"A Cloud of Witnesses"
May, Tilden, Stetson and Liberal Religion
Delivered at First Parish Unitarian
August 8, 2004

"Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." Hebrews 12: 1

In 1836, Mexico laid siege to and ultimately defeated Texan settlers at the Alamo, Samuel Colt received a patent for his revolver, and Charles Darwin returned from his seminal journey aboard the HMS Beagle. In literature, Ralph Waldo Emerson published his book "Nature" which is often marked as the beginning of the transcendentalist movement. In politics, slavery was becoming a dominant issue, and various reform movements were passionately emerging including temperance, reform of prisons, world peace, women's rights and many others. Unitarianism was, by 1836, firmly established, but its battles with orthodoxy were still very fresh and, indeed raged on in periodicals and in some congregations.

It was also in 1836 that the Scituate ship-carpenter William Phillips Tilden, then residing in Medford, was encouraged in his desire to become a minister by Medford's Minister Caleb Stetson. Tilden then moved back to his home in Scituate where he met and studied under Samuel J. May who had been called to preach here at First Parish the same year. It is the stories of these three remarkable Unitarian ministers, and their lessons, that I want to share with you this morning.

I begin with perhaps the least well known of the three, William Phillips Tilden. I came across Tilden by accident only a few months ago and have come to admire him greatly. He was born in Scituate in 1811, his family history as old as the town itself. His father was a ship-carpenter on the North River and Tilden followed in that trade. The shallowness of the River and declining old growth timber caused the center of shipbuilding to move to East Boston and Medford, and the latter is where Tilden moved and, in 1834 married Mary Foster.

It was also during this period that he had what he called "the greatest crisis of his life". He had an "inward awakening" that told him to "Be a man. Live a truer and nobler life". The liberal arminianism in which he had been raised suddenly seemed thin gruel and he moved towards the Baptists in which he had relations. He soon found, however, that "his heart had been converted, not his head" and that he remained, in principle, a Unitarian. His head and heart were finally united in Medford where he first heard the preaching of Caleb Stetson, the second in our trinity of Unitarian divines, and it would change his life. Said Tilden of Stetson, "My soul was awake now, hungry for the bread of heaven, and I found it. He was in his prime. And as he unfolded, Sunday after Sunday, the great central principles of the Unitarian Faith, the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, sin its own sorrow, goodness its own reward, it seemed like a revelation from heaven. They fed my soul."

Stetson also had ancestral ties to Scituate (being descended from Cornet Robert Stetson who was an early member of this church) and his career was a fascinating one. He was a classmate and friend of Emerson's at Harvard. Later, he would become a regular member of what has come down in history as the Transcendental Club. It was at his house in Medford that the mad Unitarian Poet, Jones Very, who was convinced that he was a harbinger of God, was first introduced to the club. A strong anti-slavery man, Stetson even addressed the Concord Mass. Anti-slavery women's club on the steps of Henry Thoreau's "secluded" cabin in the Walden Woods. Known for his warmth and good humor, Stetson served in Medford for 21 years.

Meanwhile, our man William Phillips Tilden, under the influence of Stetson's preaching was burning with his own desire to be a minister. He mustered his courage and confessed all in a letter to Stetson and waited his response. "A day or two after," in the words of Tilden, "as I was at work in the ship-yard, I saw my portly pastor coming, looking through his glasses, first one side and then the other, as was his wont, going up the broad aisle. I dropped my axe to welcome him, and soon found he had a gospel of hope for me…and had come to tell he thought-yes I might-enter the ministry. That spot of ground is still sacred."

His lack of a college education, however, seemed daunting, and he returned to Scituate where First Parish Church had just called a new minister after a two- year search. And what a call it was. Rev. Samuel J. May, recently the general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, was know for the passion of his political ideals. A disciple of William Lloyd Garrison, May was also an advocate for women's rights, universal peace, total abstinence and educational reform. Though First Parish was not particularly political, May's personal and pastoral qualities won the day.

Born in 1797 to a prominent Boston Merchant family, May's spiritual awakening had taken place as a young child when his beloved older brother fell off a fence while they were playing, impaled himself, and died. That night, May dreamed that his brother was alive in heaven and content and happy. This dream reoccurred for several days and awakened in young Samuel a deep religious feeling that stayed with him always. The father of American Unitarianism, William Ellery Channing, was a neighbor and May was from a young age admitted to his study.

He studied with Henry Colman in Hingham before entering Harvard Divinity School. There he studied with Henry Ware Sr. who helped him with lingering doubts. In 1822 he went into the heart of orthodoxy, Brooklyn, Connecticut, where he served for several years and introduced his belief in open communion for everyone, a policy that was controversial but one that he adhered to during his years at First Parish.

