What Do Unitarian's Believe.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 95, 21 April 1894, Page 4 (Supplement)

What Do Unitarian's Believe.

Some years ago a Unitarian minisber in Liverpool advertised a lecture with the rather ' catch- penny ' title, 'Why am I a Unitarian?' For twenty-four hours the walls and hoardings blazed with this legend alone and then it was seen that a slight addition had been made thereto. Ihe advertisement now read. » Why am la Unitarian ? Ah ! why indeed ?' The joke was not a bad one on the part of the clerical party, and accurately indicated their attitude towards this sect of Nonconformists. To churchmen of Bishop Ryle's temperament all Nonconformists are more or 1e.«9 peetilontiul poreons who must be tacitly ondurod in this world, but, thank Huaven ! will bo coimigned to warm cornoi-8 of thoir own in the next. But QnU.ttiiH.nß neod not bo tolerated by any decent person ovon in thin world. They aro ontsido tho palo altogether. And yec very few pooplo have ttio faintest notion what it is this contemned Beet believe.^ I cook a young Scotchman, a friond of mine, to near Dr. Brooko Herford at Hampstead a, few Sundays sro preach a wonderful sermon on ' The Mystery of Pain.' When we came out he said, 'My father woul'i consider me damned everlastingly if he knew I had been inside, that ctiapol, and yet from end to end of the service I didn't hear a word which he could or would object to.'

It is rather with a view of dissipating some of the grossor prejudices which have grown around the suppositious Unitarian that Dr. Brooke Herford has issued a little pamphlet which is being very widely quoted and discussed all over England and America just now. He calls it 'The Main Lines of Religion as held by Unitarians,' and ie contains a brief explanation of this sect's position. In the first place DrY Brooke Herford explains he can't set forth any ' Statement of Faith ' because the sect don't pogsese one. It would, no doubt, be very convenient to have a neat little pocket-creed ready for production when anyone aeked, 'What ie Unitariamsm ?' Bur, -says the doctor, then we do not think religion to be a subject that can be treated in this fashion. These great thoughts which no intensely hold humanity—God, and immortality, and duty, and the marvelloss influence of Chriat — tbe?e are not ideas that can be eet down in little formal proposi'ions and learned off like the multipli cation table. Our cardinal position on the whole subject is. to keep an open, reverent, thoughtful mind ; to recognise that these are pubjects on which, if men do think, there are sure to be differences of thought; and to leave free play for such differences of thought, not to cramp them by setting up formulas to which all must agree. In a Unitarian congregation there ie almost-every shade of belief from those who are not sure whether they believe anything to others on the border line of orthodoxy. So some, when a*ked ' What is UnitarianUm?' eimply point to the New Testament: 'That is our only creed,1 they say. A terser defcripticn was that of an old friend of mine, who used to say, ' Unitarianism, sir, means one God, and twenty shillings in the pound !' And not a bad creed either, as times go. Outeiders, indeed, fancy that with such varieties of opinion, and no fixed standard, there cannot be any real union among us; that we must be merely a rope of Band. But it is not so. The fact is, our churcheß bold together about aB heartily as any. Our general sympathy on a few great religious truths, and in this broad practical way of looking at the subject, really holds us together quite as well as any profession of doctrinal agreement. Religion, as the Unitarians hold it, begins with Man. It may not *eem much to begin a religious statement with, ' We believe in Man ;' and yet in reality this carries a great deal with it. Is not this, really, where Christ wanted men to let their religion begin? 'He that loveth not hi 9 brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hatk not seen ?' He was always teaching men to do their duty, man to man ; to show love, man to man. He appealed to men's own commonsense : ' Why, even of yourselves, judge ye not what is right?' Along the line of human relations he led them up to Divine relationsthrough man's fatherhood to the Infinite Fatherhood. Indeed, is it not true that the very thing most needed in the present day is for the churches to come back to a hearty, wholesome belief in man and manhood, in man's duty, and man's reason and conscience.

The old doctrine of the whole race being fallen and losb is not held as strongly as it u?ed to be, even by those who still keep the old statements of it. But I think I may say that we Unitarians do not hold it at all. We atand utterly cleur of it. We take man as he is; and ib seems co us that, as in. the case of the rest of God's creation, this mus-b be about what the power that caused him to be, contemplated: that man is not so much fallen, as only slowly rising; not off the track of the Creator's purpose, but in it, though noc so far along ib as he might be. Sinful ? Yes, but by no means all sinful; with original goodness in him as well na • original sin,'— a goodness which we find in heathens and unconverted folk, and which is surely nob worthless in God's sight, bub is real goodness before Him. So we regard the world's various religions, not as mere misguiding deceits, but as all real upward strivings of human thought,—feeling after God. Thus the Salvation that man needs i 3 not some divine substitution by which his punishment may be borne for him, bub all the divine and human influence by which each one may be delivered from all that keeps him down, and herped upwards and onwards.

• • > -♦ . • • Why, the very firetf thing w-e are led to along this line of Belief in man,*is the very highest thing of all,— faith in God. I might almost say that ,ioe believe in Ood because ire believe in man. Because, looking at man in all lands and aces, we find, over coming out, this sense of mighty Divine Life in the universe : we find it ever growing up into systems of faith and worship, ever stirring man with the very strongest emotions he is capable of, ever lifting him up and helping him on. W c find humanity blossoming into worship as universally and naturally as the plants blossom into flowers. And so, because we believe in the plant, we believe in the flower.

A great parb of the theology of the past consisted of the various efforts which men made to think out and define the inner mysteries of this mighty Divine Life. That was the real significance of the old word polytheisms ; each idol form of Neptune or Apollo, each pod-name of Brahm or AmunRa, was the attempt to bring out in sharp, clear outline some fancied distinction in the dimly discerned Deity. Against all of these stood out that little Jewish race with the sublime protest of their prophet leaders, ' Hear, 0 Israel! the Lord oor God, the Lord is one.' Ib was only the same tendency, a little modified, which, when Christianity sama in contact with theee polytheisms, elaborated Christ's simple thought of one God into the mystic Trinity, in which the ' Father ' was only one person out of three. That whale doctrine of the Trinity was a mere c darkening of counsel by words without knowledge.' We point to Christ's thought of God, simply as the Heavenly Father—' My Father and your Father, my God and your God,' We take with great deligbb and thankfulness those names he taught us to speak of Him by— 1 Our Heavenly Father' and the • Holy Spirit;' but these were nob theological terms by which he was defining mysterious distinctions in the Godhead, but simply the great loving names by which he helped

men to reach out in their thought to thai close, infinite, gracious Presence. We ston where Chriet did—' One God, our Heavenly Father.' *

What, then, of Jesus Chritti Simply, carrying out this thought I have been dwelling on,—of how the Divine Spirit works variously in man,-in ChrUt we have this contact and communion at ita higbtest, finest, divinesb point. To most) soulß, the consciousness of God is only an occasional up-lifting; to him, it was a constant and indwelling presence, something that lifted him out of self, that exalted his being with strange tides of power, that made him feel it was the Father's word be was speaking, the Father's work he was" doing, till, in his deep harmony with God, he could even say • 'I and my Father are one. 1 A wonderfully high word that, and yet not one which meant that he felt him. self, in any sense, God. Indeed, it is the silory of that sense of hi? close relation to God, that he felt it as eotnething which all God's children might share, that they all might come into that oneness with God that they all mieht become the 'eonsof God ;' and it was the very object of his life to lead them to this. Here, in regard to Christ, ie, I suppose, the subject on which there is the moat variety of opinion among ourselves, and our greatest difference from other churches. The old 'orthodox ' belief is, that this Jesus of Nazareth was Almighty God, come down to earth, living in the world a little space in the form of man. I can speak for all Unitarians when I say that we do not hold this. We do not find anything like ib in the accounts of Chriaf* life in the Gospels. Ib is a life of wonderful holiness and exalta-

tion that the Gospels tell us of; a life all aglow with the consciousness of God—so holy, so above the common life of man, that it is hardly wonderful that when the atory of ifc spread among { heathen peoples, who were familiar with the idea of Divine incarnations and demigods, the thought grew up and gathered strength, ' This tnu-t have been God;' Bub thie was all afterthought; and though ib | came of an exagaerating reverence, yet its ! real effect has been to disguise that simple yet majestic figure which lies forever in the Go«pels. It has concentrated the attention of Christendom on Christ's supposed mysterious nature, rather than on his simple w i life and spirit and word; ib has made Christianity consist in adoring Christ, while it does consist forever, in following him, in studying his teachings and trying to live ?; them out. fg

