TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

Series: Transcendental Days No. 5

The Old House occupied by Practical Christians at Hopedale

HIGH HOPES FOR PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY

Orestes Brownson, we have learned, quit the Presbyterian denomination and became a Universalist preacher because he was repulsed by the Calvinist notion that a loving and merciful God would predestine a few to be saved and condemn the rest to eternal punishment no matter what anyone did on Earth. Universalists kindly allowed everyone to be saved; the so-called Restorationists among them provided for limited or just deserts before salvation. Our eye is attracted by his reference to a utopian Christian community and an allegation of devil-worship in the edited autobiography of his several conversions, The Convert (1889). At the time of my ordination, those who believed in a future limited punishment, and those who denied all punishment after death, were associated together in one body, under the common name of Universalists. Subsequently, however, a division took place, and a portion of the former separated from the General Convention, as it was called, and took the name of Restorationists. This schism was formed mainly through the instrumentality of Adin Ballou, a distant relative of Hosea Ballou. The Restorationist sect, after a few years of a fitful existence, became extinct.

Page1of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

Mr. Adin Ballou did not expire with his sect. He became a socialist, and founded the community of Hopedale; and when I heard last from him, he was a spiritualist, spiritist, or devil-worshipper, conversing with spirits, and believing in Andrew Jackson Davis and the Fox girls. Adin Ballou (1803-1890), Universalist Unitarian, prominent pacifist even during the Civil War, socialist enemy of aimless individualism, temperance leader and staunch abolitionist, organized the Hopedale Community under the name of Fraternal Community No. 1 at Mendon, Mass., Jan. 28, 1841, and would be its master for the 14 years it lasted. Only 14 members of the religious community still lived in Hopedale at its dissolution in 1876, another 21 were scattered far and wide. The Fox girls were two New York sisters whose experiences in 1848 with a spirit, perhaps a peddler who had been murdered in the farmhouse some years before, that made a rapping noise in their bedroom around bedtime, set off the Modern Spiritualism movement in America. The craze included the holding of mesmerism parties, and of sances to channel spirits. As for the Hopedale Community, we notice this entry by Ballou in his History: Brother Clother Gifford still here, and Phrenology and Animal Magnetism occupied most of our time and attention. He examined nearly all our heads and tried to put Barbara Colburn into a magnetic sleep but failed. Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910), an American spiritualist author and lecturer known as the Poughkeepsie Seer, was struck by a lecture he had heard on mesmerism in Poughkeepsie, and decided that he was a clairvoyant. He was influenced by Swedenborg as well as the Shakers. He, in turn, influenced such notables as Edgar Allen Poe and Edgar Cayce, and was said to have advised Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. It was claimed that Davis ability to visit the spiritual plane enabled him to foresee many scientific advances. He even described in detail the way the spirit leaves the human body at death, takes a new form, and dwells in the hereafter. Ballou himself had experienced a vision of his deceased brother, Cyrus, whose ghost called on him to preach the Christian Gospel to his fellows; otherwise the blood of their souls would be on his hands. The residents of Hopedale were familiar with the spiritualist John Murray Spear, disseminating some of his works in the community. Spirits allegedly visited the community; Ballou avowed himself a spiritualist after investigating the phenomena. He and his wife took some comfort in receiving messages from their deceased son, Adin Augustus. Of course spiritualism is prehistoric, and its geometrical elaboration into planes, spheres heavens, gradations of being and the like is rooted in the primitive intuition that there is an imperceptible or immaterial, transcendental reality, which we associate with vaguely defined entities such as deities, souls, ghosts, spirits, cosmic forces, a universal mind and the like. And spirit is the breath of life; the driving force or virtue of a thing; the moral of the story; the cause or principle of the self-caused self evidenced by the character of a man, race, and nation; and so on and so forth. Orestes Brownson, as we shall see elsewhere, called transcendentalism and the like imposters for disguising neo-Platonic rationalizations or the Alexandrian syncretism of Christian and pagan religion as a dignified Platonic philosophy from which they alleged Christian theology was derived:
Page2of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

