Chapter 16

It was when this success was certain that the convention met in New York. The victory of the Union cause was then assured, and the utmost enthusiasm prevailed. Some of the final and most important scenes of the great national struggle were enacted while the convention was in session. Courage and hope ran high under these circumstances; and the convention was not only enthusiastically loyal to the nation, but equally so to its own denominational interests. For the first time in the history of the Unitarian body in this country the churches were directly represented at a general gathering. The number of churches represented was two hundred and two, and they sent three hundred and eighty-five delegates. Many other persons attended, however; and throughout all the sittings of the convention the audience was a large one. Many women were present, though not as delegates, the men only having official recognition in this gathering. It is evident from the records, the newspaper reports, and the memories of those present, that the interest in this meeting was very large, and that the attendance was quite beyond what was anticipated by any one concerned in planning it. The call to all the churches, and the giving them an equality of representation in the convention, was doubtless one of the causes of its success. As a result, an able body of laymen appeared in the convention, who were accustomed to business methods and familiar with legislative procedure, and who carried through the work of the convention with deliberation and skill.

On the first evening of the convention a sermon was preached by Dr. James Freeman Clarke that was a noble and generous introduction to its deliberations. He called for the exercise of the spirit of inclusiveness, a broad and tolerant catholicity, and union on the basis of the work to be done. On the morning of April 5, 1865, at eleven o'clock, the convention met for the transaction of business in All Souls' Church, of which Henry Whitney Bellows was the minister. Hon. John A. Andrew, then the governor of Massachusetts, was elected to preside over the convention; and among the vice-presidents were William Cullen Bryant, Rev. John Gorham Palfrey, Hon. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Rev. Orville Dewey, and Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett, while Rev. Edward Everett Hale was made the secretary. In Governor Andrew the convention had as its presiding officer a man of a broad and generous spirit, who was insistent that the main purpose of the meeting should be kept always steadily in view, and yet that all the members and all the varying opinions should have just recognition. In a large degree the success of the convention was due to his catholicity and to his skill in reconciling opposing interests.

The time of the convention was devoted almost wholly to legislating for the denomination and to planning for its future work. On the morning of the second day the subject of organization came up for consideration, and the committee selected for that purpose presented a constitution providing for a National Conference that should meet annually, and that should be constituted of the minister and two lay delegates from each church, together with three delegates each from the American Unitarian Association, the Western Conference, and such other bodies as might be invited to participate in its deliberations. This Conference was to be only recommendatory in its character, adopting "the existing organizations of the Unitarian body as the instruments of its power." The name of the new organization was the subject of some discussion, James Freeman Clarke wishing to make the Conference one of Independent and Unitarian churches, while another delegate desired to substitute "free Christian" for Unitarian. The desire strongly manifested by a considerable number to make the Conference include in its membership all liberal churches of whatever name not acceptable to the majority of the delegates, voted with a decided emphasis to organize strictly on the Unitarian basis.

As soon as the convention was organized, expression was given to the demand for a doctrinal basis for its deliberations. Though several attempts were made to bring about the acceptance of a creed, these met with complete failure. In the preamble to the constitution, however, it was asserted that the delegates were "disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ," while the first article declared that the conference was organized to promote "the cause of Christian faith and work." It was quite evident that a large majority of the delegates regarded the convention as Christian in its purposes and distinctly Unitarian in its denominational mission. A minority desired a platform that should have no theological implications, and that should permit the co-operation of every kind of liberal church. The use of the phrase Lord Jesus Christ was strongly opposed by the more radical section of the convention, but the members of it were not organized or ready to give utterance to their protest in an effective manner.

The convention gave its approval to the efforts of the Unitarian Association to secure the sum of $100,000, and urged the churches, that had not already done so, to contribute. It also advised the securing of a like sum as an endowment for Antioch College, and commended to men of wealth the needs of the Harvard and Meadville Theological Schools. The council of the Conference was asked to give its attention to the necessity and duty of creating an organ for the denomination, to be called The Liberal Christian. A resolution looking to union with the Universalist body was presented, and one was passed declaring "that there should be recognition, fellowship, and co-operation between all those various elements in our population that are prepared to meet on the basis of Christianity." James Freeman Clarke, Samuel J. May, and Robert Collyer were constituted a committee of correspondence, to promote acquaintance, fraternity, and unity between Unitarians and all of like liberal faith.[2]

A resolution offered by William Cullen Bryant expressive of thanksgiving because of the near approach of peace, and for the opening made by the extinction of slavery for the diffusion of Christianity in its true spirit as a religion of love, mercy, and universal liberty, was unanimously adopted by a rising vote.

