Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham

Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham (23 July 1793 – 3 April 1870) was an American Unitarian minister and pastor of the First Church of Boston from 1815 to 1850. Frothingham was opposed to Theodore Parker and the interjection of transcendentalism into the church. He also wrote sermons, hymns, and poetry.

Early life Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham was born on July 23, 1793, in Boston, Massachusetts the son of Ebenezer Frothingham and Joanna Langdon. He attended Boston Latin School under the charge of Samuel Hunt. He graduated from Harvard College in 1811 at the age of eighteen and gave a commencement speech entitled "The Cultivation of the Taste and Imagination," which was described by Dr. Pierce as "written with purity and pronounced with elegance."

Career

In 1812, Frothingham became the first Instructor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.

On March 15, 1815, Frothingham became an ordained Minister of the First Church in Boston. He remained there until March 1850.

Frothingham had been five years in the pulpit when the Unitarian controversy broke out. The American Unitarian Association was formed in 1825. In March 1835, the twentieth anniversary of his settlement in the First Church, he preached:

The dependence was on miracle. Frothingham said, in a sermon on the "Manifestation of Christ":

In a sermon entitled "The Ruffian Released", preached in 1836, he said:

He disagreed with the philosophy of Les Misérables, Victor Hugo's famous novel, which seemed to imply that a change of outward conditions would effect a change of character, that the social arrangement was radically wrong, and that the "paralysis of the person" was contingent on "the narrowness of the lot", which ran counter to his beliefs.

The following is from Parker's journal:

Frothingham was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1856. He corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson, and was a thorough student of the German language when such scholarship was rare in America.

Family In 1818, Frothingham married Ann Gorham Brooks, daughter of Peter Chardon Brooks and sister of the wives of Edward Everett and Charles Francis Adams, Sr.

They had three children, all born in Boston. Octavius Brooks Frothingham was born November 26, 1822, and became an author. Ward Brooks Frothingham was born November 16, 1828, and resided for a time in Burlington, serving in two town offices. Ellen Frothingham was born March 25, 1835, and became a translator (German into English). Christian Patriotism: A Sermon, on the Occasion of the Death of John Adams, Munroe and Francis, 1826. Sermons in the Order of a Twelvemonth, 1852.

Xenia epigram "The Crossed Swords", Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. An American Anthology, 1787–1900, 1900

"Sartor Resartus", Christian Examiner for September, 1836, N. L. Frothingham.