An American Unitarian clergyman. He was born in Massachusetts, graduated at Williams College, and later became a divinity student at Andover. He preached in Boston for two years, as assistant to Dr. Channing, forming a friendship which was only broken by death. In 1823 he became pastor of the Unitarian Church in New Bedford. He went to New York in 1835, and while pastor there secured the erection of the Church of the Messiah. About 1844 he quitted the pulpit and lectured in various parts of the country. Among his works are: “Letters on Revivals;” “Discourses on Human Nature;” “Discourses on Human Life” (1841); “Discourses on the Nature of Religion;” and “The Unitarian Belief.” A collected edition of his works appeared in New York (1847). Consult his “Autobiography and Letters,” edited by his daughter (Boston, 1884).

Personal

  In conversation, a person of Dr. Dewey’s thought and culture cannot but be attractive, if he gives freedom to his thoughts and play to his fancy. This he does to an unusual degree. He is one of the best conversationists, maintaining lively chat of anecdote, illustration, and repartee, with a vein of sound sense constantly revealing itself, and an underlying strata of philosophical and religious thought ever cropping out. In person, Mr. Dewey is of medium height, with a well-compacted body, surmounted by a head quite too large to be proportioned; with a full, high, and broad forehead; with dark, short, undirected hair; and a large, flexible, expressive, and homely mouth. Dr. Dewey’s style is the result of severe discipline, and one difficult of attainment. It is both ornate and chaste. It is not so likely to win the applause of the many; but it finds its way to an aristocracy of mind on terms of confidence. It has a nobility of air, which marks it as of a privileged order…. The orator must possess dignity, yet without pomposity; ease, without slovenliness; richness of style, without inflation; simplicity, without abruptness; power, without commotion; earnestness, without haste; he must be impassioned, but not passionate; roused, but not vehement; on-going, but not impetuous. Such an orator is Dr. Dewey. His periods are perfectly complete and rounded, yet filled by the thought; the variety is great, yet a symmetry prevails; and in general we find that harmony between the thoughts and their form, which should always obtain. Some excel in style, but lack thought; others are rich in thought, but fail in style; some use words to please the ear merely; others discard all grace and melody. Dr. Dewey combines the two. It is doubtful whether the name of Saxon or Roman would apply to his style. Artistic and scholarly it certainly is. His imagination is rich, but not superfluous; ready, but not obtrusive. It takes not the lead of truth, but waits on her as a handmaid. It flies, but not to weariness; soars, but does not strain its flight…. When Dr. Dewey appears in the pulpit, one feels that an earnest, devout, thoughtful man is to speak. There is no restlessness, no unnecessary shifting and arranging, no sudden angular movements, no commotion, no hurry.

  Dewey, reared in the country, among plain but not common people, squarely built, and in the enjoyment of what seemed robust health, had, when I first saw him, at forty years of age, a massive dignity of person; strong features, a magnificent height of head, a carriage almost royal; a voice deep and solemn; a face capable of the utmost expression, and an action which the greatest tragedian could not have much improved. These were not arts and attainments, but native gifts of person and temperament. An intellect of the first class had fallen upon a spiritual nature tenderly alive to the sense of divine realities. His awe and reverence were native, and they have proved indestructible. He did not so much seek religion as religion sought him. His nature was characterized from early youth by a union of massive intellectual power with an almost feminine sensibility; a poetic imagination with a rare dramatic faculty of representation. Diligent as a scholar, a careful thinker, accustomed to test his own impressions by patient meditation, a reasoner of the most cautious kind; capable of holding doubtful conclusions, however inviting, in suspense; devout and reverent by nature,—he had every qualification for a great preacher, in a time when the old foundations were broken up and men’s minds were demanding guidance and support in the critical transition from the days of pure authority to the days of personal conviction by rational evidence. Dewey has from the beginning been the most truly human of our preachers. Nobody has felt so fully the providential variety of mortal passions, exposures, the beauty and happiness of our earthly life, the lawfulness of our ordinary pursuits, the significance of home, of business, of pleasure, of society, of politics. He has made himself the attorney of human nature, defending and justifying it in all the hostile suits brought against it by imperfect sympathy, by theological acrimony, by false dogmas. Yet he never was for a moment the apologist of selfishness, vice, or folly; no stricter moralist than he is to be found; no worshipper of veracity more faithful; no wiser or more tender pleader of the claims of reverence and self-consecration.

