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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 49

What the Church of the Unity Stands For

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What the Church of the Unity Stands For.

"We also believe."—II. Cor. iv., I3.

It has been common in all ages for the members of religious communions to refer to those who have dared to dissent from their fundamental doctrines as "unbelievers." They are "the kingdom of heaven"; and, if one is not of their number, he must be in the "outer darkness." They quietly assume that they have all the truth there is; and, if one does not believe as they do, they take it for granted that he does not believe anything. And, sometimes, one hardly knows whether he ought to resent the supercilious impudence as an insult, to pity the narrowness of the ignorance thus displayed, or to smile at the Pharisaic self-conceit.

Because Unitarians have not been willing to tie themselves to a creed, to pledge themselves never to discover a new truth, or, if they did, not to accept it, they are commonly charged with having no creed at all. Perhaps this kind of misrepresentation is not to be wondered at. It seems particularly hard for a self-satisfied Christian to do any sort of justice to one who does not agree with him. But what is really sad about it to me is to see liberals themselves help on this sort of misunderstanding. In his witty "Fable for Critics," Lowell hits off the Unitarians of his day as they stood related to Theodore Parker; and, concerning their creed, he says,—

"They believed—faith, I'm puzzled—I think I may call
Their belief a believing in nothing at all,
Or something of that sort; I know they all went
For a general union of total dissent."?

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And Parker he speaks of as having gone a step farther yet. But, at the same time, he speaks of Parker in terms of unqualified praise, and contradicts his own pleasantry by saying,—

"Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced
In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest."

Now, he who understands human nature knows right well that no sane man ever gets in red-hot earnest about—nothing. And Parker, like all great apostles of truth, moved his age as he did, not by his doubts alone, but because he believed more than any other man of his time.

Lowell's wit is good, as wit; and he meant it only as a "sly dig." If it be taken as anything more than that, if Unitarianism is capable of wearing any such definition, then I am not a Unitarian.

But there are those among us who thoughtlessly give countenance to this sort of folly. Not long ago, I heard of a young lady who, when asked her religious faith, said,—half jestingly, to be sure,—"Oh, I go where they don't believe anything in particular." Another one once remarked to me, "When people ask me what Unitarians believe, I really don't know what to tell them." And, quite recently, a lady said to me, "I fight a good many battles for you : people often tell me that Mr. Savage doesn't believe anything."

Now, if it be really possible that people hear me preach and go away thinking I do not believe anything, either I speak with very little clearness, or else they listen with very little reflection. For certain it is that I never in my whole life believed so much as I do to-day. I never held so large, so grand, so hopeful, so stimulating a faith. And if anybody goes through the form of listening to me, and thinks other-wise, I cannot think it is my fault. For I dare to say that no man in America, during the last ten years, has given utterance to a more detailed and more positive system of religious belief than is contained in my published books. If people have read these or even a part of them, and have not found it, I must believe that they read to little purpose.

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And if they have not read, and still say, "Mr. Savage believes nothing," then they state what they ought to know is untrue. But, then, some people listen in such a curious fashion! And, on the other hand, those who are too much prejudiced either to hear or read are still very positive in their assertions, and quite ready to report their ignorant prejudices for facts.

An illustration of this sort of thing is worth giving. It shows a kind of charity and truth that, ever since the day when Jesus was popularly reported to be a glutton, a wine-bibber, and a companion of low people, have been too common among those who have claimed to be his followers. Not long since, a woman—disguised and dressed as a lady—was overheard, on a street-car, telling what dreadful things were preached in this church, and warning a young friend against being inveigled into attending such a place. But, when pressed with the innocent question as to whether she had ever read or heard me, she replied, with a sort of holy horror, that she never had. She had that kind of piety that enables its possessor heartily to despise those who do not belong to their synagogue, but which does not prevent one from lying about what one does not take the trouble to understand.

But now let us look a little more closely, and see what all this talk about not believing anything really means. From the stand-point of the bigot, it only means, "You don't believe as I do." With a great many young people, it is only careless, thoughtless talk. They do believe a great deal, only they have not taken the trouble to formulate it, and put it into definite statement. Or, allowing the creeds of others to define religion, they say, "Well, then, if that is religion, I suppose I haven't any." So they sit down quietly and wear the title of "unbeliever," when they ought to resent it as an insult,—no less insulting because it is the well-meant, pious cant of those who arrogate to themselves the exclusive right to be called "the people of God." I, for one, do not propose to take quietly the arrogant compassion of those who page 6 mistake last year's ignorance for piety, and who think the dead branch of last fall has a right to pity the restless bud of spring.

