It is needful, perhaps, to guard against the inference that the
Unitarian movement is only, or in the main, an intellectual one. Since
1833, in consequence of a visit by _Dr. Joseph Tuckerman_, from Boston,
'Domestic Missions' were founded, to promote the religious improvement
of the neglected poor, and to-day this kind of work still goes on with
much social benefit in our larger cities. Similar benevolence has marked
the American side. Many congregations, too, are composed largely of
working-people, and in recent years a Van Mission has carried the
Unitarian message into the country villages, mining districts, and other
populous parts. These aspects of their activity are apt to be obscured
owing to a pardonable disposition of Unitarianism to point to the 'great
names' associated with their churches. In the American list, for
example, we find Emerson, Longfellow, O.W. Holmes, Bryant,
Hawthorne--Whittier and Lowell had close affinities; Bancroft, Motley,
Prescott, Parkman; Margaret Fuller, Louisa Alcott; and statesmen,
jurists, merchants, and scientists too numerous to set down here.
Obviously, the English side cannot rival such a brilliant roll; the
_élite_ of society has not been here, as in New England, on the side of
the newer theology. Yet English Unitarianism has its eminent names also,
alike in literature, science, politics, philanthropy, and scholarship of
various kinds; and the body is credited with a civic strength out of
proportion to the number of its avowed adherents, while its
philanthropies have been of the same broad and enlightened kind as those
which enrich the American record.
II. IDEAS AND TENDENCIES
More important to the general public is the question of ideas which now
prevail among Unitarians. Our preceding sketch has shown some of the
results of the freedom claimed by them in one generation after another.
We have now to see in what respects the nineteenth century effected a
further change.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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