  Here and there one remains, to listen with interest to a fresh account of persons and things once familiar; while the story will find its chief audience among those who remember Mr. Dewey as among the lights of their own youth. Those also who love the study of human nature may follow with pleasure the development of a New England boy, with a character of great strength, simplicity, reverence, and honesty, with scanty opportunities for culture, and heavily handicapped in his earlier running, by both poverty and Calvinism, but possessed from the first by the love of truth and knowledge, and by a generous sympathy which made him long to impart whatever treasures he obtained. To trace the growth of such a life to a high point of usefulness and power, to see it unspoiled by honor and admiration, and to watch its retirement, under the pressure of nervous disease, from active service, while never losing its concern for the public good, its quickness of personal sympathy, nor its interest in the solution of the mightiest problems of humanity, cannot be an altogether unprofitable use of time to the reader, while to the writer it is a work of consecration.

  Miss Mary Dewey, in the admirable memoir of her father, lays great stress on his affectionate qualities. These cannot be too emphatically asserted; yet they probably had more scope than even she suspected. Indeed, unless I am much mistaken, they formed the basis of his character. He was a most deep-feeling man. He loved his friends in and out of the profession, with a loyal, hearty, obliging, warm, and even tender emotion, expressing itself in word and deed. It was overflowing, not in any sentimental manner, but in a manly, sincere way. He was a man of infinite good-will, of a quite boundless kindness. His voice, his expression of face, his smile, the grasp of his hand,—all gave signs of it. He felt things keenly; his sensibilities were most acute; even his thoughts were suffused with emotion. He could not discuss speculative themes as if they were cold or dry. Nothing was arid to his mind. In prayer it was not unusual for his audience to discern tears rolling down his cheeks…. In him, heart was uppermost; intellect, conscience, were of subordinate value when taken alone; in fact, they were incomplete by themselves, and wanted their proper substance. He said once that his skin was so delicate that the least soil on his hands was felt all through his system and prevented him from working. The excessive sensibility, which could not be understood by the world at large, was at the bottom of his likes and dislikes, and of his personal fears and hopes. Excitement drained off his strength. He exhausted himself physically, and fell into ill-health by exertions that would not have taxed an ordinary constitution. It cost him a great deal to write sermons, to visit the sick and sorrowing, to conduct public services. At the same time, he was disqualified, by a certain want of steel in his blood, for any but the clerical profession, where qualities like his are of inestimable value, and of the rarest kind.

General

  The distinguishing peculiarity of these “Discourses,” is, in fact, that they aim to persuade and convince men, with an earnestness and power from which there is no escaping, of their spiritual and immortal nature,—of the exceeding and eternal worth of that nature,—of the primary obligation to value and cultivate it,—of the inexpressible sin of neglecting, abusing, perverting it. The title-page announces Discourses on various subjects,—and they are various in the common sense of the word,—but still they are only different points of view from which the attention is directed to one central prospect. Whatever be the name of the discourse, its great end and aim is to bring men to knowledge,—not coldly and theoretically, but earnestly and abidingly,—that they are responsible creatures, living under the eye and government of an infinite God, and having far higher trusts and interests than any which belong to this world alone…. We need say nothing of Mr. Dewey’s style…. It exactly befits the thought. It is the spontaneous language of an earnest and eloquent spirit. It has starts, and breaks, and parentheses within parentheses,—but no confusion, no obscurity. We see how it might be criticized; but we shall not criticize it, and we would not have it other than it is;—or, if different in some few respects, not so different as to change its character.

  The views which he presents, [“Discourses”] on subjects so various, and singly of such wide relations, it is to be supposed will be found, in different places, more or less striking and weighty. But this is apparent throughout, that he is speaking his own observations and convictions; that he is uttering himself; that, however he may have been indebted to books for excitements and illustrations, he owes to them none of his processes of inquiry, and none of his conclusions. Often his views, while they are novel, are sagacious and satisfactory; his appeals are often strongly exciting. But this charm is never absent from what he writes, that it is evidently fresh from the author’s own mind. And, as to style, there is often a grace and gorgeousness, and often a condensed force of diction, which makes ample amends for the somewhat characteristic infelicities, to which we have referred.

