Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

It has always seemed to me a very strange attitude of mind for a man to feel perfectly convinced that a certain position is sound and true, and to be angry when anybody asks a question about it. If there are good reasons for holding it, instead of calling names, why not show us the reasons? He who is afraid to have his opinions questioned, he who is angry when you ask him for evidence, to give a reason for the position that he holds, shows that he is not at all certain of it. He admits by implication that it is weak. He shows an attitude of infidelity instead of an attitude of faith, of trust.

There is no position which I hold to-day that I consider so sacred that people are not at liberty to ask any questions about it they please; and, if they do not see a good reason for accepting it, I am certainly not going to be angry with them for declining to accept. The attitude of truth is that of welcome to all inquiry. It rejoices in daylight, it does not care to be protected from investigation.

Then there is another reason still, another point to be made in regard to this matter. People are not very likely to find the truth if they are frightened, if they are warned off, if they are told that this or that or another thing is too sacred to be investigated. I have known people over and over again in my past experience who long wished they might be free to accept some grander, nobler, more helpful view of truth, and yet have been trained and taught so long that it was wicked to doubt, that it was wicked to ask questions, that they did not dare to open their minds freely to the incoming of any grander hope.

If you tell people that they may study just as widely as they please, but, when they get through, they must come back and settle down within the limits of certain pre-determined opinions, what is the use of their wider excursion? And, if you tell them that, unless they accept these final conclusions, God is going to be angry with them, they are going to injure their own immortal souls, they are threatening the welfare of the people on every hand whom they influence, how can you expect them to study and come to conclusions which are entitled to the respect of thoughtful people?

I venture the truth of the statement that, if you should inquire over this country to-day, you would find that the large majority of people who have been trained in the old faith are in an attitude of fear towards modern thought. Thousands of them would come to us to-day if they were not kept back by this inherited and ingrained fear as to the danger of asking questions.

Do I not remember my own experience of three years' agonizing battle over the great problems that were involved in these questions, afraid that I was being tempted of the devil, afraid that I was risking the salvation of my soul, afraid that I might be endangering other people whom I might influence, never free to study the Bible, to study religious questions as I would study any other matter on the face of the earth on account of being haunted by this terrible dread?

And, then, there is one other point. I must touch on these very briefly. The acceptance of these creeds on the part of those who do hold to them does not, after all, prevent the growth of modern thought. It does hinder it, so far as they are concerned; but the point I wish to make is this, that these creeds do not answer the purpose for which they were constructed. They are supposed to be fixed and final statements of divine truth, which are not to be questioned and not to be changed.

Dr. Richard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, the famous Congregational minister, said a few years ago that the idea of progress in theology was absurd, because the truth had once for all been given to the saints in the past, and there was no possibility of progress, because progress implied change. And yet, in spite of the effort that has been made to keep the faith of the world as it was in the past, the change is coming, the change does come every day; and it puts the people who are trying to prevent the change coming in an attitude of what shall I say I do not wish to make a charge against my brethren, it puts them in a very curious attitude indeed towards the truth. They must not accept a new idea if it conflicts with the old creed, however much they may be convinced it is true. If they do accept it, then what? They must either leave the Church or they must keep still about it, and remain in an attitude of appearing to believe what they really do not believe. Or else they must do violence to the creed, reinterpreting it in such a way as to make it to them what the framers of it had never dreamed of.

Do you not see the danger that there is here of a person's disingenuous attitude towards the truth, danger to the moral fibre, danger to the progress of man? Take as a hint of it the way the Bible has been treated. People have said that the Bible was absolutely infallible: they have taken that as a foregone conclusion; and then, when they found out beyond question that the world was not created in six days, what have they done? Frankly accepted the truth? No, they have tried to twist the Bible into meaning something different from what it plainly says. It expressly says days, bounded by morning and evening; but no, it must mean long periods of time. Why? Because science and the Bible must somehow be reconciled, no matter if the Bible is wrenched and twisted from its real meaning.

And so with regard to the creeds. The creeds say that Christ descended into hell; that is, the underworld. People come to know that there is no underworld; and, instead of frankly admitting that that statement in the creed is not correct, they must torture it out of its meaning, and make it stand for something that the framers of it had never heard of. I think it would greatly astonish the writers of the Bible and the Church Fathers if they could wake up to-day, and find out that they meant something when they wrote those things which had never occurred to them at the time.