To Miss Lucy Osgood.
1 The day on which the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States, passed the House of Representatives, and (having previously passed the Senate) went to the Legislatures of the several States for ratification. [189]
Yesterday I walked up to see Mr. and Mrs. S., where I have not been for a year. He is full of the great Convocation of Unitarians at New York, to which he is sent as delegate. He seems to think it will be very easy to settle “a few fundamental principles, in which all can agree, while sufficient room for progress will be left in unsettled minor opinions.” But his very first “fundamental principle” concerning the divine origin of Jesus puts up a bar that stops the chariot wheels. There is a large class of minds that cannot see in Unitarianism a mere half-way house, where spiritual travellers find themselves well accommodated for the night, but where they grow weary of spending the day. And many of them will not even spend a night there, when they discover a new road, so shortened and straightened, that when they want to call upon the Father, they are under no necessity of going roundabout to call upon the Son.