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Alcott, Amos Bronson Burleigh, Celia C. Channing, William Henry Cordner, John Dall, Caroline Wells Healey Furness, William Henry Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Hosmer, Frederick Lucian • Johnson, Samuel Judd, Sylvester Latimer, Lewis Howard Lowell, James Russell Ripley, George Savage, Minot Judson Sears, Edmund Hamilton Sullivan, William Laurence Taft, William Howard Walker, James Weiss, John Wendte, Charles William Wooley, Celia ParkerSamuel Johnson
(1822-1882)
 Samuel Johnson |
An important hymn writer and Transcendentalist, who made significant scholarly contributions to the study of comparative religion with his books on religion in Asia, Johnson was born on October 10, 1822 in Salem, Massachusetts, where he continued to live throughout his active life. As a boy he was interested in academic pursuits, and he went to Harvard College at age 16, graduating in 1842. One of his classmates was Samuel Longfellow, with whom he began a long collaboration as hymn writers. They traveled together in Europe, and also worked on a hymn book, Book of Hymns. First published in 1846, it was later enlarged and revised as Hymns of the Spirit (1864). After he decided to enter the ministry, Johnson went to Harvard Divinity School, where Octavius Brooks Frothingham called him the “ardent disciple of the intuitionist philosophy,” finishing in 1846. He tried out for a ministry in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and then he preached in a number of pulpits in greater Boston, but none worked out, largely due to his radical political ideas. After that he found a responsive group of listeners in Lynn, Massachusetts at the Central Unitarian Society. Because of his non-sectarian, individualistic beliefs, he convinced the church to disaffiliate from the American Unitarian Association (AUA), and they formed the Independent Church of Lynn. He served them from 1853 to 1870. He so distrusted institutions, he would not even join the radical Free Religious Association (FRA) after it formed.
Johnson was a minor Transcendentalist whose faith was centered in naturalism, and he rejected much of Christian tradition as revelatory, and held little faith in established institutions always refusing to join any organized groups. His later years were devoted to study and writing. He often looked outside of Christianity for his inspiration. In his hymn. “Life of Ages,” he writes, “never was to chosen race that unstinted tide confined.” His work on eastern religions was especially important. He published three volumes of his Oriental Religions. These were India (1872), China (1877) and Persia (1885). Johnson believed in many of the reform movements of his time, including abolitionism. He contributed to the Liberator and the Anti-slavery Standard, among other periodicals. He was frequently asked to speak on reform subjects. He moved to a family home in North Andover, Massachusetts after the conclusion of his ministry in Lynn, and he died there on February 19, 1882.
