if such numerous congregations ever listened to a Unitarian before or since.  He continued an arduous work for some fifteen years, but it wore him out before his time.  He was an erudite scholar and a prolific writer.  Discarding the claims of Christianity to be the only ‘divine revelation,’ he based his clear and always optimistic theism on the broad facts of human experience.  Ardently interested in social and political questions, he poured satire without stint on the religious defenders of slavery, and himself dared all risks along with the foremost abolitionists.  Such a man could not but count for much; and though his radical views in theology greatly disturbed for many years the conservatives in the body—­for Unitarianism itself had by this time a well-defined conservative type—­they could not fail to permeate the minds of the masses.

Of Emerson’s own life-work this is hardly the place to speak at large, but in connection with the development of that ‘Religion of the Spirit’ in which Dr. Martineau sees the culmination of the theological progress of Unitarianism, Emerson’s share must be allowed to be a large one.  When Dean Stanley visited America he is said to have reported that he had heard sermons from many pulpits, but ’Emerson was the one preacher in them all.’  It is certain that at one time the style, if not also the thought, of Emerson was extensively copied by the preachers, not always to the gain of solidity.  A degree of jauntiness appears in the worse specimens of these imitations, and Lord Morley’s criticism that Emerson himself was too oblivious of the dark side of human suffering and guilt would doubtless apply to much of the Unitarian eloquence at one time inspired by his witching voice.

This, however, is but one side of the American message in the nineteenth century; evidence abounds that a ‘Christocentric’ type of teaching, with adhesion to much of old material of the Gospels, held its own till a generation ago, and its peculiar accent is not without echoes to-day.  On the whole it is probable that, as at the beginning of the century, the ‘liberals’ in New England Congregationalism were somewhat shocked at some of the daring views of the Priestleyan Unitarians in England, so even towards its close the general position of thought was more conservative there than was the rule here.  Certainly, also, there was a deep, tender tone manifested even where opinion was most radical among the American Unitarians, and of this no better proof can be cited than the large number of hymns of a high order both of thought and expression which have been written among them.  They serve to show that a frank acceptance of the evolutionary philosophy by no means necessarily entails the decay of devout personal piety or the loss of beautiful ideals.  Among the American hymnists the following are specially eminent, and their productions are often to be found in ‘orthodox’ collections:  Samuel Longfellow (brother to H.W.L.), Samuel Johnson, W.C.  Gannett, J.W.  Chadwick, and F.L.  Hosmer.