The Sacramento Daily Record-Union newspaper of Monday, December 2, 1889, happened to report the important activities of the First Unitarian Society of that week. That was the date that the women opened their Christmas season bazaar which was announced in the Record-Union:
AMUSEMENTS
At Pythian Castle tonight the ladies of the Unitarian Society open a Bazaar of Days. There will be
a booth for each day, and many holiday goods will be displayed... There will be a program of exercises
this evening. The bazaar will be open all day tomorrow and again tomorrow evening.
An advertisement in another column listed the admission price as 25 cents for adults and 10 cents for children. To give an idea of the value of the admission cost then, that newspaper advertised women’s fine shoes for $2.75, extra fine cambric night shirts at $1.25 and gents‘ warm overcoats at $3.00.
That issue of the paper also reported the sermon by Rev. C. P. Massey the day before. His pulpit address was “Looking Backward” which was the title of a romantic utopian novel by Edward Bellamy published the year before. It described the social organization of Boston in the future year of 2000, when the moral ills of a previously primitive nation had been replaced by a collectivist society founded upon humane and ideal solidarity. In one year it had become a best seller, with such a demand for it on the West Coast1 that the pastor of the Unitarian Society replied to its challenge:
LOOKING BACKWARD
REV. C. P. MASSEY DISCUSSES SOME OF BELLAMY’s
SOCIAL THEORIES
Fundamental Errors Pointed Out —
Human Nature the Most Serious Obstacle
The above was the subject of an interesting sermon preached before the Unitarian Society by its pastor, Mr. Massey, who took for his text Matthew xii, 12: “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.” He commenced by saying:
It is with no feeling of disrespect for the intelligent and enthusiastic company of men and women who have given their allegiance to the new social ideas advanced in Edward Bellamy’s recently published novel, that I elevate such a caption as the text I have selected for a discourse intended to consider some of the positions taken in this author’s fascinating book, entitled Looking Backward.2 I feel, however, that some fundamental errors have been committed by this would-be valiant champion in the cause of social reform. I therefore do not believe the Kingdom of Heaven will ever come to the world by the adoption of these suggested principles.
Here are the main points of his impeachment of Bellamy’s ideas:
There is such fervent desire to see the pall of human misery lifted that people are blinded by the pretentious fabric of Bellamy, that even if established it would speedily fall into decay. We have no way of knowing the possible accomplishment in the eternities of God’s providence. There is today too much fact and too little truth because isolated facts may cause us to forget important principles. The principles of Charles Darwin give us the road over which humanity has already traveled. There is a perfectibility of human institutions, just as there is through protozoan, radiate, mollusk, articulate and vertebrate until as man he stands, the majestic figure amid the civilization he has established, subdues nature, invents agricultural machines, writes Hamlet and In Memoriam and becomes as a god in his knowledge of right and wrong. Bellamy would change the old order of the world because he thinks the old order incapable of being perfected and would institute a new one because of its moral appeal which will make it eternal.
Better conditions may ensue, but there remains the need for conflict, the dependence upon daily struggle for daily strength, the persistence of sorrow in our lot to constitute life’s most angelic ministry. Jesus found many conditions he could have attacked but he did not because he seemed almost unconscious of their existence. But Jesus came with the teaching: Be pure, be upright, be charitable; God is your father and you are brethren in one common inheritance and the monuments of civilization have been based upon his instruction. It is not only that household suffrage has been extended in England, that the slave has been admitted to citizenship in America, but woman now comes to claim her privilege as an important unit in the State. The fortune of the State must rest upon the intelligence and integrity of the citizen, not by losing our individuality in some great communal life in which the necessity of daily struggle is removed.
1 Sacramento Daily Record-Union newspaper, October 28, 1989, p. 3.
2 “Looking Backward 2000-1887” by Edward Bellamy, edited by John L. Thomas; The John Harvard Library, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1967; p. 1.
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