It is not to be wondered at, if, in view of the vast expansion of the universe, the unsettling of old theories, the sudden uncovering of an infinite beyond in every direction that baffles imagination even, the painfully felt inadequacy of all the old schemes and systems,—it is not, I say, to be wondered at, if people do feel that they know very little, and for the time hardly know what to believe. All this, however, is not because the awakened modern mind believes less than was believed in former times; for, in fact, it believes a great deal more. It is only that what is known seems so very little as compared with the endless vistas of the unexplored. When Newton spoke of himself as a little child picking up now and then a brighter pebble than usual on the seashore while the infinite ocean of truth lay all unknown before him, it was not that the great scientist knew less than his predecessors : it was only because he knew so much that he could comprehend how much he did not know.

The liberal religionist has been called a "doubter" and "unbeliever" so long that he is half ready to admit that these titles really belong to him. And his opponents have so long and so loudly claimed to be "men of faith" that people are half persuaded to admit the claim. But I, for one, am not ready to confess that either of these positions is true. The Church of the Unity, so far as I have a right to represent it, believes more truth and grander truth than is contained in any one of the old creeds; and its faith is deeper and higher and more comprehensive than that of any one of the religions of the past.

This claim I wish now to substantiate as definitely as possible by outlining a series of contrasts between the main points of the orthodox creed and our own. When I am done, I trust you will see plainly that henceforth no enemy can honestly charge, and no friend can intelligently admit, that we do not believe as much and as positively and definitely as any church in existence. As the most effective way of making page 7 this apparent, I will state the points of the old faith that we do not believe, and then in sharp contrast will set down what we do believe, asking you meanwhile to consider whether our positions are not quite as positive and quite as religious as the others.

1. We do not believe that the world was created in six days six thousand years ago. Neither do we believe in the attempts to get over the difficulties of Genesis by making days mean long periods of time. But we do believe that the earth has been in existence for millions of years; and that, by slow and wondrous processes of growth, it has come to be what we see it to-day. And, instead of holding the pessimistic and despairing belief that it is accursed and blighted, we believe that the same marvellous processes of development and improvement that have been at work in the past are at work still. So we cherish the hope that man's wondrous dwelling-place is to be better and better still in the future.

Which is the larger, broader belief? Which is, by comparison, the negative one? Which is the most honorable, hopeful, and, in the best sense, religious ?

2. We do not believe in the "fall of man." But we do believe in the ascent of man. We believe that, beginning at the lowest point that could be called human, he has ascended by the toilsome pathway of experience, until, from the sun-bright summits of his present civilization, he can look back and down, and trace the winding, blood-stained, tear-wet way by which he has come. Imperfection and sorrow and evil find a more natural, and far more hopeful an explanation in the latter theory than they do in the old. The moral sense of the nineteenth century declares the old doctrine to be immoral and unjust, unworthy of God, and cruel to man.

Again, which belief is the more positive, the more nobly religious? Where are the "pale negations," where the doubt and denial in this our position ?

3. It is contained, by implication, in our last statement that we do not believe in "total depravity." Neither do we page 8 believe that man is an angel. We do not make an ideal man out of a preconceived theory of either goodness or badness. We simply go to the facts, and take him for what he is. And we find that, along with fearful capacities for evil, he has in him also limitless possibilities of good. And we find that the good is more and stronger than the evil, as is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the world has been and is growing better. Thus, hope is ever stronger than despair; and we work with courage, having our Eden before us as the goal of our attainment, and not behind us as the object of perpetual regret.

Can the old statement be called belief and assertion, and the new one doubt and denial? Rather is it true that the canker of doubt and denial eats forever at the heart of the old, while ours is fresh and strong with courage and trust.

4. We do not believe that God was miraculously incarnated, once for all, in one man only, and that nearly two thousand years ago. But we do believe that he is eternally incarnated in all that is good and beautiful and true. All light, all love, all life, all beauty, are the present Deity. At every turn, God faces us. "He besets us behind-and before, and lays his hand upon us." He is nearer to us than our pulse-beats or than the most secret thoughts of our hearts. God was not simply at the beginning, when he breathed into Adam the breath of life, but in all life, ever reaching upward; not simply in the miraculous bush of Moses, but in every wayside shrub, the bursting of spring buds, and the woods of October all aflame with glory; not simply giving the stars their first impulse, but holding their poise and guiding their boundless orbits to-day; not speaking now and then to "holy men of old," but always speaking to him who "hath ears to hear," and always revealed to the "pure in heart."

Which of these positions is the more religious? The one is a pagan notion, shared by Christianity with half, at least, of the old crude and superstitious religions of the world's ignorant childhood. The other is the grandest and highest page 9 thought of the noblest, most reverent, most intelligent age of the world. The old is petty and dwarfed in the comparison; and it denies an unspeakably larger truth than that which it affirms.