If I am farther asked, ' Wbafc, however,^-, are the Unitarian ideas a boat Christ?' I';' have frankly to Ray *hat they are very vari- '■ one. A few still bold to tbe old Arian be-"''■'•' lief that be wa» a sort; of angelic being of ! miraculous birth; some, at tbe other ex-

rreme, Fimply revere him aßa great re>

iigione reformer, the product of the highest religious tendencies of a remarkable age.

Bat 7 think that moeb of us, while distinctly regarding him as man, and ' not being ab!e to believe the stories .•• of miraculous birth, which only two of "■*;'. th«* Goppelß — not including Mark, the earliest—mention, do regard him as, above | . al' others, inspired ; the man of the Spirit j ' the Revealer and Teacher of the things of ' the Spirit; lifted by the Spirit into an;,, authoritative wirdotn, and some think, into , a sacred, immeaaurable power. But then, . mark ushv there are these differences among ' dp in our explanations oi how Christ came | to be what he was : because it is our maio popitioi th<it*nch explanations are a second- . ary matter. We do not law stress on them. That this was nob ftod, indeed, who was p tempted, and prayed, and suffered and ; | died and that it is an impiety to worship him as God, —this seems clear to all of us; but as to how exactly he came to be bo above all others, we lay down no doctrine,

but would have each read the Gospels an^ jodge for himself. It is not the explanation' of the life, but the lite itself—the life and

spirit and word of Christ as they stand for ever in the Gospel?,— thath what we hold

to. That ie the beautiful thing to study; there it is that the grent realities of God'a love and truth, and man'- duty and deßtiny, are set forth in 'he clearest light and upon an immovable foundation.

That doctrine of * the Blood,' as ib is ! called, as something 'to shelter behind, 1 V seems to us a phocltincr perversion of the beautiful work which Christ lived and died to do. Gnd never needed any such patis* M faction. He never needed any reconciling, It. was to turn—to reconcile—man to God, nob God to roan, that Christ lived and died. His whole blessed work was simply in human hearts, thnn and forever, to show ' them the infinite love of God waiting for."; their rppnntance ; to help them to feel the awfulneaß of pin ; to put a new strivingafter eoodness and kindness in their hearts; to make mankind happier and better, the world the kingdom of God, and the life on earth an earnest beginning of the life - eternal. j

A closing word as to the Life Eternal. I think that comes as the very crown and apex of this structure of faith, the lyies of= which I have been tracing. Believing in man, not as fallen and ruined, but aaa proeressive being, only yet in the lower - rounds of his progress; believing 'o God as - the Infinite Life that is ever leading all thine? on in their beautiful development); i believing in Christ as the Exemplar of what humanity has in ib to become, and the teacher of the divinest truth about life, it. Ip impopsib'e to help believiner that man's ; life has a destiny beyond this mere fragment ; of the earthly years. So among Unitarian! /; there is a hapnv, trustful feeling about the future life. Here, top, we do not pretend to lay down any special, formal Unitarian, ( doctrine. Tt is a great, grand hope andtrust, about the details of which we do not : profess to know : and I think we generally have a profound distrust of all detailed de* scriptimis and mappings out of itr-all attempts to make one how many are saved, and who are lost, and how long they are going to be lost, and fo forth. But thfl one thing which is clear to us, ift that) there is no finality at the end of this life ; that the destiny of human souls is> not then closed up, but rather just opening. As far as hope ef^ti Unitarians are pretty much the same a? Universalize — hoping that even those who f seem most lost will at last be reached ty the influence of God and raised to thetroe and blessed life. But man mn«t be free m the next world a» in this, and so we dara not lay down any doctrine that all vm? { come to the blessed life beyond ; but w« are sure that all may do. Because, over aIL that is dim to us arches the infinite presence and power and love of Ood: and as we look t" Him we fee' that we can ' trosfi the larger hope,' and say with Whittier-

• Father of all. thy erring child may b« ( Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee.