Creed

of persons who desire a reform in the prevailing philosophy of the day. These are called Transcendentalists, because they believe in an order of truths which transcends the sphere of the external senses. Their leading idea is the supremacy of mind over matter. Hence they maintain that the truth of religion does not depend on tradition, nor historical facts, but has an unerring witness in the soul. There is a light, they believe, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world; there is a faculty in all-the most degraded, the most ignorant, the most obscure-to perceive spiritual truth when distinctly presented; and the ultimate appeal on all moral questions is not to a jury of scholars, a hierarchy of divines, or the prescriptions of a creed, but to the commonsense of the human race."

Individuals differing very widely in their convictions were brought together. They were united by the common belief in the supremacy of the individual reason, of the intuitions of the soul, and of the immediate apprehension of spiritual truth by the native power of man. To them human nature itself was divine.

Emerson

Chief among the Transcendentalists was Ralph Waldo Emerson, both a lover and a critic of the movement. He was a man of delightful spirit, and wrote with inimitable subtlety and grace. His name reflects immortal honor upon American letters. He came from a family famed for its religious distinction, in which were eight generations of preachers. Not in theology, however, or in the theological spirit, but in letters and philosophical glimpses, it may be said Emerson was the rare flower of the New England stock. He graduated from Harvard University in 1821, and in 1829 became pastor of the Second Unitarian Church of Boston. In 1832 he resigned his pastorate on account of his growing lack of sympathy with everything distinctive of Christianity. Later, he became unwilling to offer public prayer, and at length retired from all association with ecclesiastical affairs. He then devoted himself entirely to writing and lecturing. He made no pretension whatever to any consistency or constructiveness of thought, but there is always something marvellously vital, suggestive, and stimulating in his writings. He was an intuitionalist pure and simple. He left no philosophical system, no school, and in religion he steadily drifted farther away from theism to a

sort of pale pantheism. His life was remarkably pure and beautiful, and his constant plea for the things of the spirit was not without its influence against the rising materialism. The Transcendentalists, at the outset, were men of sane and moderate intentions. They broached no visionary reforms. They were not iconoclasts. But between 1830 Affiliated Reformers and 1850 the air was full of radical proposals for a reconstructed world, and the wildest social and religious theories were set forth. These the Transcendentalists rather encouraged than frowned upon, so that the opprobrium of these movements fell upon those who had little or nothing in common with them. Frothingham quotes from Emerson a description of the Conventions of the Friends of Universal Progress, held in 1840 in Chardon Street, Boston:

"The singularity and latitude of the summons drew together from all parts of New England, and also from the Middle States, men of every shade of opinion, from the straitest orthodoxy to the wildest heresy, and many persons whose church was a church of one member only. A great variety of dialect and of costume was noticed. A great deal of confusion, eccentricity, and freak appeared, as well as of zeal and enthusiasm. . . . Madmen, mad women, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh Day Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians, and philosophers, all came successively to the top, and seized their moment, if not their hour, wherein to chide, or pray, or preach, or protest. . . . If there was not parliamentary order, there was life, and the assurance of that constitutional love for religion and religious liberty which in all periods characterizes the inhabitants of this part of America. . . . These men and women were in reach of something better and more satisfying than a vote or a definition."

The Transcendentalists themselves inaugurated an experiment at West Roxbury, Massachusetts, for the realization of human brotherhood, personal equality, and the comBrook Farm bination of intellectual pursuits with manual labor. It was a small agricultural colony, organized, not on a communistic, but on a socialistic and co-operative basis. The articles of association were drawn up in September, 1841. The prime leaders were George Ripley, Charles A. Dana, Minot Pratt, and William B. Allen. Nathaniel Hawthorne also bought

stock, and Theodore Parker, the great Channing, and other men of eminence gave it their sympathy. Personal property and individual rights and tastes were respected. The colony numbered about one hundred and fifty. Some joined to see how such an industrial experiment would work, and others were impelled by the desire to realize the democratic ideal of Christ. In the Dial, which was the great Transcendental organ, Miss Elizabeth Peabody describes the institute as an attempt to establish upon earth the City of God. "We have hitherto heard of Christ by the hearing of the ear," she says; “now let us see him, let us be him, and see what will come of that. Let us communicate with each other and live." The male members of the institute worked at farming, gardening, and other pursuits, according to their liking, and many of them in teaching, which was the most remunerative part of their work. Some of the members, like Mr. and Mrs. Ripley, Dana, John S. Dwight, and George P. Bradford, were competent scholars, and they had no lack of pupils. In 1845 the Brook Farm Association was turned into a Fourierist "phalanx." On the evening of March 3d, 1846, the phalanstery was burned, and the interesting experiment of Brook Farm was abandoned, 1847, amid crushing financial losses.