This system, he expounded in his essay, Authority and Liberty (April 1849), was an attempted fusion of all the particular forms of gentilism, molded into a shape as nearly like Christianity as it might be, and intended to dispute with it the empire of the world. It borrowed largely from Christianity;copied the forms of its hierarchy, and many of its dogmas; which has led some in more recent times, who never consult chronology, to charge the church with having herself copied her hierarchy, her ritual, and her principal doctrines from it. In fact, the Presocratic, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoical and Neoplatonic theologies employed scientific and philosophical reasoning to rationalize the vulgar anthropomorphic myths explaining divine spiritual activity in the material world. For example, anthropomorphic cosmogonies were translated from stories of male and female progenitors, or mothers and fathers of the universe, to relatively abstract feminine and masculine principles, further interpreted as the interactions of matter and form, and scientific metaphysical speculations on matter and energy. People wondered which sex was original, primary, active, dominant and reasonable, as opposed to secondary, subordinate, reactive, and irrational; some chose the male; others the female; yet others were satisfied with ambiguous equivocations. As for matter and form, Plato was both optimistic and pessimistic on matter, which we may believe is an evil necessary for good, and he went so far as to identify matter with space, matter being the Supreme Beings first creation. However that may be, the ancient theosophy or philosophical religion that clearly preceded Christianity continued to thrive after the development of Christian and Islamic monotheism until it was employed during the Enlightenment, especially by Kant, to destroy dogmatic Christianity altogether; it was this destructive activity that preoccupied the American Protestants and New England Transcendentalists. Each form of bigotry would have its one and only true religion recognized as a unique, individual entity, neglecting the fact that individuality is only unique in particular coincidences of universals. Such is the desperate quest for immortal identity that logical differences must be made over essentially nothing and battle lines drawn to fiercely deny hence mutilate the common ground of the ultimate transcendentalia, Being, forgetting the One that is both coincidentia oppositorum and uniformis and omniformis, actus but not motus, and is being, thinking and willing at once, filling the universe without being filled, pervading it without being pervaded, including it without being included, and so on ad infinitum. As for the illusory material world and man mothered by Maya, we note that Arjuna could not be enlightened without seeing things: O Lord of the universe, O universal form, I see in Your body many, many arms, bellies, mouths and eyes, expanded everywhere, without limit. Supreme Being must pose as Christ or Krishna and the like because, For those whose minds are attached to the unmanifested, impersonal feature of the Supreme, advancement is very troublesome. To make progress in that discipline is always difficult for those who are embodied. Ballou, in his conversational Practical Christian Socialism, presumes that there is a world of spiritual and immortal existence, into which all mankind pass at or soon after the death of the bodya world wherein are innumerable angels and spirits of various gradesis certainly a cardinal principle of the Christian Religion. The world to come, the resurrection of the dead, and the existence of angels and spirits, arc prominently spoken of throughout the Christian Scriptures, as realities of the sublimest importance. Furthermore, he holds that there is, always
Page3of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

was and always will be an Infinitarium of existing worlds, beings and things, passing through their appropriate changes, and that the Infinitarium is now ever was, and ever will be vitalized, through its inmost interiors, by one all-pervading, omnipresent, absolutely Infinite Spirit, who is its Soul, the origin of all its motific power, sensific life, affectional love, rational intellect, spiritual sentiment and entire good; that this Spirit is God the Father; that this universal SpiritFather can have no one exclusive local residence; that no finite mind, nor congregation of minds in any earth, heaven or universe, can see this One God as a WHOLE, in his absolute Infinity of being; and that he can be known to finite intelligences only by particular manifestations adapted to their capacities. Adin Ballous family was converted to the Christian Connexion sect at a revival. The sects founders objected to the proliferation of denominations hence had denominated themselves as simply Christian. Its members were called Destructionists because they rejected the Calvinist doctrine of eternal punishment for sinners, and adhered instead to the merciful notion that the souls of sinners would simply be destroyed at death. In other words, if one did not believe in resurrection to immortality, and behave accordingly to get it, then one would have none of it. Ballou converted to Universalism in 1822 when he married the daughter of a Universalist and was introduced to Elhanan Winchesters Dialogues on the Universal Restoration, which persuaded him by that everyone would be saved. Wherefore the Christian Connexion excommunicated him and his father disowned him. He would align himself with and lead the Restorationist splinter of the Universalists in 1830. The Restorationists conjectured that sinners would be punished for some time after death before finally being saved. However, the real cause of the schism may have been over a political rather than a theological squabble at the Milford church where he served as Universalist minister and was consequently fired. He pondered upon socialism, and expounded on practical Christianity for the establishment of a city of God on Earth, then went on to found and serve the Hopedale Community or children of God as pastor. The Restorationists there would eventually be absorbed by the Unitarians upon the dissolution of the Christian socialist congregation, making Ballou their Unitarian minister. I had long before outgrown my early belief, wrote Adin, that the religion of the New Testament was chiefly concerned with the condition of mankind in a future state of being, and that it was the essential office and mission of Jesus Christ, in the plan and providence of the Infinite Father, to save men from damnation and misery awaiting the finally impenitent after death. I had come to see that the teachings of the Master were essential to human well-being in this world, as well as in the world to come; that it was one of the declared objects of Christ's labors to inaugurate the kingdom of heaven on the earth. Consequently the seemingly mighty and almost sale concern of the nominal Christian Church to save souls from the tortures of neverending fire and secure heaven for them beyond the grave, appeared to me a distortion of the Gospel requirement - a delusion of superstition. On the other hand, among dissenters from the dogmas of prevailing theological systems, the then dominant Universalism, which magnified the doctrine of the salvation of all men at death and knew of no condition beyond the grave but that of angelic beatitude, had become to me a scarcely less irrational and offensive extreme of socalled liberalism. I belonged to a small Association of Restorationists who had seceded from the Universalist denomination, and were in a state of controversial protest against both extremes.

Page4of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

Adin said that he was of the progressive wing and longed most ardently to see New Testament Christianity actualized made practically the controlling agency in all the relations and concerns of life. Wherefore in 1839 he drafted for himself and sympathetic associates a Confession or Declaration of Sentiment setting forth their Standard for Practical Christianity, with the grand object of the restoration of man, especially the fallen and friendless, which was to be accomplished by the practice of Christian virtues and cessation from commission of a multitude of sins. That Standard was the ideological basis for the formation of the Hopedale Community. We think the devil-worship charged by Brownson amounted to the typical Christian denunciation of any spiritual work or possession besides that of Christ as the work of the devil. We do not see any devils per se in the high Christian principles for practical life set forth in Adin Ballous Standards and Hopedales Constitution. If Satan himself was involved, perhaps he persuaded the Hopedale Restorationists that they were Children of God capable of realizing Heaven on Earth, thus packing them off on a ship of fools. Supplicants were admitted into membership of the utopian community upon recommendation of seven members and ballot-vote of at a regular meeting of the community providing that the following Declaration be made by the supplicant: I BELIEVE in the religion of JESUS CHRIST, as he taught and exemplified it, according to the Scriptures of the New Testament. I acknowledge myself a bounden subject of all its moral obligations. Especially do I hold myself bound by all its holy requirements never, under any pretext whatsoever, to kill, assault, beat, torture, enslave, rob, oppress, persecute, defraud, corrupt, slander, revile, injure, envy, or hate any human being, even my worst enemy; never in any manner to violate the dictates of pure chastity; never to take or administer an oath;, never to manufacture, buy, sell, deal out, or use any intoxicating liquor as a beverage; never to serve in the army, navy or militia of any nation, state, or chieftain; never to bring an action at law, hold office, vote, join a legal posse, petition a legislature, or ask governmental interposition, in any case involving a final authorized resort to physical violence; never to indulge, self-will, bigotry, love of pre-eminence, covetousness, deceit, profanity, idleness or an unruly tongue; never to participate in lotteries, games of chance, betting, or pernicious amusements; never to resent reproof, or justify myself in a known wrong; never to aid, abet, or approve others in anything sinful; but through divine assistance always to recommend and promote, with my entire influence, the holiness and happiness of all mankind. No fire arms or deadly weapons of any description shall be owned, kept or used, either for offence, defense or sport, within the territorial limits of this Community, except by express permission of the Council of Religion, Conciliation and Justice, and then only for the purpose of killing very mischievous or dangerous animals. And it shall be the duty of every Member,' Probationer and Dependent of this Community to remonstrate kindly but firmly with persons from abroad, against gunning on the Community Domain, and especially against the shooting of harmless birds; and also to discountenance utterly among our children the use of all warlike, savage-like or ruffian-like toys, playthings, sports and amusement, however harmless in themselves.

