Thomas Whittemore

Thomas Whittemore (1800-1861) was a Universalist minister, editor, and historian in the Boston area, widely regarded as the most influential Universalist editor of the nineteenth century. A protege of Hosea Ballou, he founded the Trumpet and Universalist Magazine in 1828 and conducted it for more than three decades as the denomination's leading newspaper; he also co-founded the Universalist Historical Society in 1834 and wrote early histories of Universalism, a four-volume life of Hosea Ballou, and a frank autobiography of his own first twenty-five years. He served in the Massachusetts legislature in the 1830s, where he chaired the committee overseeing the disestablishment of the state's churches, and was later a trustee of Tufts College.

Whittemore's counterpart to Hosea Ballou's earlier Notes on the Parables (also in this collection): the parables arranged in the order of their delivery and expounded to show that none of them teaches endless punishment. Fuller and more systematic than Ballou's pioneering volume, it became the denomination's standard parable commentary and went through many editions.

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The oldest text in this collection's lineage: Samuel Richardson, a London Particular Baptist of Cromwell's era, published this attack on the doctrine of eternal torments in 1660. Thomas Whittemore rediscovered and republished it for American readers in 1833, delighted to show that the denial of endless hell had seventeenth-century Baptist credentials. It stands with Jeremiah White's Restoration of All Things as evidence of universalism's deep English roots.

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A collection of sacred music compiled by Whittemore for congregational and social use — the 'Cambridge collection' of his home city. This copy is bound with manuscript music entries by an early owner, a reminder that nineteenth-century tune books were working documents, extended by hand as choirs acquired new favorites.

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The nineteenth century's most popular handbook of Universalism, 'designed to lead inquirers to the belief of that doctrine, and believers to the practice of it.' Whittemore lays out the scriptural case in plain language, answers common objections, gives advice on organizing societies and Sunday schools, and closes with counsel on living the faith. As close as the movement came to a single-volume introduction for the curious layperson.

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Whittemore's tune book: sacred music for Universalist choirs and congregations, including tunes of his own composition — the Trumpet's editor was also an amateur composer and music publisher. Designed to accompany the words-only hymnbooks of the era, it joins the Musical Supplement in this collection as evidence of how the denomination's singing actually sounded.

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The book of Revelation supplied endless ammunition to preachers of doom, so Whittemore met it head-on with a full commentary. Following the preterist line of interpretation, he reads the Apocalypse as prophecy long since fulfilled — in the fall of Jerusalem, the persecutions of the early church, and the collapse of pagan Rome — rather than as a preview of endless torment to come. A characteristic piece of Universalist exegesis: sober verse-by-verse work deployed to disarm the most terrifying book in the Bible.

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The life of the movement's great biblical critic, written by his friend and publisher. Whittemore traces Balfour's pilgrimage from Scottish orthodoxy through the Baptist ministry to the Inquiry into sheol, hades, tartarus, and gehenna (also in this collection) that made him Universalism's most formidable exegetical controversialist — and preserves his letters to Moses Stuart and the Andover establishment.

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The first volume of the great documentary biography, begun in Ballou's lifetime by his devoted disciple Thomas Whittemore. This volume carries Ballou from his Calvinist boyhood in Richmond, New Hampshire, through his conversion, early itinerancy, and rise to leadership, quoting letters, sermons, and contemporary records at length. Whittemore's four volumes remain the fullest source for Ballou's life; Safford's later one-volume biography (also in this collection) distills much of their material.

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The second volume of Whittemore's four-volume documentary biography follows Ballou through his maturing ministry — the pastorates, the controversies with orthodox opponents and with dissenters inside Universalism, and the stream of publications — continuing the method of the whole work: letters, sermons, contemporary records, and Whittemore's own recollections quoted at length and knit together with commentary.

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The third volume of the documentary biography, dense with the materials of Ballou's Boston years — the Second Universalist Society, the periodicals he edited and fed, the Restorationist controversy that divided his denomination, and the biographical sketches of fellow ministers that Whittemore wove through the narrative, making the work as much a portrait of a generation as of one man.

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The final volume brings the record to Ballou's serene old age, his death in 1852, and the extraordinary public mourning that followed — with the funeral discourses, tributes, and assessments of his legacy. Completed within three years of its subject's death by the disciple who knew him best, the four volumes together remain the indispensable source for Ballou's life and for the first half-century of organized American Universalism.

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Whittemore's own story of his first twenty-five years: a poor Boston boyhood, apprenticeship to a bootmaker, conversion under the preaching of Hosea Ballou, and his rapid rise from shop bench to pulpit to the editorship of the Trumpet. Written with the energy and self-assurance that marked everything he did, it complements Adams's posthumous memoir (also in this collection) with the inside view — and is one of the liveliest accounts we have of how early Universalism recruited its leaders from the artisan class.

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The companion to Ballou 2d's ancient history, picking up the story at the Reformation and carrying it to the author's own day. Whittemore — editor of the Trumpet and one of the denomination's most energetic controversialists — chronicles universalist thinkers and movements across Europe and America, ending with the rise of the organized Universalist church in the United States. Together the two histories gave the young denomination a documented pedigree reaching back to the early church.

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