IN THE NEW ENGLAND ATMOSPHERE -1851-1853 535 



Christianity not necessarily friendly to slavery: but I 

 also saw that it was a side not welcomed by the churches 

 in general, and especially distrusted in my own family. 

 I remember taking to him once an old friend of mine, a 

 man of most severe orthodoxy ; and after we had left Mr. 

 May s house I asked my friend what he thought of the 

 kindly heretic. He answered, Those of us who shall be 

 so fortunate as to reach heaven are to be greatly surprised 

 at some of the people we are to meet there. 



As a Yale student I found an additional advantage in 

 the fact that I could now frequently hear distinguished 

 clergymen who were more or less outside the orthodox 

 pale. Of these were the liberal Congregationalists of 

 New York, Brooklyn, and Boston, and, above all, Henry 

 Ward Beecher, Edwin Chapin, and Theodore Parker. At 

 various times during my college course I visited Boston, 

 and was taken by my classmate and old friend George 

 Washburn Smalley to hear Parker. He drew immense 

 crowds of thoughtful people. The music-hall, where he 

 spoke, contained about four thousand seats, and at each 

 visit of mine every seat, so far as I could see, was filled. 

 Both Parker s prayers and sermons were inspiring. He 

 was a deeply religious man ; probably the most thorough 

 American scholar, orthodox or unorthodox, of his time; 

 devoted to the public good and an intense hater of slavery. 

 His influence over my thinking was, I believe, excellent; 

 his books, and those of Channing which I read at this 

 time, did me great good by checking all inclination 

 to cynicism and scoffing; more than any other person he 

 strengthened my theistic ideas and stopped any tendency 

 to atheism; the intense conviction with which men like 

 Channing, Parker, and May spoke of a God in the uni 

 verse gave a direction to my thinking which has never 

 been lost. 



As to Beecher, nothing could exceed his bold brilliancy. 

 He was a man of genius ; even more a poet than an orator ; 

 in sympathy with every noble cause ; and utterly without 

 fear of the pew-holders inside his church or of the mob 



