In an undated letter written in the 1880s, William Henry Furness remarked, "My interest in the view of Jesus of the Gospels, which I have been taking more and more to heart for these fifty years past, is almost insane." A Unitarian clergyman, theologian, reformer, translator, and author, Furness was both an unyielding abolitionist and one of the first Americans to distinguish between the life of Jesus and the theology of Christ. Someone once remarked of Furness that his life and work were driven by "two themes,-the man of Nazareth and the man of Africa." As a member of the Transcendental Club, despite his distance from the community, Furness corresponded regularly with Convers Francis, Frederic Henry Hedge, Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, Moncure Daniel Conway, and Christopher Pearse Cranch. He maintained a lifelong friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson and conducted his private funeral service. Emerson wrote of...