258 DR. DEWEY UNITARIANISM. [CHAP. XXXIX. 



to the current, his table would be covered next morning- with 

 letters each beginning with the dreaded words, Stop my paper. 

 He has made a bargain, like that of Dr. Faustus, with the devil, 

 bartering away his immortal soul for a few thousand dollars.&quot; 

 When I afterward reflected on this alleged tyranny of regular 

 subscribers, it occurred to me that the evil must be in a great 

 degree mitigated by the cheapness and variety of daily prints, 

 each the organ of some distinct party or shade of opinion, and 

 great numbers of them freely taken in at every reading-room and 

 every hotel. 



I might say of Dr. Dewey s discourse, as I have already said 

 of the preaching of the Unitarians generally, that, without want 

 ing spirituality, it was more practical and less doctrinal than the 

 majority of sermons to which I have been accustomed to listen. 

 But I should mislead my readers, if I gave them to understand 

 that they could frequent churches of this denomination without 

 risk of sometimes having their feelings offended by hearing doc 

 trines they have been taught to reverence treated slightingly, or 

 even with contempt. On one occasion (and it was the only one 

 in my experience), I was taken, when at Boston, to hear an emi 

 nent Unitarian preacher, who was prevented by illness from offi 

 ciating, and his place was supplied by a self-satisfied young man, 

 who, having talked dogmatically on points contested by many a 

 rationalist, made it clear that he commiserated the weak minds 

 of those who adhered to articles of faith rejected by his church. 

 If this too common method of treating theological subjects be ill 

 calculated to convince or conciliate dissentients, it is equally 

 reprehensible from its tendency to engender, in the minds of those 

 who assent, a Pharisaical feeling of self-gratulation that they are 

 not as other sectarians are. 



T can only account for the power which the Unitarians have 

 exerted, and are now exerting, in forwarding the great education 

 al movement in America, in the face of that almost superstitious 

 prejudice with which their theology is regarded by nineteen- 

 twentieths of the population, by attributing it to the love of 

 intellectual progress which animates both their clergy and laity, 

 and the deep conviction they are known to feel that public moral- 