The convention was a remarkable success in the number who attended its sessions, the character of the men who participated in its deliberations, and the skill with which the unsectarian sect had been organized for effective co-operation and work. Its influence was immediately felt throughout the denomination and upon all its activities. The change in attitude was very great, and the depressed and discouraged tone of many Unitarian utterances for a number of years preceding and following 1860 gave way to one of enthusiasm and courage.[3]

[Sidenote: New Life in the Unitarian Association.]

The annual meeting of the Unitarian Association, that soon followed, felt the new stir of life, and the awakening to a larger consciousness of power. The chief attention was directed to meeting the new opportunities that had been presented, and to preparing for the larger work required. Dr. Rufus P. Stebbins, who had been for three years the president, and who had been actively instrumental in securing the large accession to the contributions of the year, was elected secretary, with the intent that he should devote himself to pushing forward the missionary enterprises of the Association. He refused to serve, and accepted the position only until his successor could be secured. In a few weeks, the executive committee elected Rev. Charles Lowe to this office, and he immediately entered upon its duties. He proved to be eminently fitted for the place by his enthusiastic interest in the work to be accomplished, and by his skill as an organizer. His catholicity of mind enabled him to conciliate, as far as this was possible, the conservative and radical elements in the denomination, and to unite them into an effective working body. Educated at Harvard College and Divinity School, Lowe spent two years as a tutor in the college, and then was settled successively over parishes in New Bedford, Salem, and Somerville. His experience and skill as an army agent of the Association suggested his fitness for the larger sphere of labor into which he was now inducted. For six most difficult and trying years he successfully conducted the affairs of the Association.

For the first time in the history of the Association its income was such as to enable it to plan its work on a large scale, and in some degree commensurate with its opportunities. During the year and a half preceding the first of June, 1866, there was contributed to the Association about $175,000, to Antioch College $103,000, to the Boston Fraternity of Churches $22,920, to the Children's Mission $42,000, to the Freedman's Aid Societies $30,000, to the Sunday School Society $2,500, to The Christian Register $15,000, and to the Western Conference $6,000, making a total of about $400,000 given by the denomination to these religious, educational, and philanthropic purposes; and this financial success was truly indicative of the new interest in its work that had come to the Unitarian body.

[Sidenote: The New Theological Position.]

Although the New York convention voted that $100,000 ought to be raised in 1866, because the needs of the denomination demanded it, yet only $60,000 were secured. The reaction that followed the close of the war had set in, the financial prosperity of the country had begun to lessen, and the enthusiasm that had made the first great effort of the denomination so eminently successful did not continue. A chief cause for the waning interest in the denomination itself was the agitation, in regard to the theological position of the Unitarian body that began almost immediately after the New York convention.

The older Unitarians held to the Bible and the teachings of Jesus as the great sources of spiritual truth as strongly as did the orthodox, and they differed from them only as to the purport of the message conveyed. This may be seen in a creed offered to the New York convention, by a prominent layman,[4] almost immediately after it was opened on the first morning. In this proposed creed it was asserted that Unitarians believe "in one Lord, Jesus Christ; the Son of God and his specially appointed messenger, and representative to our race; gifted with supernatural power, approved of God by miracles and signs and wonders which God did by him, and thus by divine authority commanding the devout and reverential faith of all who claim the Christian name." Although this creed was not adopted by the convention, it expressed the belief of a majority of Unitarians. To the same purport was the word spoken by Dr. Bellows, when he said: "Unitarians of the school to which I belong accept Jesus Christ with all their hearts as the Sent of God, the divinely inspired Son of the Father, who by his miraculously proven office and his sinless life and character was fitted to be, and was made revealer of the universal and permanent religion of the human race."[5] These quotations indicate that the more conservative Unitarians had not changed their position since 1853, when they made official statement of their acceptance of Christianity as authenticated by miracles and the supernatural. In fact, they held essentially to the attitude taken when they left the older Congregational body.

