less in some
sense necessary. And it was attended with some beneficent consequences.
It gave rise to instructive and illuminating debate. And on the part of
the Orthodox it occasioned an outburst of earnest zeal which in a
wonderfully short time had more than repaired their loss in numbers, and
had started them on a career of wide beneficence, with a momentum that
has been increasing to this day. But it is not altogether useless to
put the question how much was lost to both parties and to the common
cause by the separation. It is not difficult to conceive that such
dogged polemics as Nathanael Emmons and Jedidiah Morse might have been
none the worse for being held in some sort of fellowship, rather than in
exasperated controversy, with such types of Christian sainthood as the
younger Ware and the younger Buckminster; and it is easy to imagine the
extreme culture and cool intellectual and spiritual temper of the
Unitarian pulpit in general as finding its advantage in not being cut
off from direct radiations from the fiery zeal of Lyman Beecher and
Edward Dorr Griffin. Is it quite sure that New England Congregationalism
would have been in all respects worse off if Channing and his friends
had continued to be recognized as the Liberal wing of its clergy? or
that the Unitarian ministers would not have been a great deal better off
if they had remained in connection with a strong and conservative right
wing, which might counterbalance the exorbitant leftward flights of
their more impatient and erratic spirits?

The seating of a pronounced Unitarian in the Hollis chair of theology at
Harvard took place in 1805. Three years later, in 1808, the doors of
Andover Seminary were opened to students. Thirty-six were present, and
the number went on increasing. The example was quickly followed. In 1810
the Dutch seminary was begun at New Brunswick, and in 1812 the
Presbyterian at Princeton. In 1816 Bangor Seminary (Congregationalist)
and Hartwick Seminary (Lutheran) were opened. In 1819 the Episcopalian
"General Seminary" followed, and the Baptist "Hamilton Seminary" in
1820. In 1821 Presbyterian seminaries were begun at Auburn, N. Y., and
Marysville, Tenn. In 1822 the Yale Divinity College was founded
(Congregationalist); in 1823 the Virginia (Episcopalian) seminary at
Alexandria; in 1824 the Union (Presbyterian) Seminary, also in Virginia,
and the Unitarian seminary at Cambridge; in 1825 the Baptist seminary at
Newton, Mass., and the