Page5of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

Hereafter no person known to speak of this Community in terms of contempt, or to rail against any of its established regulations, or to defame any of its Members by scandalous imputations, or to manifest personal ill will towards any permanent resident its Domain, shall be indulged in such offences without prompt and faithful reproof therefor. And no person persisting, after due admonition, in such offences, shall be retained as a Member, Probationer, Dependent, Employee or Resident of this Community. Property in the communitys territory was held privately, and in common, and as joint stock which paid a four-percent dividend from the communitys net income. The community had a post office, and was a mutual fire insurance company. Its treasury operated as a mutual savings bank, and no loans could be let out without community consent. Education was managed by a board. Public works were performed by a male and female Industrial Army, charity was managed by a Relief Committee using resources levied from the community. Most importantly, a by-law for moral and religious discipline by the community provided for a Council of Religion, Conciliation and Justice, annually elected, consisting of not less than three, nor more than seven Members, subject to such instructions and restrictions as the Community may from time to time impose; whose official duty it shall be to supervise all matters of religion, morality and internal Christian discipline; to reprove, admonish and endeavor to correct all antiChristian customs, habits and practices springing up within the Community; to advise, mediate, conciliate and adjudicate in all cases of controversy between Member and Member, and between Members and Officers of the Community; to examine and certify their opinion of the religious and moral fitness of all applicants for probationship, or membership; and, generally, to exercise the proper functions of a Judicial Council, on Christian principles, concerning all matters of controversy not otherwise seasonably adjusted: provided that all decisions of said Council shall be subject to a final appeal to the Community. All members had the right to vote, a two-thirds majority carrying any motion. Members could be voted out of the community for unworthiness. Of course regular financial reports were provided. For example, for the year 1854: Assets $60,441.08 - Liabilities $59,091 - Net available for dividends $1,350 + $471 = $1,821 - $1,574 dividends = net gain $247, which was more than was had in previous periods. By this showing it was made evident that from a financial point of view the year 1854 had been advantageous. But this seeming advantage came in the midst of an external financial crisis that was suspending industrial operations in the young nation, throwing men out of work and into bankruptcy, and raising interest rates as high as 30 percent. According to the report of Hopedale Community President and Treasurer Ebenezer D. Draper, the causes of that crisis must be considered and precautions taken. Drapers annual report closed with: "May we learn wisdom by the experiences we are passing through as we labor together here in the great cause of Social Reform. May we be faithful to our high calling. As for me and my house, we have enlisted for life, and I thank God that he called me so early into the work and that he has blessed me with means to help it forward. That I may be more worthy of it and more worthy of your love and confidence is the prayer of your friend and brother.

Page6of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

Ebenezer Draper and his brother George held the majority interest in the utopian joint-stock community, which was not communistic inasmuch as private property and private enterprise were permitted to its members. At first the community owned the Old House and the land around it called the Jones Farm, with decent water-power, dilapidated buildings and a tolerable orchard; altogether 258 acres, purchased June 30, 1841. The Old House had been built in the wild beginning in 1703 by settler John Jones. Ballou reported that a colony of seven families numbering 28 members of his Fraternal Community No. 1 were congregated and living together in the Old House as of April, 1, 1842. The population numbered 175 people in 1851, the land then being about 500 acres, including the original domical with its structures considerably improved; there were 24 dwellings; 3 industrial shops with water-power, carpentry and other machinery; and a chapel also used for education. At the time of its surrender in 1856, the property encompassed nearly 600 acres, and the community numbered about 300. Over the period of fourteen years, the total value shares of stock issued went from $100 to $40,000 at par, while the value of personal property rose from about $10,000 to over $90,000. After the Old House was occupied, members were subsequently allowed to buy their own house lots provided that the properties revert to the religious community by at a fair appraisal of value if they departed. Private employment was of course encouraged, work for the community being paid at hourly wages. The majority of members were professional and working-class folk, with one of considerable substance, namely, Ebenezer Draper. In fact, the Draper family business was crucial to the communitys survival. The Draper fortune was built on patented labor-saving innovations made to textile looms, beginning with Ira Draper, a pioneering weaver and textile purveyor who emigrated from England. Ebenezer Draper took over the business in 1837, moving it to Hopedale in 1841, he and his wife Anna becoming members of Adin Ballous Hopedale Community in 1842, in which Ebenezer was the only substantial investor at the time and for which he would serve as treasurer and president for some years. His brother George, who had bought an interest in the new Dutcher temple (a weaving device for straightening edges), joined him in business 1853, resulting in the development of several textile industry firms. Adin Ballou, unaware of the doom impending to the communitys economy due to the Panic of 1857, a relatively short financial downturn with vestiges lasting until the Civil War (1861-1865), went ahead with his grand plans. The Panic was associated with a decline in European demand; overextension of credit to rapidly expanding railroads in the U.S., the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which held that a slave has not right to sue in court, and effectually abrogated the Missouri Compromise that was crucial to western development; and the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company due to fraudulent management, which threatened to start a run on banks. Ballou said of the 1856 annual meeting that, The meeting passed off harmoniously and quietly, no one even suspecting that any peril to our organization and its interests was impendingmuch less that we were on the brink of a precipice from which we were soon to be hurled to our doom. The reports generally were enlivened by a tone of cheerfulness, and that of the President was especially encouraging in its closing passages and calculated to allay any apprehension of coming ill that might have arisen in the minds of any of us.

