The human mind can not long subsist merely on protest and denial. Enthusiasm can not long be kept up simply by not believing. By a power as inevitable as gravitation, the human soul is always tending, after every such era of revolutionary free inquiry, to fall back exhausted into the kindly arms of a positive belief. He who teaches a positive and definite faith, which he believes with undoubting certainty in every part, has therefore an infinite advantage in any such crisis of opinions as that which Dr. Beecher found in Boston.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, quoted in The Autobiography, Correspondence, etc. of Lyman Beecher, vol.2, p. 111. The 'crisis of opinions' was the struggle between the Unitarians and the Congregationalists over the major institutions of Boston; the Unitarians had the upper hand, holding most of the cards, until Lyman Beecher came to Boston, rallied the Congregationalists, and spearheaded their revival.
