Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

CHAPTER XXXIX POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS FAITH

I close this book with a statement of the political principles which I think define the duty of the American people in the near future, and from which I hope the Republic will not depart until time shall be no more; and of the simple religious faith in which I was bred, and to which I now hold.

They cannot to my mind be separated. One will be found in
some resolutions offered in the Senate December 20, 1899.
The other in what I said on taking the chair at the National
Unitarian Conference, at Washington, in October 1899.

"Mr. Hoar submitted the following resolution:

"WHEREAS the American people and the several States in the Union have in times past, at important periods in their history, especially when declaring their Independence, establishing their Constitutions, or undertaking new and great responsibilities, seen fit to declare the purposes for which the Nation or State was founded and the important objects the people intend to pursue in their political action; and

"WHEREAS the close of a great war, the liberation by the United States of the people of Cuba and Porto Rico in the Western Hemisphere and of the Philippine Islands in the far East, and the reduction of those peoples to a condition of practical dependence upon the United States, constitute an occasion which makes such a declaration proper; Therefore, be it

"Resolved, That this Republic adheres to the doctrines which were in the past set forth in the Declaration of Independence and in its National and State constitutions.

"Resolved, That the purpose of its existence and the objects to which its political action ought to be directed are the ennobling of humanity, the raising from the dust its humblest and coarsest members, and the enabling of persons coming lawfully under its power or influence to live in freedom and in honor under governments in whose forms they are to have a share in determining and in whose administration they have an equal voice. Its most important and pressing obligations are:

"First. To solve the difficult problem presented by the presence of different races on our own soil with equal Constitutional rights; to make the Negro safe in his home, secure in his vote, equal in his opportunity for education and employment, and to bring the Indian to a civilization and culture in accordance with his need and capacity.

"Second. To enable great cities to govern themselves in freedom, in honor, and in purity.

"Third. To make the ballot box as pure as a sacramental vessel, and the election return as perfect in accord with the law and the truth as a judgment of the Supreme Court.

"Fourth. To banish illiteracy and ignorance from the land.

"Fifth. To secure for every workman and for every working woman wages enough to support a life of comfort and an old age of leisure and quiet, as befits those who have an equal share in a self-governing State.

"Sixth. To grow and expand over the continent and over the islands of the sea just so fast, and no faster, as we can bring into equality and self-government under our Constitution peoples and races who will share these ideals and help to make them realities.

"Seventh. To set a peaceful example of freedom which mankind will be glad to follow, but never to force even freedom upon unwilling nations at the point of the bayonet or at the cannon's mouth.

"Eighth. To abstain from interfering with the freedom and just rights of other nations or peoples, and to remember that the liberty to do right necessarily involves the liberty to do wrong; and that the American people has no right to take from any other people the birthright of freedom because of a fear that they will do wrong with it."

SPEECH ON TAKING THE CHAIR AT THE NATIONAL UNITARIAN CONFERENCE, IN WASHINGTON, OCTOBER, 1899

"The part assigned to me, in the printed plan of our proceedings, is the delightful duty of bidding you welcome. But you find a welcome from each other in the glance of the eye, in the pressure of the hand, in the glad tone of the voice, better than any that can be put into formal words.

From hand to hand the greeting goes;
From eye to eye the signals run;
From heart to heart to bright hope glows;
The seekers of the light are one.

Every Unitarian, man and woman, every lover of God or His
Son, every one who in loving his fellow-men loves God and
His Son, even without knowing it, is welcome in this company.

"We are sometimes told, as if it were a reproach, that we cannot define Unitarianism. For myself, I thank God that it is not to be defined. To define is to bound, to enclose, to set limit. The great things of the universe are not to be defined. You cannot define a human soul. You cannot define the intellect. You cannot define immortality or eternity. You cannot define God.

"I think, also, that the things we are to be glad of and to be proud of and are to be thankful for are not those things that separate us from the great body of Christians or the great body of believers in God and in righteousness, but in the things that unite us with them. No Five Points, no Athanasian Creed, no Thirty-nine Articles, separate the men and women of our way of thinking from humanity or from Divinity.

"But still, although we do not define Unitarianism, we know our own when we see them. There are men and women who like to be called by our name. There are men and women for whom Faith, Hope, and Charity forever abide; to whom Judea's news are still glad tidings; who believe that one day Jesus Christ came to this earth, bearing a Divine message and giving a Divine example. There are women who bear their own sorrows of life by soothing the sorrows of others; youths who, when Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' reply, "I can'; and old men to whom the experience of life has taught the same brave lesson; examples of the patriotism that will give its life for its country when in the right, and the patriotism that will make itself of no reputation, if need be, to save its country from being in the wrong.

"They do not comprehend the metaphysics of a Trinal Unity, nor how it is just that innocence should be punished, that guilt may go free. They do not attribute any magic virtue to the laying on of hands; nor do they believe that the traces of an evil life in the soul can be washed out by the sprinkling of a few drops of water, however pure, or by baptism in any blood, however innocent, in the hour of death. But they do understand the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, and they know and they love and they practise the great virtues which the Apostle tells us are to abide.