5. Of course, it follows from our position concerning the doctrines of man and the incarnation that we do not believe in either the fact of or the necessity for the atonement. But we do believe in the infinitely more honorable and hopeful views that Jesus taught in the parable of "The Prodigal Son,"—that God is always ready to receive all who come to him, and the gateway of improvement is never shut. The theology that turns God's altar into a slaughter-house, and pictures him as demanding a victim before he can help his own children,—this, we regard as an appropriate product of barbarism, and only fit to be left in possession of the people whose cruelty and ignorance were capable of inventing it.

But to call the old view an affirmation and the other a denial is a travesty on all sensible uses of language. Every affirmation denies that which is inconsistent with it, and every denial affirms. But ours is unspeakably the larger, the more positive, the more hopefully religious view.

6. We do not believe in the old heaven and the old hell as the finished and permanent terminus of a brief probation here on earth, as places where fixed characters are to be forever happy or forever miserable. But we do believe in the law of cause and effect, that "as a man soweth so shall he also reap "; that this law holds in this world and in all worlds, that it has always held in the past and will always hold in the future. We believe that heaven is the music of well-ordered lives and of harmoniously developed characters, and that hell is the shadow of one's own deeds that forever follows and treads on the heels of wrong. But we also believe that always, before the feet of the farthest wanderer, is the lower end of a ladder that leads up to the highest possibilities of good. Nay, more, we believe that every soul is "doomed to be saved"; that wrong is always folly page 10 and sorrow; that the inexorable God will scourge with merciful punishment all the law-breakers of the universe, until they learn that only the right is the happy.

For any one, then, to characterize our doctrines of salvation and retribution as loose, or as savoring of doubt or denial or negation, is either culpable ignorance or culpable misstatement. They are as much more positive and grand than the old as light is grander than darkness, as love is higher than hate, as life is better than death.

7. We do not believe that the Bible is a perfect divine revelation of truth. But we do believe that man has a perfect revelation of all necessary truth, just as fast and as far as his experience discovers and verifies it. We reject the unworthy idea that God is partial, sending his light to only one little fragment of humanity and leaving all the rest to perish; and we believe that his light shines on all nations, and that its reception is only limited by human capacity.

Which doctrine is the more worthy of God and the more hopeful for man? We affirm the larger truth; and those who hold the old view, born of conceit and ignorance, are the ones who deny, in order to defend their narrower creed.

8. We do not believe that religion is essentially in any one set of statements, or in any one kind of church organization, or in any ritual or ceremony or priestly vestments. These seem to us to be even flippant impertinences, when, as is often the case, they are clung to and emphasized, while the real truth is scouted, and love and character and charity are put down into a secondary place. But we do believe that character is the very heart of religion, and that truth is her high priest. And we hold that all institutions and ordinances and vestments and ceremonials are to religion only what clothes and houses and external manners are to men. These outward things are well, if not substituted for life; but they were made for man, and not man for them. And there is constant danger that, intrenched in ordinances, decorated by vestments, and absorbed in rituals, people shall fancy that they are very religious, while they treat with super page 11 cilious and self-righteous contempt persons so much more truly godlike than themselves that they are not worthy to unloose the latchets of their shoes.

Here, then, are the outlines of a definite, positive creed. It not only matches the old one at every point, but is larger and clearer. The old one is only traditional, and is largely discredited and disproved : the new one is in accord with the best knowledge of the world. The old is pessimistic and full of despair: the new is hopeful and brave. If you say that the new one is negative, in that it denies the old, you must also say that the old one is negative, in that it denies the new. Each affirms itself and denies the other; but, as the new is the larger, grander, and more hopeful of the two, it is only fair to say that the old one denies the most, and so is the most negative, and carries with it the least of positive affirmation.

I think then that I am fully justified in saying that there is to-day no church on earth that stands for a more definite, positive, hopeful, helpful religious creed than does this Church of the Unity. Of course, it takes some time for new ideas to become habituated to the brain so that they feel at home, and for new sentiments to become domesticated in the heart. But this statement is no whit truer of the ideas we hold than it was of the old ideas when they were new. And, if the world is ever to grow any wiser and better, we must teach ourselves to be hospitable to new truth, to open wide our doors, give it cordial welcome, and make it a warm place by our firesides.

There remain two or three supplementary points that I must outline briefly, in order to complete the fitting treatment of my theme.

