Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

So, as a point of time must be fixed upon, we will begin with Thomas Paine. It is not easy to speak fully and justly of Paine, because in so doing we must speak of the misappreh...

What History asks from us is not Literature and Art. The world is full of what can never grow old in either. _American_ Literature, _American_ Art! Heaven save us from them! Let...

Samuel Johnson was an enthusiastic evolutionist, but of mind itself, not of matter as ripening into mind. The ordinary conception of evolution,--that the higher came from the lo...

No, the religion of the future in America must be of the spirit; not merely as being independent of form and dogma, but as cherishing a great hope for the soul, and a great aspi...

There is a faculty in all--the most degraded, the most ignorant, the most obscure--to perceive spiritual truth when distinctly presented; and the ultimate appeal on all moral qu...

In this country Mr. Emerson led the dance of the hours. He was our poet, our philosopher, our sage, our priest. He was the eternal man. If we could not go where he went, it was...

And who were the inmates? The master, a man whose sympathies were always and completely with the working-people, a man of steady and boundless humanity; the mistress, a woman wh...

The idea that man is _developed_ into the divine life, not _converted_ to it, seems to be the heart of the system. The writings of F. D. Maurice are full of it. He said that he...

In a word, the institution was all that could have been looked for in a time when ecclesiastical and doctrinal traditions were fatally though not confessedly broken, and naked i...

In calling Mr. Weiss essentially a poet, I am far from implying that he was not a thinker. Perhaps he was more subtle and more brilliant a thinker for being also a poet--that is...

Jersey City, to which I went directly from Salem, was a very different place from what it is now; smaller and perhaps pleasanter. Where now is a large city, a few years ago was...

This task--the complete emancipation of the human mind from every form of thraldom--will occupy liberal teachers for a long time to come. All that can be said in defence of inst...

Then, whether from disposition or philosophy we cannot tell, this man avoided everything dark, evil, unwholesome, unpleasant. Sickness of all kinds, complaint, depression, melan...

Among the Unitarians our conception is familiar. At the convention that was held in Philadelphia, in October, 1889, both parties, the most conservative and the most radical, sat...

The Catholic Church, to say nothing here of any ecclesiastical purpose in keeping masses of men and women out of the world, gathered those who could not help themselves into gre...

Broad and vast and immense as that problem may appear, it is after all, in actual experience, purely individual.... The truth is, nobody has experienced more of it than you or I...

Her love of nature was genuine. As a young woman she could distinguish the colors of a flying bird. When she had a house of her own in the country, she preferred a spot remote f...

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Dr. Osgood was intensely self-conscious, self-regarding, self-referring. Not vain in the ordinary sense, though he seemed so from his countenance, attitude, manner, for all of w...

Whether it be the tendency of modern thought, or whether it be not, to abandon the Christian religion and cast discredit on every kind of faith held by the churches and professo...