Things New And Old: An Installation Sermon, by T. W. Higginson, minister of the Worcester Free Church (Worcester: Earle and Drew, 1852).

P. 4: . . . We have no quarrel with the past--for are we not its children? Do we need better martyrs, better saints, better heroes, than [P. 5] people its great temple? Doubtless every form [i.e., liturgical and/or sacramental] against which we can protest, was born of prayer and baptized in tears. Every creed which we renounce was in its day the triumphal anthem of the freed intellect. We may do justice to these ancestral glories, while we bid them farewell. It is only, that in building the tombs of the prophets we have to bury some of their works with them, as the Indian sleeps beside the memorials of his courage. But some there are always who cling to that which should pass away, as a child clings to the body of his dead parent and will not relinquish it to the grave. Yet the globe must roll on, unchecked by all those passionate tears; those clinging arms must untwine, or share the sepulchre; life goes on, on, through a series of bereavements, and each generation bids farewell to much that the heart holds dear. We must choose between the past forms which once embodied the eternal spirit, and the other forms which are to renew and embody it now. The stern alternative always creates a division in society; the old has the court, the senate, and the market; the new has the poets, the people, and posterity.

The conservative and the reformer are thus the permanent forces in society. Neither desires at heart to be exclusive. The reformer only wishes to secure the new forms, willing to retain the old spirits; the conservative is only anxious to preserve the old spirit, which he thinks endangered by the new forms. But they distrust each other and so the antagonism continues. Neither able to absorb the other, they abide as mutual and useful checks. [P. 6] . . . Let us not be too vain of our reformatory spirit. We need some resistance if the work is to be wisely and thoroughly done. One might almost say, "If there were no conservatives in the community I would myself be a conservative- discharge with alacrity that disagreeable duty; so seldom do we see a radicalism wise enough and pure enough to take care of itself without the instructive antagonism of this stubborn and often selfish power."

In looking for a reconciling influence between these two forces, I do not know where we can more reasonably demand it than in the church. . . . The church is, in short, the representative of religion--the sole reconciler of the ideal and the practical. Without the religious spirit, practical reform become intemperate and vindictive. With a merely abstract religion there is no practical reform at all. The present revolt of reformers against the churches [eg., that of Worcester's Abby Kelley and Stephen S. Foster] can never be pacified--nor yet the errors charged on these revolutionists corrected--unless the churches can expand sufficiently to take the heroic rebels in. We need more radicalism in our religion and more religion in our radicalism.
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P. 8: . . . it is much easier to give religion a divided seventh-part of every week, than to give it the due undivided proportion of every instant. It is easy to separate life into periods, and pay tithe to God, on condition of non-interference with the rest.
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But as this subdivision of conscience requires a skill which is not commonly taught in Theological Schools, it obviously bears rather hard upon the young clergymen. . . . if the minister may not after the day of ordination, even think for himself enough to be moderate or a Whig, except as the majority of his supporters define the terms from month to month- if he must daily represent each new phase of local opinion, merely a piece of church machinery--if, in short, there is to be no difference between a minister and a weathercock, except that one is outside the meeting-house and [P. 9] the other inside;--then I think the sooner we all become non conformists and come-outers the better.
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. . . But I rejoice to think that the picture I have drawn is one not yet realized in the New England pulpit. I cannot endorse quite all the reproaches of our reformers. . . .In the anti-slavery movement itself, I scarcely know a single young clergyman who is not avowedly more anti slavery than the majority of his congregation. This is to say little, I know, but it is to say something. The new Temperance law of this state, has been chiefly carried by the clergy. Nor has any profession contributed so largely to the ranks of the most fearless radicalism. I think it has done the clergy good, to proclaim their faults; but they are in these days such very safe game for reformers to attack, that the denunciation may in time grow rather in-[P. 10]glorious. . . .to denounce them and spare their rich parishioners, is to denounce the weathercock and spare the breeze that whirls it--a policy quite safe indeed, but not, perhaps, either heroic or effectual.

But whether the fault be in clergy or congregation, the result is equally bad--a system of churches where creed and ritual supplant the divine life. So far has this reached, that when an organization arises like our own, a Free Church, seeking its own light from Heaven, not asking what may be the forms and doctrines of others, not desiring the aid of any sectarian machinery; when this occurs, men seem actually surprised, as if the true surprise were not in hearing that any Church should ever wish any other basis.