On the other hand, the transcendentalists and the radical Unitarians proposed a new theory of the nature of religious truth, and insisted that the spiritual message of Christianity is inward, and not outward, directly to the soul of man, and not through the mediation of a person or a book. Almost from the first Channing had been moving towards this newer conception of the nature and method of religion. He did not wholly abandon the miraculous, but it grew to have less significance for him with each year. The Unitarian conception of religion as natural to man, which was maintained strenuously from the time of Jonathan Mayhew, made it probable, if not certain, that a merely external system of religion would be ultimately outgrown. In his lecture on self-denial Channing stated this position in the clearest terms. "If," he said, "after a deliberate and impartial use of our best faculties, a professed revelation seems to us plainly to disagree with itself or to clash with great principles which we cannot question, we ought not to hesitate to withhold from it our belief. I am surer that my rational nature is from God, than that any book is an expression of his will. This light in my own breast is his primary revelation, and all subsequent ones must accord with it, and are in fact intended to blend with and brighten it."[6]

Channing was not alone in accepting Christianity as a spiritual principle that is natural and universal. As early as 1826 Alvan Lamson had defended the proposition that miracles are merely local in their nature, and that attention should be chiefly given to the tendency, spirit, and object of Christianity. He claimed that it bore on the face of it the marks of its heavenly origin, and that, when these are fully accepted, no other form of evidence is required.[7] In 1834 James Walker, in writing on The Philosophy of Man's Spiritual Nature in regard to the Foundations of Faith, had taken what was essentially the transcendentalist view of the origin and nature of religion. He contended for the "religion in the soul" that is authenticated "by the revelations of consciousness."[8] In 1836 Convers Francis, in, describing the religion of Christ as a purely internal principle, maintained the "quiet, spirit-searching character of Christianity," as "a kingdom wholly within the soul of man."[9]

When Convers Francis became a professor in the Harvard Divinity School, in 1842, the spiritual philosophy had recognition there; and he had a considerable influence upon the young men who came under his guidance. Though of the older way of thinking, George R. Noyes, who became a professor in the school in 1840, was always on the side of liberty of interpretation and expression. For the next two decades the Divinity School sent out a succession of such men as John Weiss, Octavius B. Frothingham, Samuel Longfellow, William J. Potter, and Francis E. Abbot, who were joined by William Henry Channing, Samuel Johnson, David A. Wasson, and others, who did not study there. These men gave a new meaning to Unitarianism, took it away from miracles to nature, discarded its evidences to rely on intuition, rejected its supernatural deity for an immanent God who speaks through all life his divine word.

During the interval between the New York convention and the first session of the National Conference, which was held in Syracuse, October 10-11, 1866, the questions which separated the conservatives and radicals were freely debated in the periodicals of the denomination, and also in sermons and pamphlets. The radicals organized for securing a revision of the constitution; and on the morning of the first day Francis E. Abbot, then the minister at Dover, N.H., offered a new preamble and first article as substitutes for those adopted in New York, in which he stated that "the object of Christianity is the universal diffusion of love, righteousness, and truth," that "perfect freedom of thought, which is at once the right and duty of every human being, always leads to diversity of opinion, and is therefore hindered by common creeds or statements of faith," and that therefore the churches assembled in the conference, "disregarding all sectarian or theological differences, and offering a cordial fellowship to all who will join them in Christian work, unite themselves in a common body, to be known as The National Conference of Unitarian and Independent Churches."

At the afternoon session Mr. Abbot's amendment was rejected; but on the motion of James Freeman Clarke the name was changed to The National Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches. A resolution stating that the expression "Other Christian Churches was not meant to exclude religious societies which have no distinctive church organization, and are not nominally Christian, if they desire to co-operate with the Conference in what it regards as Christian work," was laid on the table.

[Sidenote: Organization of the Free Religious Association.]

The result of the refusal at Syracuse to revise the constitution of the National Conference was that the radical men on the railroad train returning to Boston held a consultation, and resolved to organize an association that would secure them the liberty they desired. After correspondence and much planning a meeting was held in Boston, at the house of Rev. Cyrus A. Bartol, on February 5, 1867, to consider what should be done. After a thorough discussion of the subject the Free Religious Association was planned; and the organization was perfected at a meeting held in Horticultural Hall, Boston, May 30, 1867. Some of those who took part in this movement thought that all religion had been outgrown, but the majority believed that it is essential and eternal. What they sought was to remove its local and national elements, and to get rid of its merely sectarian and traditional features.

