x churches. The writings of Horace Bushnell, of
Hartford, one of the most eminent Congregational divines, approach
Unitarianism in their interpretation of the doctrine of the Atonement;
and the "progressive orthodoxy" of Andover is certainly not the
Calvinism of Thomas Hooker or of Jonathan Edwards. But it seemed to
the transcendentalists that conservative Unitarianism was too negative
and "cultured," and Margaret Fuller complained of the coldness of the
Boston pulpits; while, contrariwise, the central thought of
transcendentalism, that the soul has an immediate connection with God,
was pronounced by Dr. Channing a "crude speculation." This was the
thought of Emerson's address in 1838 before the Cambridge Divinity
School, and it was at once made the object of attack by conservative
Unitarians like Henry Ware and Andrews Norton. The latter, in an
address before the same audience, on the _Latest Form of Infidelity_,
said: "Nothing is left that can be called Christianity if its
miraculous character be denied. . . . There can be no intuition, no
direct perception, of the truth of Christianity." And in a pamphlet
supporting the same side of the question he added: "It is not an
intelligible error, but a mere absurdity, to maintain that we are
conscious, or have an intuitive knowledge, of the being of God, of our
own immortality, . . . or of any other fact of religion." Ripley and
Parker replied in Emerson's defense; but Emerson himself would never be
drawn into controversy. He said that he could not argue. He
_announced_ truths; his method was that of the seer, not of the
disputant. In 1832 Emerson, who was a Unitarian clergyman, and
descended from eight generations of clergymen, had resigned the
pastorate of the Second Church of Boston because he could not
conscientiously administer the sacrament of the communion--which he
regarded as a mere act of commemoration--in the sense in which it was
understood by his parishioners. Thenceforth, though he sometimes
occupied Unitarian pulpits, and was, indeed, all his life a kind of
"lay preacher," he never assumed the pastorate of a church. The
representative of transcendentalism in the pulpit was Theodore Parker,
an eloquent preacher, an eager debater, and a prolific writer on many
subjects, whose collected works fill fourteen volumes. Parker was a
man of strongly human traits, passionate, independent, intensely
religious, but intensely radical, who made for himself a lar