Page7of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

Draper reported to his Beloved Associates that the auditor had not had sufficient time to audit the community accounts to determine where they stood with any certainty. He then proposed that individuals be financially accountable: I hold it to be the duty of everyone to know his or her pecuniary standing and whether their income is sufficient to cover their expenditures or not, and it seems to me that this new and more precise method than any heretofore pursued will aid much in the way of discharging that duty. "From the statements obtained from individuals under this new method we find the whole amount of individual property to be $146,886; the whole amount of individual indebtedness, $58,479; making the individual property free of debt, $92,907. Amount of gains in the Community, $2,144; in business abroad, $6,574; total gains for the year of $8,718. amount of losses for the year, $1,416, showing a net gain of $7,302. . . . The whole amount paid for labor for the year past in the general operations of the Community, aside from what individuals may have expended on their own account, was $18,114.46; of which foreigners received about $2,400.00." Ballou said that listening to the cheery report of the Draper gave no one cause to anticipate that the joint stock proprietorship and the communitys industrial army would have to be abandoned two months later, causing the ship carrying their Christian hope to sink. The fact of the matter, which Draper, being the shrewd businessman that he was, well knew, was that the community business was underwater when unaccounted for expenses such as depreciation were considered, although the private business was getting along well enough. It is to be observed that the cheering picture of the condition of property affairs presented in the President's address and of the gains made during the year 1855 did not relate to Community affairs at all, but to those of individuals, Ballou wrote. And it should be understood that at least three fourths of the 87,302.00 net gains were made by himself and his brother George, in profitable business operations carried on entirely outside of our associated industries, in which neither the Community nor other individuals had any direct interest whatever. It was a piece of good fortune for the brothers named and every way honorable on their part, but it concerned the rest of us no further, and was no further encouraging to us, than that it would enable them, out of their generosity and regard for the Community, to render it substantial aid in any unprovided for emergency or time of special need. A shrewd business man or an expert in finance could easily see by looking over the situation, he observed, that the Community liabilities actually exceeded its assets by several thousand dollars, and that under our peculiar circumstances we were pecuniarily in a very bad way. Of this fact, I presume, Bro. George Draper was abundantly satisfied, or, at least, was convinced that as things were going, either the Community would ere long become bankrupt or be obliged to draw upon him and his brother Ebenezer for a greater sum to extricate it from its difficulties and meet its obligations than he was disposed to give it. At any rate it soon transpired that he was becoming weary of Community financiering, especially when his capital was involved and when it blocked the way of his money-making ambition. Failing to discover definitely, he continued, save in this instance, where the fault was, it was natural and easy to attribute it to the system, and this was the culminating accusation. In making
Page8of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

it the lead was taken by George Draper, before-named, who had been with us but a short time, and who probably never had more than a half-faith in Community life or in the fundamental principles which constituted the basis of our movement. He was a man thoroughly honest in his opinions, upright in his dealings, and of undoubted integrity and honor. A man, however, of inflexible will, and one not to be turned from his purpose if its attainment were within the realm of possibility. Hence, when he came to feel that our socialistic undertaking was financially impracticable, that it stood in the way of his success as a business man of the world, and that therefore it must be abandoned, so far at least as he was concerned, all his energies were directed to the accomplishment of that result. Ballous heart was chilled when it dawned on him that his experiment was doomed. But its fate was predestined by Gods will. At least its positive accomplishments would serve as a lesson to future generations. Such, in the Providence of the all-wise, all-loving Father, was its mission, and that mission it fulfilled. The brothers withdrew their capital; Christian Socialism in practice failed as a business enterprise and as a moral one as well: Its glory had departed; its sun had set forever. From that time forward our beloved Hopedale village became gradually secularized and conformed to tile habits, customs, and usages of similar boroughs elsewhere, losing that distinctive character and the well-earned reputation which its founders and responsible guardians always felt was rather to be chosen than great riches. Saved from the shipwreck were the organizations fraternity and pledges; the name Hopedale Community; distinctive ideas and principles; control over some of the common property like some dwellings, the school, the chapel, public squares, and the cemetery; limited control over education; the mutual aid society; some trust funds; their good reputation in society for fair dealing and the like. The religious community continued until 1867 at which time it became the Hopedale Parish and joined the Unitarian mainstream to resolve complaints that members of the community had become outnumbered by nonmembers who had no voice in its religious affairs and management yet they were asked to contribute to its maintenance. Adin Ballou stayed on as Hopedales pastor until he retired in 1880, and died there on August 5, 1890. Ebenezer withdrew from the business in 1868, moved to Boston after Anna died of cancer in 1870, where he invested much of his capital in a business that would fail: the America Steam Fire-proof Safe Co. George led the Hopedale enterprises from 1868 to his death in 1887 Ebenezer died four months later. The enterprise started selling completed looms in 1894 instead of just loom parts and other textile industry items. The various businesses consolidated as the Draper Corporation in 1917, the largest U.S. maker of power looms for the textile industry, operating in Hopedale for over 130 years where at its peak it employed nearly 3,000 workers. Rockwell International took control of the illiquid company in 1967. International competition from computerized Japanese enterprises amid heavy government regulations and the high energy costs led to cutbacks in plant activities. The doors were finally shut in 1980. The Milford Daily News reported on August 30, 1980, that the factory was virtually deserted but for the signs on