At the first meeting the speakers were O.B. Frothingham, Henry Blanchard, Lucretia Mott, Robert Dale Owen, John Weiss, Oliver Johnson, Francis E. Abbot, David A. Wasson, T.W. Higginson, and R.W. Emerson; and discussion was participated in by A.B. Alcott, E.C. Towne, Frank B. Sanborn, Hannah E. Stevenson, Ednah D. Cheney, Charles C. Burleigh, and Caroline H. Dall. Of these persons, one-half had been Unitarian ministers, and about one-third of them were still settled over Unitarian parishes. Mr. Frothingham was elected president of the new organization, and Rev. William J. Potter secretary. The purposes of the Association were "to promote the interests of pure religion, to encourage the scientific study of theology and to increase fellowship in the spirit." In 1872 the constitution was revised by changing the subject of study from theology to man's religious nature and history, and by the addition of the statement that "nothing in the name or constitution of the Association shall ever be construed as limiting membership by any test of speculative opinion or belief,--or as defining the position of the Association, collectively considered, with reference to any such opinion or belief,--or as interfering in any other way with that absolute freedom of thought and expression which is the natural right of every rational being."

The original purpose of the Free Religious Association, as defined in its constitution and in the addresses delivered before it, was the recognition of the universality of religion, and the representation of all phases of religious opinion in its membership and on its platform. The circumstances of its organization, however, in some measure took it away from this broader position, and made it the organ of the radical Unitarian opinion. Those Unitarians who did not find in the American Unitarian Association and the National Conference such fellowship as they desired became active in the Free Religious organization.

The cause of Free Religion was ably presented in the pages of The Radical, a monthly journal edited by Sidney H. Morse, and published in Boston, and The Index, edited by Francis E. Abbot, at first in Toledo and then in Boston. It also found expression at the Sunday afternoon meetings held in Horticultural Hall, Boston, for several winters, beginning in 1868-69; in the conventions held in several of the leading cities of the northern states; at the gatherings of the Chestnut Street Club; and in the annual meetings of the Free Religious Association held in Boston during anniversary week. Little effort was made to organize churches, and only two or three came into existence distinctly on the basis of Free Religion. In connection with The Index, Francis E. Abbot organized the Liberal League to promote the interests of Free Religion, with about four hundred local branches; but this organization proved ineffective, and soon ceased its existence.

The withdrawal of the radicals into the Free Religious Association did not quiet the agitation in the Unitarian ranks, partly because some of the most active workers in that Association continued to occupy Unitarian pulpits, and partly because a considerable radical element did not withdraw in any manner. The conferences had an unfailing subject for exciting discussion, and the Unitarian body was at this time in a chronic condition of agitation. As in the days of the controversy about the Trinity, the more conservative ministers would not exchange pulpits with the more radical.

[Sidenote: Unsuccessful Attempts at Reconciliation.]

At the second session of the National Conference, held in New York City, October 7-9, 1868, another attempt was made to bring about a reconciliation between the two wings of the denomination. In an attitude of generous good will and with a noble desire for inclusiveness and peace, James Freeman Clarke proposed an addition to the constitution of the Conference, in which it was declared "that we heartily welcome to that fellowship all who desire to work with us in advancing the kingdom of God." Such a broad invitation was not acceptable to the majority; and, after an extended debate, this amendment was withdrawn, and the following, offered by Edward Everett Hale, and essentially the same as that presented by Mr. Clarke, with the exception of the phrase just quoted, was adopted:--

To secure the largest unity of the spirit and the widest practical co-operation, it is hereby understood that all the declarations of this conference, including the preamble and constitution, are expressions only of its majority, and dependent wholly for their effect upon the consent they command on their own merits from the churches here represented or belonging within the circle of our fellowship.

The annual meeting of the Unitarian Association in 1870 was largely occupied with the vexing problem of the basis of fellowship; and the secretary, Charles Lowe, read a conciliatory and explanatory address. He said that the wide differences of theological opinion existing in the denomination were "an inevitable consequence of the great principle on which Unitarianism rests. That principle is that Christian faith and Christian union can coexist with individual liberty."[10] Rev. George H. Hepworth, then the minister of the Church of the Messiah in New York, asked for an authoritative statement of the Unitarian position, urging this demand with great insistence; and he presented a resolution calling for a committee of five to prepare "a statement of faith, which shall, as nearly as may be, represent the religious opinions of the Unitarian denomination."