Founded in 1813 as The Christian Disciple, it was purchased in 1814 by Nathan Hale.

[1][2][3] Ralph Waldo Emerson's first printed work, "Thoughts on the Religion of the Middle Ages," signed "H.O.N.," was published in The Christian Disciple in 1822.

[4] Through the years, editors included: William Ellery Channing; Noah Worcester; Henry Ware Jr.; John Gorham Palfrey; Francis Jenks, and others.

An important journal of liberal Christianity, it was influential in the Unitarian and Transcendentalist movements.

[5] It ceased publication in 1869 when it was subsumed by a new Unitarian periodical edited by Edward Everett Hale and called Old and New.