One curious error yet lingers, and, with a shadowy sort of sovereignty, still dominates the public mind. This is the general notion, that it is meritorious to believe, and that to doubt borders, at least, on the sinful. To the Church, the two words, unbeliever and sinner, mean about the same thing. It is no wonder that this notion is in the air, because page 12 for centuries the Church has regarded heresy as the blackest of all crimes. Murder, adultery, theft, lying,—these could be condoned and pardoned. But unbelief cut one off from both human and divine mercy. Of course, the Church, as an organized institution, was thus acting only in self defence. Doubt was treason to the power of the priesthood. The error lay in making herself the mistress instead of the servant of man. Thomas has always been held up to reprobation because he asked for evidence before he could believe. Always has the Church claimed to hold the keys, and to say, "Believe, and I will open for you the gates of heaven; doubt, and there waits for you only the outer darkness of hell." It is no wonder then, I say, that men have come to fear doubt and to commend faith, and to do both with little care or discrimination.

But, in the modern world, another spirit is abroad. We have come to think the discovery of truth the highest end of life. And we have learned that truth can be found only as the result of careful search, of trial and verification. Too ready credulity, then, is an evil. It accepts a guess or an unproved assertion, and so hinders that thorough investigation that penetrates to the heart of things and compels them to give up their secrets. We have therefore taken doubt out of the category of vices, and crowned it as one of the cardinal virtues. The whole matter hinges on the question of proof. It is a virtue to doubt what is not proven, as much as to believe what is. For truth is the end, and both doubt and belief are of value only as means toward its attainment.

Credulity has been one of the great curses of the world. For what age-long wastes of money and time and effort and tears and blood has it not been responsible! The one thing that humanity needs to-day, more than anything else, is a disposition to seek for the truth of things. An easy-going credulity, misnamed "faith," has done more harm to man than all the doubt and denial of all the ages.

There are, indeed, doubts and beliefs that spring out of page 13 moral dispositions and biases. Men believe because they want to, and doubt for no better reason. All this, of course, is wrong. But I dare affirm that to-day there is quite as much of this inside the churches as there is out. So that a recognition of it does not at all affect our general position.

I have not, then, throughout the body of my sermon, defended the quantity or quality of our belief, because I think it is wrong to doubt. An honest man, when he has put weights into both sides of a pair of scales, must doubt that the side which goes up is as heavy as the side which goes down. And the same principle holds when his scales are of the mind, and his weights are observations and impressions.

Prove all things then, and hold fast to that which stands the test and is demonstrated to be good. Doubt is no place for rest. Neither, for that matter, is mere belief. When, through the agency of both, you have found the truth, then act it and live it; for that is the one end that justifies all research.

One point more we need particularly to remember. Men talk about the "unsettling of beliefs," until they get the impression that there is really serious doubt concerning the great practical questions of .conduct and human life. But we cannot be too often reminded that this is not true. The matters in dispute are not such as need to hinder a man in doing his duty. Grant that we can never know any more about any one of these things than we do to-day, still every field of noble human achievement lies open, and along every pathway spring the fragrant blossoms of joy.

Consider for just one moment. Suppose we should never find out what God was thinking about during the eternity past, this doubt need not stand in the way of your being a good citizen. And you're doing this is much more important than the satisfaction of your curiosity about the infinite. Suppose the pulpits should never agree as to the doctrine of inspiration, that need not hinder your being an honest business man. And the welfare of the world is much more concerned page 14 in your fair dealing than it is in your opinions about David. Suppose you continue to doubt whether the original home of man was in Eden or in the jungle, at least you can see to it that your own home is sweet and sunny and restful. A present Eden is a vast deal more important than any question about a past one. If you cannot settle, to your own satisfaction, where you will be and what you will be doing in a thousand years, you can see to it that you are in the right place and are doing the right thing to-day. When I see people worrying so much about being saved in the future, I sometimes wonder if they are not overlooking the somewhat more important matter of seeing to it that they make themselves worth saving.

By the long experience of the past, the human race has already wrought out a knowledge of right and wrong and the conditions of happiness. Of course, all these will be improved as the years go by. But we already know enough, so that we need not fold our hands and sit still, while theological doctors fight over what perhaps none of them know or ever will know. You can see enough to do right yourselves and to help your fellow-men to-day.

Here, then, the Church of the Unity stands. It holds that the great practical questions of duty are clear. It holds that an open and free search for truth, for the sake of human well-being and happiness, is a universal human obligation. To this end, it holds that doubt of the unproved is a duty equally with the acceptance of that which is known to be true. And it holds to a creed clear and definite and positive concerning all the great questions of human life. And this creed it stands ready to improve, to curtail, to enlarge, to modify just as fast and as far as newly discovered truth shall warrant it. And, above and beyond all, it holds that each man's first and last duty is to live as well as he can himself, and do what he can to make the world a little cleaner, brighter, easier, and happier for others. And, if anybody is lost in the future, we feel perfectly sure it will not be that kind of a man.