Brook Farm is a romantic episode in American history. Of the sincerity of purpose and noble enthusiasm of its promoters there can be no doubt. Frothingham thinks that the introduction of Fourierism was one of the chief causes of its downfall. It smothered its joyous and free spirit by too much mechanism and rule. "The idealists lingered last, loath to leave a spot endeared by so many associations, hallowed by so many hopes. One of the last to go, one of the saddest of heart, one of the most self-sacrificing through it all, was John S. Dwight. It may truly be said that Brook Farm died in music."* But the men who planted it never lost faith in the principles it embodied. Hawthorne used to speak of “his old and affectionately remembered home at Brook Farm." In the same spirit Dana wrote long after of the "great pleasure to look back upon the days when we were together, and to believe that the ends for which we then labored are sure at last, in good time, to be realized for mankind."

* Frothingham, "George Ripley,” p. 192.

CHAPTER XXI

COMMUNISTIC CHURCHES

[AUTHORITIES.-The best authority is Nordhoff, Communistic Societies in the United States (N. Y., 1875). Noyes, History of American Socialisms (London, 1870), is a valuable work. Dixon, New America (London, 1867), and Spiritual Wives (London, 1868), contain a mine of information by a competent critic and versatile writer. Noyes, Handbook of the Oneida Community (Wallingford, Conn., 1867), gives full details concerning the most radical communistic experiment. Williams, The Harmony Society at Economy, Pa. (New Haven, 1867); Avery, Sketches of Shakers and Shakerism (Albany, 1883).]

SEVERAL attempts at a realization of the unity and community of goods of the Early Church have been made on American soil. These organizations, for the most part, have been established on ostensibly Christian and Biblical principles, and therefore deserve a brief treatment in a history of the American Church.

The first of these in point of time is the German SeventhDay Baptists. They were founded by Conrad Beissel, who The German came to this country in 1720. He very soon became Seventh-Day dissatisfied with the views of the Tunkers, of which Baptists body he was a member, and began to advocate celibacy and the Saturday Sabbath. He withdrew from all intercourse with his former associates, and established himself as a hermit on the banks of the Cocalico River. He was soon joined by others. In 1728 Beissel formed a monastic order, and built cells at Ephrata, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Celibacy was required on the part of the monks, but not for other members of the society. The inmates of the cloisters changed their names on assuming the vows of the order, and wore a peculiar garb. In 1740 there were thirty-six monks and thirty-five nuns, besides nearly two hundred and fifty affiliated members. Various mills were operated. The monks gave special attention to printing. Some of the largest pub

lishing undertakings of the entire Colonial period were carried on in the German language in the retired settlement of Ephrata. For example, the celebrated Martyr Book (“Der Blutige Schau-Platz") was translated by them from the Dutch into German, and printed here in 1748. It is an immense folio, of over fifteen hundred pages, and probably the largest work from the colonial press. Pennypacker refers to the Sabbathschool established by Ludwig Häcker, of Ephrata, as existing forty years before Raikes's school was founded. Beissel died in 1768. Peter Miller, a convert from the Presbyterians, succeeded him. But the society has steadily gone down, and there are now but few members. The old cloister still stands at Ephrata, and another at Snow Hill, Pennsylvania. The Ephrata community kept up a good reputation for morality and piety, and one cannot but look with regret upon the steady dwindling-away of this picturesque band of Baptist monks. The Shakers trace their origin back to the Camisards of France. They say that some of the Camisards went to England in 1706, and formed a society in 1747, which was led by

Shakers James and Jane Wardley. Ann Lee, of Manchester, England, joined this society in 1758. She received revelations from God, and went forth to found a new Church. Her leadership was accepted by many, and she was regarded as the second appearing of Christ. Acting under a supposed divine revelation, she and nine of her followers set sail for New York, May 19th, 1774. A tract of ground was bought, seven miles northwest of Albany, and in 1776 Ann Lee's pilgrim Church "gathered in this forest home." A revival of religion at New Lebanon, Columbia County, New York, in 1779, largely increased Lee's company. "The Shakers' first house of worship was built at New Lebanon in 1785. The first gathering into a community was in 1787. Their first written covenant of a full consecration to God of life, services, and treasure was signed by the members in 1795.”

Their proper name is "Believers in Christ's Second Appearing," but they themselves ordinarily use the name by which they are known to the world. It is derived from one of their chief prophecies (Haggai ii., 6, 7), where Christ is promised to appear. They have several points of agreement with the Quakers, especially in simplicity of dress and severe morality of life. Their societies consist of both sexes and all ages.

The