Samuel May seems to have been that rare personality who embodied passionate, even radical political beliefs with a pastoral sweetness that immediately endeared him to his parishioners. It was much the same at First Parish where May immediately became much involved in educational reform, anti-slavery work and, especially, temperance. While at First Parish he organized a chapter of the Cold Water Army, which enlisted children in an organization dedicated to total abstinence from alcohol. At one time, he led 500 area children in parades in which banners were flown and chants were chanted. His efforts were eventually successful in closing every rum shop in town except one. What happened next is best told in the pages of his biography.

"All the rum shops in town were closed with one exception, and finally this obstinate seller capitulated. Mr. May resolved to have a public execution of the last enemy. He got hold of the remaining liquors in the man's shop, procured an old horse and cart to carry the barrels to the scene of action, and summoned his little army. They came in full ranks to the appointed grove. He made an address, led them in singing, and then took an axe and beat in the head of every barrel. As the contents flowed forth upon the earth, the children are said to have cheered as boy and girls have seldom cheered."

Among the other innovations of his ministry were:

The organization of a peace society, much work for the reform of the educational program in the area, communion for all no matter public profession and much else. The first woman many had every heard speak from the pulpit was Angelina Grimke, a prominent southern abolitionist, who spoke here at the invitation of May.

As an aside, May was the brother of the mother of Louisa May Alcott, the writer of "Little Women". He presided over her marriage to A. Bronson Alcott, Louisa's father and the educational reformer and transcendentalist. Alcott was much admired by May and the family often visited First Parish and sat in these very pews during May's time here.

For our friend William Phillips Tilden, Samuel J. May was literally a Godsend. May, when he learned of Tilden's desire for the ministry, took him in, studied with him and guided him. In the words of Tilden, " my best text-book, intellectual, moral, and religious, was Mr. May. He set me at work; made me superintendent of his Sunday-school; took me with him to school-house meetings, educational, temperance, anti-slavery, and religious." The Sunday- School, organized by May and directed by Tilden was the first at First Parish.

Their time at First Parish was central for both Tilden and May. For Tilden, he would receive from May the only training he would need for the ministry. May would remember his time at First Parish as among the happiest of his life.

At odd moments, sitting in the meeting hall alone, I imagine May and Tilden bent over works of theology-maybe Andrews Norton' on Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, in the very pews in which we now sit, occasionally pausing to discuss a temperance meeting or an organizational meeting for the Sunday School.

Though First Parish deserves some credit for calling Samuel J. May and later Caleb Stetson, their actions also precipitated May's departure. When he objected to the placing of African American and poor parishioners in the balcony, several congregants expressed great anger and May decided to accept his friend Horace Mann's earnest desire for him to take over the Normal School in Lexington.

May continued to have an impact on his beloved First Parish Church. He recommended his good friend and fellow abolitionist and total abstinence man Caleb Stetson who so impacted the life of W. P. Tilden, for minister and he indeed occupied this pulpit from 1848 to 1858. He later recommended the Rev. William Fish who served from 1865 to 1885 and founded the James Library.

May himself, served the normal school well and then became the minister of the Unitarian Church in Syracuse New York for many years. He has gone down as one of the greatest of Unitarian divines and activists.

As for William Phillips Tilden, he more than fulfilled his great and passionate desire to become a minister of the Unitarian Gospel. The only training he would receive would be from May but that would prove more than enough. He served parishes in Concord, Walpole, Fitchburg and most famously at the New South Free Church in Boston where he was so loved he received the name "Brother Tilden." His enthusiasm for the ministry carried him to parishes well into his seventies.

As mentioned earlier, Caleb Stetson returned to First Parish where he served for ten years. During his tenure, a man named Henry Turner would begin serving as Sunday School Superintendent, a position he would hold for 60 years (He would also serve as clerk for 50).

This period in our history from 1836 to 1858 was one of tremendous energy and intellectual expression. To a degree, First Parish deserves great credit for its support of such controversial ministers as May and Stetson. Both, for example, were among the only ministers who would exchange pulpits with the Unitarian Divine, Theodore Parker. Though we did not always acquit ourselves admirably, the fact that we attracted such notable, intellectual and socially committed ministers must always be in our favor.

The New Testament writer of the book of Hebrews, from which the reading during the chalice lighting came, said much. We, all of us, are "compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses," each of them encouraging, supporting and showing us the way. Tilden, Stetson and May. They are models of liberal religion-engaged in social, personal, and spiritual reform, dedicated to the human community, and determined that the world will be better for their having lived in it. May it be the same with us. Amen

Links:

UU Christian.org
http://www.uuchristian.org/index.html
An excellent site devoted to Unitarian and Universalist history. Good links, good sections on Channing, especially strong on Universalism.

The Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography
http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/index.html
An excellent and ever growing collection of biographies of distinguished Unitarian and Universalist people in many different spheres of life.

Notable American Unitarians
http://harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/
More than 100 illustrated biographies of "notable American Unitarians". An excellent resource.