Orthodox and
liberal Congregational churches split apart, and when Channing
preached the ordination sermon for Jared Sparks in Baltimore in
1819, the word Unitarian, accepted by the liberals with some
misgiving, became the recognized motto of the new creed. It is
only with its literary influence that we are here concerned, yet
that literary influence became so potent that there is scarcely a
New England writer of the first rank, from Bryant onward, who
remained untouched by it.
The most interesting and peculiar phase of the new liberalism has
little directly to do with the specific tenets of theological
Unitarianism, and in fact marked a revolt against the more
prosaic and conventional pattern of English and American
Unitarian thought. But this movement, known as Transcendentalism,
would have been impossible without a preliminary and liberalizing
stirring of the soil. It was a fascinating moment of release for
some of the most brilliant and radical minds of New England. Its
foremost representative in our literature was Ralph Waldo
Emerson, as its chief exponents in England were Coleridge and
Carlyle.
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