Channing preached
a saintly sermon and Mr. Dwight's quartet rendered the Gregorian chants,
the service was an appropriate and impressive expression of sincere
religious sentiment.
Some of our Puritan neighbors called us heretics because we did not
believe in infant damnation or some equally profitable and comforting
doctrine of the orthodox faith, and, furthermore, we actually sang hymns
in Latin. All that was very bad to be sure, but then we kept the
commandments, eleven of them, ten in the old testament and one in the
new, and we dealt fairly with all men. We went to church too, either
having Sunday services at home or attending Theodore Parker's church in
Brookline. However, both Theodore Parker and Dr. Ripley were Unitarians,
so that did not help us very much in the opinion of our critics.
It may almost be said that Brook Farm was as much an outgrowth of
Unitarianism as of Transcendentalism. Nearly all the first members were
Unitarians and many of the later comers were of the same faith.
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