"Alas for churches in New England! We be all dead men, for the Transcendentalists have come! They say there is no Christ; no God; no soul; only "an absolute nothing," and Hegel is the the Holy Ghost. Our churches will be pulled down; there will be no Sabbath; our wives will wear the breeches, and the Transcendentalists will ride over us rough shod"
John Owen, 1840, quoted in Theodore Parker's "Transcendentalism"
(Not wives in breeches!)