We have come together from various religious organizations, to form a new one; we stand, as I think, in the only direct path in which the Future is planning to guide men on. We are passing, as I believe, through the only door out of sectarianism and unreason. Where the next step will lead, we know not, more than others; but in this I think we are secure. In taking this, we enter at once into the sympathies of the most hopeful in all places. I rejoice that so many are here prepared to take it. In looking round upon this large number, I feel that it is not in vain for me to be here, since you are. If I have any shrinking, it is from distrust in myself, not in this enterprise. My few years retirement from the active duties of the min-[P. 11]istry, have helped me to see more clearly what I have never doubted, the capabilities of the institution. We cannot spare united worship. We cannot spare preaching. We make too great a concession if we abandon these because they are misused.

When I say preaching, I mean exhortation proceeding from the highest point of view. A [Scriptural] text does not constitute a sermon, it only improves it. To attempt to demonstrate a doctrine by counting Scripture sentences, is idle, there are so many contradictory doctrines which can be proved in that way; while the rhetorical and moral value of such sentences is incalculable.
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I have said that we here aim to seek an independent attitude for ourselves, not bound by any other organization. If this be the case, it is all the more our duty to define, at the outset, as clearly as we can, our own position as to religious ideas and practices. And it will be difficult to state our own position without some reference to that of others.

For there exists and predominates in this community, a type of religion which produces, in its [P. 12] milder forms, some beautiful results but, when carried to its logical consequences, creates on the one side the sternest bigotry and spiritual pride, and on the other side the darkest anxiety and gloom. The majority of professing Christians claim to believe that mankind are, by a defect in their inherited nature, exposed to a more awful, more horrible danger than imagination can conceive, so that in the words of Holy Writ, to cut off the right hand, to pluck out the right eye is wisdom in order to escape--the danger of a never-ending Hell, from which the majority of human beings can by no means escape. They profess to believe that He who is the Creator of all things, was himself so affected by this dreadful exposure of his creatures, that, for their salvation, he gave up the blessedness of heaven, became a suffering man, and spent thirty-three years in labors and sacrifices, which were finally terminated by an ignominious and painful death. I state these strange things in the words of those who believe them, because I frankly confess that they are to me unintelligible, and therefore I may not do them justice.

But one thing I cannot help seeing. The result of views such as these, has been agony, insanity, suicide, among multitudes of virtuous persons--and a terrible hypocrisy among many irreligious ones; while the reaction from it has made atheists by the thousand. Rather, far rather would I disbelieve in a God than believe in such a God as some of the publications of the American Tract Society [one of a large number of "benevolent" associations of the period] portrays to you and your children--who has [P. 13] no attribute of the Deity but power--power which, without love, is only infernal. Far rather would i believe the individual soul doomed to perish with the body, than that the saints should live (in Baxter's phrase) "to look down upon the burning lake and rejoice and sing."

Atheists may have sadness of their own, but they have nothing like this.
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P.14: I cannot doubt that if the truth were known we should at this moment find hundreds and thousands of good and sincere men, in the clerical body and out of it, struggling in mental agony which they will not express and cannot remove. Where is [P. 15] the refuge? In the Unitarian or Universalist denomination? These are but a partial refuge. For by no reasonable construction, as it seems to me, can the bible be converted into a consistently Unitarian or Universalist book, (so various and dissimilar its elements;) while these two sects yet claim to hold, like all others, the bible as their infallible creed.
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Here lies the great difficulty. Let the simple truth be told. The time has come when an earnest and fearless inquirer can no more study the Bible and believe in its verbal inspiration, than he can study astronomy and believe that the sun moves around the earth. There is no person about whom I feel greater anxiety than an ingenuous young man who has been brought up to identify this dogma with religion and virtue,--to make the Most High God responsible for every word which his human [P. 16] creatures have spoken through the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The path of one so educated is encompassed by dangers; everything is against him, history is against his belief, science is against it, humanity is against it; the more thoughtful and earnest he is, the more sure he will be to discover it; he is launched on the ocean clinging to a plank which may at any moment slip from him, and he has never learned to swim.
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Is it asked, then, how we can escape these sorrows that seem to be marring all the peace which Jesus came to give . . . ? How, but by returning to a simpler, humbler, nobler, more comprehensive attitude; to the one eternal religion of Love to God and Love to man; the faith which all races and ages of men have striven in their weak way to embody. . . . [P.17] A creed much more definite than this the human race appears yet too young to form; but in affirming this creed we take our position on ground which has never been disputed, and lay our foundation below the range of the most daring criticism, upon the primary rock of all human faith.
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Therefore I cannot bear to hear the grand word Religion, cut down to mean a technical and formal Christianity, or the blessed word Faith distorted to mean an unreasoning belief in the doctrines of men, whether those men lived in the first century or the [P. 18] nineteenth.
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For myself I can conceive of no system of doctrine which can give hope and faith to man without . . . recognizing . . . the simple humanity of Jesus. There stands the fact, indispensable in its value. Never man spoke like this man; and hence the paramount value of this one contribution to human speech. Here is the maximum of God's inspiration, in all the ages of history--the high water mark, as far as recorded, of spiritual attainment. The thought of him comes back to us as the thought of our own highest moments, summoning us to a reproduction to that sainted experience. This comforts, this impels. Take this away and our Saviour is taken away; make him an exception to all human experience and the support of our hope fails; instantly the possibilities of human life are dwarfed; and we renew the mournful confession of Dr. [William Ellery] Channing, that "though Jesus came to be example to us, yet in the points in which we so much need an example, in our conflict with inward evil, in our approach to God as sinners in penitence and self-purification, he utterly fails us." Far from us to believe such a desolation.

We do not, I trust, undervalue the debt of mankind to the Scriptures. We only claim, with the most eminent of modern Orthodox critics, the [P. 19] learned and pious Neander,1 that the time is come "to distinguish between the divine and human in the sacred writings." . . . It is not possible that any collection of various books by various writers at various times can be assumed as a whole and so consulted, without introducing the utmost confusion into all moral questions. It has almost come to be a proverb, "You can prove anything out of Scripture." There are, all told, not less than fifty different sects in this country, each claiming to sustain itself by the Bible, to the exclusion of all others. And in all great moral questions, as War, Slavery, Temperance, Capital Punishment, it is unquestionably far easier to decide what is or is not right, than to ascertain what is or is not Scriptural. And worse than this is the discomfort, that we study in this priceless book, from childhood, in a manner so constrained and unnatural, that one half its beauties are veiled from us and reserved for a generation that shall read it with artificial light.
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. . .There are certain practical tests provided in every generation, difficult works to be done, crosses to be borne--which are "the only true relics of the true cross of Christ, let the Romanists [Catholics] say what they will." By their fruits ye [P. 20]shall know them. I do not see positive marks of any apostolical in churches whose members buy and sell their fellow-members; but I see a zeal that looks quite apostolical in several reformatory societies, and even if they do reprove rather sharply at times, so did Peter and Paul. In times when doctors of divinity openly offer to sell their brothers in the cause of slavery, we need not wonder if irregular practitioners go so far as to scold their brothers in the cause of liberty.
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P. 21: Religious institutions should accept the duty [of reform], and save it from worse hands. We need the church as an antidote to the politicians. Here are questions to arise--Temperance laws, Woman's Rights, Land Reform, Ten Hour Bills, the system of Punishments, the Manufacturing system, which fills some of our towns with stout Irishmen who live helplessly on the labor of their children ten years old, working thirteen hours a day--the whole problem of Associated Labor which we must inevitably meet and settle--and above all the great cloud of Slavery, and the one immediate storm [the Fugitive Slave law?] which calls all hearts to endure it;--all these are before us.
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I do not say that the clergy, in particular, make the best politicians; but I say that there is something more important than politicians, and not so easily to be had for the asking. The truth is, that moral movements take aboard politicians as packet [P. 22] ships take aboard pilots--when they are near port. . . .It is the pilot's chief duty to have looked downward, and learned the petty shoals and currents of that narrow harbor; but for the captain you must have a man who can look upward, and take an observation of the sun, and believe in it. Let the ship once make her winged way across the ocean, and there will be pilots enough ready to take her skilfully [sic] into port for their proper fee; or if one pilot fails, she can lie off and on, and wait for another.

1.A reference to Augustus Neander, author of History of the Christian Religion and Church during the first three centuries (Phil., 1843) and The Life of Jesus Christ (New York, 1848).