Thomas Starr King

Thomas Starr King (1824-1864), the largely self-educated son of a Universalist minister, served both Universalist and Unitarian congregations, taking the pulpit of a Charlestown, Massachusetts, Universalist church at age twenty, leading Boston's Hollis Street Church from 1849, and moving in 1860 to the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco. A celebrated preacher and lecturer, he campaigned across California for the Union during the Civil War and organized fundraising for the U.S. Sanitary Commission, work credited with helping keep the state loyal. He died of diphtheria and pneumonia in 1864 and is commemorated by statues in Golden Gate Park and at the California capitol, his statue having earlier represented California in the U.S. Capitol.

Starr King was the brightest star the denomination produced at mid-century — the Universalist-turned-Unitarian preacher famous for saying the two faiths covered the whole ground between them ("one thinks God is too good to damn men forever, the other thinks men are too good to be damned"), and later the orator credited with holding California for the Union. This discourse against endless punishment dates from his Boston years at the Hollis Street church. No copy has been located on the Internet Archive; the PDF scan comes from Google Books (linked in this book's metadata).

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)

Published in the year of his death, with a biographical sketch by Richard Frothingham: the addresses of Starr King's California years, when the Universalist-bred preacher was credited with holding the state for the Union. The civic voice of the man whose theological voice speaks in his discourse against endless punishment, also in this collection.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)

A posthumous collection of Starr King's sermons, edited by Edwin Percy Whipple, showing the breadth of the liberal gospel he preached from Boston to San Francisco. It joins his discourse against endless punishment, also in this collection.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)