Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

Oh, let us purge these statements of outgrown crudities, cruelties, falsities, blasphemies, infamies! Let us dare to believe that the light of God to-day is holier than the mistakes about Him made by those who walked in darkness.

Now let me suggest to you. Every one of these creeds sprang out of a theory of the universe that nobody any longer holds. They are Ptolemaic in their origin, not Copernican. They sprang out of a time when it was believed that this was a little tiny world, and God was outside of it, governing it by the arbitrary imposition of his law. Every one of these creeds is fitted to that theory of things; and that theory of things has passed away absolutely and forever.

Consider for just a moment. Why should we pay such extravagant deference to the opinions of men who lived in the dark ages, of the old Church Fathers, of Athanasius, of Arius, of Justin Martyr, of Origen, of Tertullian? Why, friends, just think for a moment. There was hardly a single point connected with this world that they knew anything about. How did it happen that the whole modern world should get on its knees in their presence, as though they knew everything about the Infinite, when they knew next to nothing about the finite? Is there any proof that they knew anything about it? Not one single particle.

Think for a minute. We know to-day unspeakably more about the origin of the Bible, how it grew, how it came into its present shape, than any man from the first century until a hundred years ago could by any possibility know. We know a good deal more than Paul, though he was one of the writers, unspeakably more. He had no means of knowing. We have sifted every particle of evidence, every source of knowledge that the world has to show. We know unspeakably more about this universe than any man of the olden time had any way of knowing. He had no way of knowing anything.

I said something recently about the origin and nature of man. Very little was known about this until within the present century. We know something about how religions grow. We have traced them, studied them, not only Christianity and Judaism, but all the religions of the world back to their origin, and seen them coming into shape. We can judge something about them to-day. You want the antiquity of the world? People are bowing in the presence of what they suppose to be the antiquity, that is, the hoary-headed wisdom, of the world. Why, friends, as you go back, you are not going back to the old age of the world: you are going back to its childhood. The world was never so old as it is this morning. Humanity was never so old, never had such accumulated experience, such accumulated knowledge, as it has this morning.

If you want the results of the world's hoary-headed antiquity, its wisdom, its accumulated experience, its knowledge, then get the very latest results of the very finest modern investigations; for that is where you will find them.

Then let us note in just a word some other reasons why we cannot hold these old creeds. The statements that are made about God are horrible. The statements that are made in regard to the method by which God is going to deal with his creatures are horrible; and then what they tell us in regard to the outcome of human history is pessimistic and hopeless in the extreme.

Where do they claim to get the authority for these old beliefs? They tell us they find them on the one hand in the Bible. What do you find in the Bible? You find almost anything you look for. Is it not perfectly natural you should? The Bible was written by ever so many different writers during a period covering nearly a thousand years. Would you expect to find the same ideas throughout it? The book of Ecclesiastes teaches that man dies like a dog. The Bible upholds polygamy, slavery, cruelty of almost every kind. You might prove almost any kind of immorality from the Bible if you wished to.

But take the highest and noblest conception of the Bible you can have. I was talking with an eminent and widely known clergyman of the Presbyterian Church during the present year; and we were speaking about the Bible. I tell you this to show how modern ideas are permeating the thoughts of men. He said: I confess that, if God had ever given the world an infallible book, I should be utterly appalled and disheartened; because it is perfectly clear that we have no such book now. And, if God ever gave us such a book, then he has lost control of his universe, and was not able to keep us in possession of it.

Here are Quakers and Methodists proving their beliefs, the Baptists proving theirs, the Episcopalians proving theirs, the Presbyterians theirs, all of them different in some particular, and each of them getting their proof from the Bible.