Page9of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

the walls: "Join Now And Watch Your Money Grow" from a credit union, "Safety Is Your Duty," "Whatever Needs Doing - Do It With Pride." The quality of life in the community may be gleaned from Ballous History as well as later reminiscences of its inhabitants. For example, Sarah E. Bradbury of Arlington, Massachusetts, reminisced on her idyllic youth at Hopedale. The members were men and women drawn together by a common interest in the great principles of liberal and practical Christianity at a time when church doctrines were narrow. In addition to the vital principles of ultimate salvation for all, temperance, non-resistance, etc., each one brought some fad of his own: belief in Spiritualism, or the vegetarian diet. Some were non-shavers, and all, I think, were non-smokers. Disagreements between the faddists were a source of entertainment for all, she wrote: The small band of vegetarians were firm in the faith and provided much amusement for those who had no scruples against a meat diet. And there was a love of music. The kids led a happy life, feeling, like their parents, that they were sheltered from the wicked world without, and they had a great teacher in Miss Abbie Ballou, whose advanced teaching methods attracted the sons of such notables as William Lloyd Garrison. Nellie T. Gifford of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, related similar experiences: It was not strange that residents should differ in opinion. Some were vegetarians, regarding the use of meat as a food wrong, and at one time the Lyceum was the scene of heated arguments between those who favored and those who opposed its use. One family advocated such an extremely plain diet, that it was rumored theirs consisted chiefly of peat and molasses. Of course the practical Christian community abjured slavery. She was acquainted with one Sojourner Truth, once a slave, a powerful, if not cultured, advocate of freedom for those of her race in bondage. She was a large, very black woman, very witty, and an inveterate smoker. The late Theodore Tilton once asked her how she expected to enter Heaven with a tobacco scented breath. Her reply was, When I die and go to Heaven, I 'spect to leave my bref behind me. And one old fellow, an early riser named Bowers, like to make such remarks as, "Folks lie abed so late now, the next generation won't get up at all." A most prominent development, she says, was the establishment of the interracial boarding school, called the Home School, by Morgan Bloom, previously of the Five Points Mission in New York City. Naturally social intercourse between the adults in the community was not always idyllic or ideal. Religious enthusiasm was often wore down by the daily grind of mundane affairs. Dissensions arose early in its history, the most serious one between a communistic cabal among the poor members who wanted common ownership of property, and the majority who preferred the jointstock ownership which allowed them to withdraw their contributions under certain conditions. There were disputes over the socialist aspects of their constitution. One-legged Reverend David A. Lamson took it upon himself to champion rights and privileges for the poorer sort. For example, he insisted that nursing mothers be paid for 16 hours wages per day for childcare, twice what was paid others for their work, on the ground that a common nursery, which was not yet built, was guaranteed by the constitution. I proposed a compromise regulation, recounted Ballou, which was duly approved by the Community, to the effect that nursing mothers be regularly credited for eight hours' service a

Page10of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

day, provided, that if the nature of the case reasonably admitted of it they should perform more common domestic labor occasionally. Brother Lamson pressed other issues, the most troubling one as to who should move out of the main house and occupy new dwellings when constructed, and he even insulted Ballou at an open meeting. Lamson cited biblical injunctions, for giving preference to the weak, feeling blessed for giving rather than receiving, and not pleasing oneself. But the better off members could not help notice that the pleasure was all to go to the recipients making the selfish argument. Ballou remarked to ingrates that it was unfortunate that what had already been done on their behalf had gone unappreciated, inspiring them with so little confidence, love and fellowship. I as the mouthpiece of the majority replied that our whole movement recognized the primary right of the individual to whatever property, talents, and gifts of any sort were justly his or her own, and that the social fabric we were trying to build did not presuppose or require the annihilation of the distinctive personality of its members; consequently, what was put into the Community for the benefit of all concerned and for the special benefit of the weaker and more needy persons among us was so contributed under the law of brotherhood and charity, not of an arbitrary justice, and should be so understood. When, in urging the merits of our cause before the public, I added, I have been met with the objection that the more dependent and less responsible of our number would claim every advantage extended to them as a right, and be made by the generosity of those able and willing to help them more discontented and exacting, I have denied the statement as an imputation upon the better impulses of human nature and upon the Christian spirit of brotherhood in the human soul. A conversion of the joint-stock company to a common-stock company was anathema to the majority for it would deny their Christian individuality. Yet, in striving to escape the Scylla of threatening Communism, we might fall into the Charybdis of selfish, unscrupulous, and hardhearted Individualism, which would be no less fatal to our highest purposes and noblest aims, to all we were trying to stand for before God and men. We were in a critical and dangerous strait. A compromise was arrived at and the constitution accordingly amended: Ballous account of the failure of the community proceeds with the observation that it was in fact quite successful in a material sense. Considerable wealth had been accrued. It is to be noted that the successors of the Community in the ownership and management of business affairs, on the foundation which the Community laid and with the facilities which the Community had provided and passed over to them, proceeded at once, without disaster or serious hindrance, to build up a fortune that in a few years far exceeded the wildest fancies of any of our dreamers in that direction and would have been deemed colossal by all of us. A proper accounting would have the community at a rather small deficit, but the entity was not nearly as bad off as other businesses, 90 percent of which were bankrupted by the Panic. Of course one could lay the blame on the Drapers for withdrawing their capital, which amounted to a takeover of the assets and liabilities, the foundation laid by the community rendering them personally an ample fortune. But business was business, and they had every right to it. They had in fact contributed greatly to the developing community, and must be thanked for that. Some
Page11of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

members wished to obtain loans to buy their stock, but in the end democracy dictated that it was time for the members to walk, with nary a one of them taking a loss on their stock, and for most of the time of their holding having taken their four percent dividend. I did at the time greatly deplore the decisive step on their part by which our associated endeavors were brought to an end. But as the movement rested wholly on the basis of the inherent and indefeasible individual rights of its membersrights of conscience, of private judgment, of personal possession of property, and of voluntary action in the management of our common affairs, I always held these sacred, and never attempted or desired to dictate, coerce, overrule, or over-persuade anyone, even to save the Community from dissolution. Ballou subsequently identified several secondary causes for the communitys failure: insufficient capital; inadequate restrictions on withdrawal of capital; land infertile and difficult to cultivate; exclusive management of resources, rather than letting them out to others; overly rigid Constitution and polity; forsaking principles for sake of expediency, focus on money-making, success, and other forms of self-seeking; allowing an abundance of incompetent, corrupt, and shiftless outsiders into the community, necessitating an abundance of restrictive policies. Ballou thought the primary cause of failure was moral and spiritual. It seems that Christians are wont to blame themselves for misfortune. It is my deliberate and solemn conviction that the predominating cause of the failure of The Hopedale Community was a moral and spiritual, not a financial one, a deficiency among its members of those graces and powers of character which are requisite to the realization of the Christian ideal of human society, such as that enterprise was designed to represent and exemplify. In other and more general terms, the movement was too far ahead of and above the world, in its then existing or present state of advancement, to be practicable. Ballou flagellated the Hopedale membership, Christianity, and mankind for page after page. First of all, the experiment was premature, ahead of its time by hundreds of years. The Hopedale members lacked Christ-like nobility of soul, large-mindedness, and generosity to accomplish the sublime end that the mass of Christians have no conception of. They simply had too many of the infirmities of the carnal nature under the dominion of the worldly mind. Its secular interests render people too egoistic, angular, self-opinionated, mercenary, combative, belligerent, revengeful; too crude, inconsiderate, capricious, fastidious, undrilled, in their tastes, tempers, wills, judgments, to live with each other or with any number of their fellowmen on terms of equality, fraternal co-operation, and mutual good feeling. Indeed, the prevailing currents of society setting so strongly in the direction of the accumulation of wealth, of political preferment, of fashionable display, of easy-going morality, and of a religion still studiously careful not to offend too seriously the popular taste, or habits of the multitude by arraigning and condemning giant wrongs and unchristian practices in social, civil, and national life. The notion of a dynasty of right principles - of justice, mercy, truth, and love, under which selfseeking, mammonism, loye of display, scramble for preferment and power, the gross inequalities of social condition, tyranny, national jealously and ambition, and above all, injurious force, vindictive punishment, and the barbarous war system, shall have no place, seems to be quite above and beyond the apprehension of the common religious teacher of divine truth, save as a
Page12of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

