and it ended with the dismissal of Dr. Holmes in 1829. At Brookfield in 1827, when a liberal majority of the parish settled a Unitarian minister, all the male members of the church but two withdrew, excommunicated those two and claimed the church property; but the two members remaining organized a new church, went to law, and recovered the property, as in the Dedham case. At Waltham in 1825 every member, male and female, of the church seceded from the parish, took their minister with them, and formed a new church and society. There were many other cases similar to these, though less conspicuous.

These controversies had not died down before a yet more heated one arose over the subject of exclusiveness; for as the orthodox regained strength and confidence they grew increasingly exclusive against the Unitarians, until they at length denied them the privilege of their turn in preaching the annual sermon before the state convention of Congregational ministers to which both belonged. Indeed, there were thought to be signs that they meant to close against the Unitarians everything in church and state. A young orthodox preacher aroused much attention in 1828 by asserting that though Unitarians formed no more than a fourth of the population of the state, they monopolized public offices, controlled nine-tenths of the political power, and influenced legislation and court decisions in their own interest and against the orthodox; and he called upon orthodox voters to remember these things when voting at elections. Once more, and for the last time, Channing now entered the lists in a memorable sermon before the Legislature (1830) on Spiritual Freedom. He charged that orthodoxy was using all its power in the way of bigotry and persecution to suppress freedom of thought in religion by raising the cry of heresy, and that this was in effect a new

Inquisition; and he uttered a strong protest against such a spirit. The orthodox replied that these charges were not true, and that it was they that had cause to complain of being ridiculed by the Unitarians; that they were given no share in public offices and honors, and no positions at Harvard University. Professor Stuart called upon Channing to withdraw his charges or prove them. Channing himself made no reply, but one of the younger ministers published a whole volume of evidence that for a generation the orthodox had tried in every way to oppress the liberal party in their churches. Here the matter rested, for the fires of controversy had nearly burnt themselves out. Most had grown weary of it and disgusted with it. The final act was at Salem in 1833, where an orthodox minister in a public address attacked Unitarians with personal abuse of a violence hitherto unknown, calling them "cold-blooded infidels." But the controversy had lost its leader with the departure of Dr. Beecher 1 from Boston in 1832, followed by the suspension of the Spirit of the Pilgrims the next year. The separation of Church and State in Massachusetts in 1834 removed the occasion for further controversy over the property rights of churches. Moreover, the orthodox were becoming involved in a doctrinal controversy within their own body, so that probably every one concerned was glad of an excuse to cultivate peace.

1

The separation of the two bodies was now complete beyond hope of reconciliation. The last exchange of pulpits had taken place. The two denominations went their different

1 It is interesting to note that though Dr. Beecher had been the leading champion of conservative orthodoxy against Unitarianism, he himself had to stand trial a few years later for heresy; and that three of his seven sons, all of whom were ministers, were well known for their liberal views and that one of his grand-daughters became the wife of a Unitarian minister, Edward Everett Hale.

ways, the Unitarians with about one hundred and twentyfive churches,1 the orthodox with some four hundred. The orthodox had moved further than they fully realized from the teachings of Calvin; and the Unitarians further than they realized from their original ground. Without being aware of it, they were already depending much more on reason in religion than on the Bible, and in their views of the nature of Christ had gone far toward the position of Priestley and Belsham. But though they had now settled their final account with orthodoxy, they had even more serious accounts to settle with themselves. Those will form the subject of the next chapter.

1 But the Universalist movement which had been growing up at about the same time, the Hicksite movement among the Friends from 1827 on, and the Christian Connection in the West, made the total number of churches which had abandoned orthodoxy in the whole country much larger than this.

CHAPTER XXXVI

AMERICAN UNITARIANISM TRYING TO FIND ITSELF: INTERNAL CONTROVERSY AND DEVELOPMENT, 1835–1865

When their long controversy with the orthodox had at last come to an end, the Unitarians found themselves but poorly equipped for carrying on an efficient and healthy life as a religious denomination with a distinct mission of its

own.

Their organization for promoting their common interests, though now ten years old, was still weak and inefficient, and had fallen far short of winning the support of all their churches. Nor had the progress of their thought gone much beyond the stage of merely dropping a few of the most objectionable doctrines of Calvinism. In their churches were many who were there merely because they were opposed to orthodoxy, but who had no positive and strong convictions in religion, and no earnest devotion to its principles. Many who had been bold defenders of Unitarianism so long as it was attacked, relapsed into inactivity now that the war against it seemed to be over, thinking that its work was done, and that liberal religion would henceforth spread fast enough of itself, without any personal effort of theirs. Most of the rank and file, and many of even the leaders, were content to settle down and enjoy in peace the liberty they had won, with no desire for further progress in thought or in organization. This chapter will try to show how the denomination was gradually roused out

of this torpor, at length began to think and act for itself, and after struggling for thirty years at last found itself, realized its mission, and began to gird itself for its proper work in the religious life of America.

The American Unitarian Association had been formed as a volunteer organization of a few individuals, who hoped in time to enlist the support of the whole denomination in a common cause; but they were long disappointed in this hope. At a period when the orthodox churches were full of reviving life and missionary zeal, and were giving generously for their own work though comparatively little for outside causes, the Unitarians, while giving with great liberality for hospitals, colleges, and all manner of charitable and philanthropic work, were giving pitifully small sums to spread their own religious faith.1 In the first year of the Association only four of the churches contributed to its funds; and though the number of these steadily increased, after fifteen years scarcely more than a third of the churches known as Unitarian were doing anything for the organized work of their denomination. Several of the largest and wealthiest of the Boston churches gave it nothing at all. They shrank from sacrificing the least of their freedom by joining any organization, they did not care to build up a new denomination, and they disliked even a denominational name. As late as 1835 the minister of the First Church in Boston stated that the word Unitarian had never yet been used in his pulpit.

It was nearly ten years before the Association was able

1 It is doubtful whether there has ever been a year since the Association was founded in which some individual Unitarian laymen (often several individuals) did not give to education or philanthropy more, often many times more, than the whole denomination was giving for its common work. A single such person is known to have given to benevolent objects $150,000 a year for ten successive years.