"I think there can be found in this country no sectarianism so narrow, so hide-bound, so dogma-clad, that it would like to blot out from the history of the country what the men of our faith have contributed to it. On the first roll of this Washington parish will be found close together the names of John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams had learned from his father and mother the liberal Christian faith he transmitted to his illustrious son. If we would blot out Unitarianism from the history of the country, we must erase the names of many famous statesmen, many famous philanthropists, many great reformers, many great orators, many famous soldiers, from its annals, and nearly all of our great poets from its literature.

"I could exhaust not only the time I have a right to take, but I could fill a week if I were to recall their names and tell the story of their lives. Still less could I speak adequately of the men and women who, in almost every neighborhood throughout the country, have found in this Unitarian faith of ours a stimulant to brave and noble lives and a sufficient comfort and support in the hour of a brave death. As I stand here on this occasion, my heart is full of one memory,—of one who loved our Unitarian faith with the whole fervor of his soul, who in his glorious prime, possessing everything which could make life happy and precious, the love of wife and children and friends, the joy of professional success, the favor of his fellow-citizens, the fulness of health, the consciousness of high talent, heard the voice of the Lord speaking from the fever-haunted hospital and the tropical swamp, and the evening dews and damps, saying, 'Where is the messenger that will take his life in his hand, that I may send him to carry health to my stricken soldiers and sailors?' When the Lord said, 'Whom shall I send?' he answered, 'Here am I: send me.'*

[Footnote]
* Sherman Hoar, who after a brilliant public and professional career,
gave his life to his country by exposure in caring for the sick soldiers
of the Spanish war.
[End of Footnote]

"The difference between Christian sects, like the difference between individual Christians, is not so much in the matter of belief or disbelief of portions of the doctrine of the Scripture as in the matter of emphasis. It is a special quality and characteristic of Unitarianism that Unitarians everywhere lay special emphasis upon the virtue of Hope. It was said of Cromwell by his secretary that hope shone in him like a fiery pillar when it had gone out in every other.

"There are two great texts in the Scripture in whose sublime phrases are contained the germs of all religion, whether natural or revealed. They lay hold on two eternities. One relates to Deity in his solitude—'Before Abraham was, I am.' The other is for the future. It sums up the whole duty and the whole destiny of man: 'And now abideth Faith, Hope, and Charity,—these three.' If Faith, Hope, and Charity abide, then Humanity abides. Faith is for beings without the certainty of omniscience. Hope is for beings without the strength of omnipotence. And Charity, as the apostle describes it, affects the relations of beings limited and imperfect to one another.

"Why is it that this Christian virtue of Hope is placed as the central figure of the sublime group who are to accompany the children of God through their unending life? It is because without it Faith would be impossible and Charity would be wasted.

"Hope is that attribute of the soul which believes in the final triumph of righteousness. It has no place in a theology which believes in the final perdition of the larger number of mankind. Mighty Jonathan Edwards,—the only genius since Dante akin to Dante,—could you not see that, if your world exist where there is no hope and where there is no love, there can be no faith? Who can trust the promise of a God who has created a Universe and peopled it with fiends? The Apostle of your doleful gospel must preach quite another Evangel: And now abideth Hate, and now abideth Wrath, and now abideth Despair, and now abideth Woe unutterable. With Hope, as we have defined it,—namely, the confident expectation of the final triumph of righteousness,—we are but a little lower than the angels; without it we are but a kind of vermin.

"The literature of free countries is full of cheer: the story ends happily. The fiction of despotic countries is hopeless. People of free countries will not tolerate a fiction which teaches that in the end evil is triumphant and virtue is wretched. Want of hope means either distrust of God or a belief in the essential baseness of man or both. It teaches men to be base. It makes a country base. A world wherein there is no hope is a world where there is no virtue. The contrast between the teacher of hope and the teacher of despair is to be found in the pessimism of Carlyle and the serene cheerfulness of Emerson. Granting to the genius of Carlyle everything that is claimed for it, I believe that his chief title hereafter to respect as a moral teacher will be found in Emerson's certificate.

"But I must not detain you any longer from the business which waits for this convention. It is the last time that I shall enjoy the great privilege and honor of occupying this chair.

"Perhaps I may be pardoned, as I have said something of the religious faith of my fellow Unitarians, if I declare my own, which I believe is theirs also. I have no faith in fatalism, in destiny, in blind force. I believe in God, the living God, in the American people, a free and brave people, who do not bow the neck or bend the knee to any other, and who desire no other to bow the neck or bend the knee to them. I believe that the God who created this world has ordained that his children may work out their own salvation and that his nations may work out their own salvation by obedience to his laws without any dictation or coercion from any other. I believe that liberty, good government, free institutions, cannot be given by any one people to any other, but must be wrought out for each by itself, slowly, painfully, in the process of years or centuries, as the oak adds ring to ring. I believe that a Republic is greater than an Empire. I believe that the moral law and the Golden Rule are for nations as well as for individuals. I believe in George Washington, not in Napoleon Bonaparte; in the Whigs of the Revolutionary day, not in the Tories; the Chatham, Burke, and Sam Adams, not in Dr. Johnson or Lord North. I believe that the North Star, abiding in its place, is a greater influence in the Universe than any comet or meteor. I believe that the United States when President McKinley was inaugurated was a greater world power than Rome in the height of her glory or even England with her 400,000,000 vassals. I believe, finally, whatever clouds may darken the horizon, that the world is growing better, that to-day is better than yesterday, and to-morrow will be better than to-day."