  Believing that the philosophy of the filial heart is higher and of infinitely more worth than that of the doubting head, we rejoice in the expression of simple, childlike, faith, by one whom the world will not easily suspect of either having been awed into the popular belief, or of believing one, and preaching and printing another. We have been refreshed and strengthened by reading these sermons. It gladdens us to know that one, who has stood so prominent among the champions of liberty and progress in religion, retains so firm an attachment to that basis of miracle and inspiration, on which alone, as we think, Christianity can rest. These Discourses recognise the distinction between Natural and Revealed Religion, the insufficiency of the former of itself both as to doctrine and evidence, and man’s deep need of an express and authoritative revelation from the Author of his being. They are so rich in just and striking thought, that to give a fair analysis of them would be to reprint them entire.

  He is admired by those who are capable of appreciating the philosophy of morals, without reference to his peculiar theological belief. His reasoning is generally comprehensive, and his illustrations often poetical. There is a happy mixture of ease and finish in his style, and he is remarkable for interesting the nearer in themes which would be trite if treated with less earnestness. Perhaps the pathos of his rhetoric is its most effective characteristic.

  The author of these discourses [“Discourses and Reviews”] stands in the very first rank of Unitarian literature. As a pulpit orator, his reputation is distinguished…. These essays are not chargeable with the usual offensiveness of controversial writing. Dr. Dewey possesses all the qualifications which are needed to give seemliness and polish to the form of his opinions. He shines more to our apprehension, in the gentle glow of sentiment, than in the conflict of reasoning. Nothing is more characteristic of the whole work, than a disposition to avoid bold statement of positions, sharp cutting of defining lines, and penetrating analysis of philosophical difficulties. The shudder with which the author sometimes flies back from metaphysical methods is more amiable in the saloon, than dignified in the field of disputation. Yet he is not a common man, and where he is in the right, as he frequently is, we admire the perspicuity and scholarlike elegance, with which he can express a familiar truth.

  There is a great beauty of style—much force, and much felicity, of language about them. They display a rich and vigorous imagination, a fine and cultivated taste, and for the most part an elevated and courteous spirit; to all which we regret that, by the hostile bearing of the work upon our orthodox faith, we are obliged to render but the scanty justice of this paragraph.

  The discourses of Dr. Dewey are full of profound thought, of strong religious convictions, and are written in a solidly attractive style.

  The theologian and preacher who came nearest to Channing in the geniality and largeness of his nature, and the persuasiveness with which he enforced what may be called the conservative tenets of Unitarianism, was Orville Dewey, a man whose mind was fertile, whose religious experience was deep, and who brought from the Calvinism in which he had been trained an interior knowledge of the system which he early rejected. He had a profound sense not only of the dignity of human nature, but of the dignity of human life. In idealizing human life he must still be considered as giving some fresh and new interpretations of it, and his discourses form, like Channing’s, an addition to American literature, as well as contribution to the theology of Unitarianism. He defended men from the assaults of Calvinists, as Channing had defended Man. Carlyle speaks somewhere of “this dog-hole of a world;” Dewey considered it, with all its errors and horrors, as a good world on the whole, and as worthy of the Divine beneficence.

  Everywhere in this volume [“Sermons”] there is great felicity of diction, and a happy faculty of illustration, a sense of what is great and beautiful, a shrewd insight into the ways of the world and into our human nature. But these are not what make up its special charm and power. Here is a man thoroughly in earnest, who, with a powerful intellect and a great soul, has been reverently looking into the greatest and most vital of all subjects for nearly fourscore years. In the opening dawn of childhood, treading “unconsciously on the hidden springs of wisdom and mystery,” through all the succeeding years, he has been grappling with these momentous problems, and here we have the maturest processes and results of all his thinking and of his life’s experience. Here are marks of the conscientious and laborious workings of a strong and thoroughly trained mind. Great subjects, carefully examined and thought out, are brought before us.

  His creed, his method, and his intellectual and spiritual nature closely resembled those of his friend Channing, to whom in youth he had been assistant minister; but the distinctly literary ability of his sermons and other writings was less; and, unlike Channing, he was not a power in philanthropy, nor did he make his influence felt in literary criticism. Upon his thoughtful and reverent lectures on “The Problem of Human Destiny” his present literary reputation chiefly rests. But it is the misfortune (in one sense) of the minister, however earnest and able, that his books and sermons, unless of striking and significant force, or of literary ability so high as to give them a renown aside from that due to their moral mission, are not widely remembered or often read. We think of what clergymen did, or perhaps of what they were, but not of what they are in literature.

  One of the profoundest thinkers of his generation.