A Discourse on the Wants of the Times, Delivered in Lyceum Hall, Hanover Street, Boston, Sunday, May 29, 1836.

[iii]-iv, 23 pp. Self wrappers. A spirited discourse on the 'New Church,' which was to be the subject of Brownson's important first book of the same year. The theology and institutions of the church have gotten out of sync with the times. The principal 'wants' that need to be addressed are a tolerance for free inquiry and the spirit for social reform. Earlier in the thirties Brownson had been associated with Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright and had helped to found the Workingmen's Party. "In 1836 he organized his own church among the laboring men of Boston, calling it the Society for Christian Union and Progress, and during the same year publishing his first book, New Views of Christianity, Society and the Church, in which he condemned both Catholicism and Protestantism and celebrated the 'Church of the Future.' Eloquent and irascible, Brownson had now become a force both on the platform and in the press." (Dictionary of American Biography) The text of this Discourse was appended to Harriet Martineau's Society in America (1837) but without the 'Advertisement' (pp. iii-iv) prefixed here.