beautiful theory, as it is of the great majority of the so-called Christian world. Such notions are deemed fanciful, impracticable, Utopian; the speculations and vagaries of visionaries and eccentric enthusiasts, not the conclusions of judicious, level-headed, practical, common sense men and women. Ballou thought the so-called Christian church was too superficial, pretentious, and unfaithful. Whats more, its attitude is too subservient to the civil authority and power, too complaisant and indifferent in respect to the vindictive and unchristian features of existing human governments and of society as it now is. One may laud Christ to the skies, nay, exalt him to a place in the Godhead, he may lavish encomiums upon his precepts and example without stint, but must not follow him too closely or apply his teachings too rigidly, in matters pertaining to the acquisition and use of property, methods of trade, the wage system, the relations between capital and labor, treatment of the criminal and perishing classes, caste distinctions, and concerns of kindred nature. A regenerated church was needed to engage in the transcendent work of shaping humanity according to the infallible standards of Practical Christianity, wherefore the blame rests with Christianity at large and not solely with the Hopedale community, which was fated to fail by its circumstances. We believe that the kingdom of god on this earth desired by Ballou and his nave children of god is long gone and shall never come again. Primitive Christians who separated themselves from the world may have had a brief taste of heaven on earth. Hopedale certainly had a better chance at it than we do today. The very sins abhorred by practical Christians are the sacred rites of the worldly religion constantly propagated by its media. Ideologies, the structures of evil in the war of all against all, are its holy doctrines. God, the power absolute that each would have, is religiously worshiped, while politics apportions the forms of power more and more democratically until each self-centered person or monad reflects on itself as god and worships itself, as if the ego were god. But there is nothing there, no center at all, no soul to speak of, so everyone is increasingly alienated from personhood, from itself and society at once. Whether this will result in utter disintegration on a doomsday remains to be seen, and then we hope that not everyone has to see it, that a few shall be saved from the awful sight. On the other hand, maybe this is the best of all possible worlds for the time being, and real instead of ideal salvation from death shall be universal to all when death is defeated by science unto the end of this world and perhaps beyond, in other parts of the universe, if we can get everyone off the planet in time. Cybernetics looks promising. So does the immortal jellyfish. In any event, we thank the Universalists for their good intentions, whether there is an afterlife or not. If not, at least we are saved by death, and of course from any limited punishment the Restorationists would have us have. But death is contrary to our inclination to live forever. A basic principle held by the Hopedale Community was that good shall win out over evil in the end. What good is a god without a devil? Orthodox Zoroastrians, or Dualists, have two gods to that end, the good one overcoming the evil one after millions of years.

Page13of14

TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS

But we are getting ahead of ourselves, and wish to return to Orestes Brownsons experience as a New England Universalist preacher, and then on to his repudiation of Protestantism and his ultimate conversion to Roman Catholicism. We may wonder what Brownson would think of Pope Benedict XVIs conservative statement in his homily opening the 2005 conclave, that, We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate standard consists solely of one's own ego and desires. -XYX-To Be ContinuedSources Quoted: Ballou, Adin, Practical Christian Socialism, a Conversational Exposition of the True System of Human Society, Fowlers and Wells, New York: 1854 Ballou, Adin, History of the Hopedale Community from its Inception to its Virtual Submergence in The Hopedale Parish, Thompson & Hill, Lowell, Mass: 1897 Brownson, O.A., The Convert, or Leaves From My Experience, D&J Sadler, New York: 1889 Constitution, By-laws, Rules and Regulations of The Hopedale Community, As Revised and Approved July 10, 1850, Community Press by A.G. Spaulding, Hopedale: 1850

Page14of14