in artistic power and skill, the names of Hooker, Cotton, Williams, the Mathers, Willard, Blair, and Hopkins, are easily surpassed by those of Channing, Hodge, Bushnell, Parker, and Brooks. Even in philosophy, I have no question that future students will rank Porter, Hopkins, or McCosh as philosophers equal to Edwards in ability, though relatively of less significance to their time. If this modest gain continue, American literature, founded by-almost upon-religious purpose, will do service to the cause of art as well as that of religion. The theological America. But, by no possibility, can the nineteenth century in America be called a theological era. Only when other literature stagnates, does theology, era past, in philosophy, politics, or any science come to the front. These are not natural literary leaders, for reasons too apparent to need explanation. In the original book-making part of the New World—that is, in New England-theology held unTheological disputed sway until the middle of the eightchanges. eenth century, when, by the force of events, politics began to appear as its rival. Speeches, and resolutions, and state papers were more essential than creeds and sermons, in the colonial period between 1760 and 1790, though, of course, America was still "full of religious refugees animated by ideas which in England had lately passed out of fashion." Then, too, the new nation, emancipated from colonial relations, grew so rapidly in numbers and material prosperity that dogmatic and controversial theology seemed relatively of small import * J. R. Seeley, “The Expansion of England," 297. ance. For the first thirty years of its constitutional existence, the United States was also involved in foreign affairs, and was busy in trying to settle the relations between the federal idea and the States'rights idea. Thus the conspicuous and apparently all-absorbing religious element appeared to pass somewhat into the background. rian revival. That it continued to exist, however, and that it was prized by the best Americans as the ground- The Unitawork of our society and of our thought, was evident at the beginning of this century, and is evident to-day. The first twenty-five years after 1800 were made notable, in the history of American intellect, by a religious controversy that excited the New England churches, and was watched with interest by those outside of New England which did not feel its immediate force. This controversy attended the spread of the Unitarian faith in Massachusetts, particularly in its eastern section. The Congregational churches in that part of the state, and in the seaboard towns of New Hampshire and Maine, had slowly but steadily been modifying their Calvinistic and Augustinian sentiments, even before their creeds and forms were changed. Not a few ministers were regarded with suspicion as being "High-Arians," or "semi-Arians," or at any rate " Arminians "—even by the middle of the eighteenth century. Sermons had become more liberal; the minutiae of the faith were no longer considered of equal importance with its essentials and now and then some peculiarly "progressive" utterance gave sincere pain to the conservative party. Indeed, as far back as Chief Justice Sewall's day, at the close of the seventeenth century, Harvard University had been regarded as a subject for suspicion, while Yale College, established in 1700, was already deemed more conservative. In 1785 the first denominational break was made. The oldest Protestant Episcopal-or, as it was then called, "Church of England"-church in New England was King's Chapel, Boston, which, in the early days, the Puritans had feared, detested, or despised, as the case might be. might be. This church, in 1785,* put forth a revised liturgy, prepared by James Freeman, the head of the church, in which all Trinitarian expressions were omitted. In it, as Dr. Freeman's preface stated, no Christian could find aught to offend him or wound his conscience, while "the Trinitarian, the Unitarian, the Calvinist, the Arminian, will read nothing in it which can give him any reasonable umbrage. God is the sole object of worship in these prayers; and as no man can come to God but by the one Mediator, Jesus Christ, every petition is here offered in his name, in obedience to his positive command." But the book was certainly non-Trinitarian; and the King's Chapel society was no longer either Trinitarian or Episcopal. Young Mr. Freeman, then but twenty-six, was probably the first United States minister to call himself a Unitarian, though an Arian had been ordained over the Hingham Congregational Church as early as 1718. Mr. Freeman, in 1787, was re-ordained pastor of King's Chapel by the * The year of the first Protestant Episcopal prayer-book in America; the second (present) book dates from 1789. wardens and congregation, not at the hands of bishops. The break, as far as the single church was concerned, was complete; and a similar break was soon made in many Congregational churches. upon literature. About 1812, simultaneously with the second war between England and the United States, Its bearing the theological war in Massachusetts broke out in earnest. Already the " orthodox or evangelical" ministers had refused to exchange pulpits with the avowed Unitarian ministers. The latter, however, strenuously retained the Congregational name, and the churches formerly Trinitarian of course continued their ancient corporate existence and congregational system. Previous to or soon after this date, nearly all of the oldest Congregational churches, established between 1620 and 1650 in such ancient towns as Boston, Cambridge, Dorchester, Dedham, Plymouth, and Salem, joined the new movement. Indeed, the Old South (Third Congregational) Church in Boston was the only prominent society in that city remaining Trinitarian. The details of the movement and of the attendant controversy, of course, cannot be chronicled here. We are chiefly interested in its literary aspects, which were of considerable importance. All New England seemed to have returned to its old-time avocation of religious pamphleteering, and there was no doubt that both sides were terribly in earnest. The most prominent leaders on the side of the conservative, or Trinitarian, Congregationalists, were Samuel Worcester, of Salem, and Professors Moses Stuart and Leonard Woods, of the theological seminary at Andover. The chief Unitarian debaters were William Ellery Channing, Boston's most famous preacher, Henry Ware, senior, Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard, Henry Ware, junior, minister of the Second Church, Boston, and Andrews Norton, professor of sacred literature at Harvard. The whole controversy had really been precipitated by the election, in 1805, of the elder Ware as divinity professor in a university and to a chair once explicitly Trinitarian in their work. The divinity school, and to a large extent the whole university, became Unitarian within the next two decades. The debate was carried on with ability, with intensity, and with as much courtesy as could be expected, in many books, in more pamphlets, in hundreds of sermons, and in such periodicals as The Panoplist (Trinitarian) and The Christian Examiner (Unitarian). Of this mass of destructive and constructive writing, but few books need now be studied. The indirect influence of the freedom of Unitarianism upon American literature-through such writers as Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, Prescott, Bancroft-will sometimes be made apparent, sometimes be but felt, in our later studies of their works. William Of all those who, on either side, took part in the Unitarian controversy, William Ellery Channing put forth the writings most deserving of notice by the literary student. Channing was 1780-1842. born in Newport, Rhode Island, during the Revolutionary war, graduated at Harvard when eighteen years old, and was known as a promising student at an early age, notwithstanding his slight |