CHRIST IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
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in general, or with predestination in particular, he emerged as the
redeemer in his true New Testament vocation.
This revolution in religious thought found its expression
in
one
of the best novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
The Minister's Wooing,
published in 1859. As a young girl Harriet Beecher was steeped in
Calvinist theology, and at the age of eleven she came to doubt the
doctrine of predestination and damnation when a friend, the fiance
of her elder sister, was drowned in a shipwreck. She presents the
same problem in her novel: the lover of the young heroine is be–
lieved to be lost at sea, and his mother is on the brink of madness
with fear that her son, who had not yet affirmed his faith, has been
consigned to hellfire and eternal damnation. In this calamity it is the
uneducated but deeply religious Negro servant Candace who stands
up to the learned minister, the representative of Calvinist theology,
and defeats him. Her advocate is Christ. She says to her mistress:
"I know our Doctor's a mighty good man, an' larned,-an' in fair
weather I hain't no 'bjection to yer hearing all about dese yer great
and mighty tings 's got to say. But honey, dey won't do for you now;
sick folks mu'n't hab strong meat: an' times like dese, dar just ain't
but one ting to come to, an' dat ar's Jesus." . .. "Why Jesus didn't die
for notin',-all dat love ain't gwone to be wasted. De 'lect is more 'n
you or I knows, honey! Dar's de Spirit,-He'll give it to 'em and ef
Mass'r James is called an' took, depend upon it de Lord has got him
ready--<:ourse He has: so don't ye go to laying on your poor heart
what no mortal creature can live under, 'cause as we 's got to live in
dis yer world, it's quite dar de Lord ha' fixed it so we can, and ef
tings was as some folks suppose, why we couldn't live, and dar wouldn't
be no sense in anyting dat goes on."
The way for an even wider function of Christ was prepared by
the Unitarian movement and completed by Emerson and the trans–
cendentalists, who transformed the Son of God into a figure almost
entirely human. To Emerson, Christ becomes the supreme witness
of man's divinity:
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open
eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished by
its beauty, he lived in it, had its being there. Alone in all history he
estimated the greatness of man. One was true to what is in you and
me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes
