Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

Now it is very difficult, indeed, for you to persuade a man that he ought to do right under such circumstances. He is ready to doubt and question as to whether these laws of right are imperative, whether they are divine, whether they may not be waived one side in the interest of the thing which he desires to do. So you must guard yourself very carefully, no matter what the department of life may be that you are facing, if you find yourself doubting under the impulse of your own wishes, if you are trying to argue yourself into the belief that you may be permitted to do something which you very much want to do.

Be suspicious of your doubts, then, and remember that probably they are wrong. Great moral questions may be involved, and doubt may mean wreck here.

There is another field where doubt is dangerous and presumably an evil. You will find most people, in regard to any question which they have considered or which has touched them seriously, with their minds already made up. They have some sort of a persuasion about it, they have a theory which they have accepted; and, if you bring them a truth with ever such overwhelming credentials which clashes with this preconceived idea or prejudice, the chances are that it would be met with doubt, with denial, not a clear-cut, intelligent, well- balanced doubt, but a doubt that springs out of the unwillingness that a man feels to reconstruct his theory.

Let me give you an illustration of what I mean, and this away off in another department of life from our own, so that it will not clash with any of your particular prejudices. Sir Isaac Newton won a great and world-wide renown, and magnificently deserved, by his grand discovery of the law of gravity. You will see, then, how natural it was for people to pay deference to his opinion, to be prejudiced in favor of his conclusions. It was perfectly natural and, within certain limits, perfectly right. Sir Isaac Newton not only propounded this law of gravity, but he propounded a theory of light which the world has since discovered to be wrong. But it was universally accepted because it was his. It became the accepted scientific theory of the time. By and by a man, unknown up to that time, by the name of Young, studied Newton's theory, and became convinced that it was wrong; and he propounded another theory, the one which to- day is universally accepted through the civilized world. But it was years before it could gain anything like adequate or fair consideration, because the preconception in favor of Newton's theory stood in the way of any adequate consideration of the one which was subsequently universally adopted.

So you will find scientific men, I know any quantity of them, grand in their fields, doing fine work, who are not willing to consider anything which would compel a reconstruction of their theories and ideas. This is true not only in the scientific field, but it is true everywhere: it is true in politics. How many men can you get fairly to consider the political position of his opponent? He not only doubts the rightness and the sense of it, but he is ready to deny it. How many people can you get fairly to weigh the position of one who occupies a religious home different from their own? And these religious prejudices, being bound up with the tenderest and noblest sentiments, feelings, and traditions of the human heart, become the strongest of all, and so are in more danger of standing in the way of human progress than anything else in all the world.

People identify their theories of religion with religion itself, with the honor of God, with the worship and the love of God, and feel that somehow it is impious for them to consider the question whether their intellectual theories are correct or not; and so the world stands by the ideas of the past, and opposes anything like finer and nobler ideas that offer themselves for consideration. And not only in the religious field; but these religious prejudices stand in the way of accepting truths outside the sphere of religion. For example, when Darwin published his book, "The Origin of Species," the greatest opposition it met with was from the religious world. Why? Had they considered Darwin's arguments to find out whether they were true? Nothing of the kind. But they flew to the sudden conclusion that somehow or other the religion of the world was in danger, if Darwinism should prove to be true. And it is very curious to note I wonder how long the world will keep on repeating that serio-comic blunder from the very beginning it has been the same; almost every single step that the world proposes to take in advance is opposed by the constituted religious authorities of the time because they assume at the outset that the theories which they have been holding are divinely authorized and infallible, and that it is not only untrue, this other statement, but that it is impious as well.

The doubt, then, that springs from preconceived ideas is not only unjustifiable, but may be dangerous and wrong.

Then there is another kind of doubt against which you should beware. There are certain doubts that, if accepted and acted on, stand in the way of the creation of the most magnificent facts in the world. Take as an illustration of what I mean: when Napoleon, a young man in Paris, was asked to take command of the guard of the city, suppose he had doubted, questioned, distrusted, his own ability; suppose he had been timid and afraid, the history of the world would have been changed by that one doubt. Take another illustration. At the opening of our war or in the months just preceding the beginning of active hostilities the man then occupying the presidential chair had no faith, no faith in himself, no faith in the perpetuity of our institutions, no faith in the people; and so he sat doubting, while everything crumbled in pieces around him. And then appeared a man in whom the people had little faith at first, and who had no great faith perhaps in his own ability; but he had infinite faith in God, faith in right, faith in the people, faith in the possibilities of freedom trusted in the hands of the people. And this faith created a new nation.

If there had been doubt in the heart of Abraham Lincoln, again the history of the world would have been &hanged. He believed that "Right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win: To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin."

You see, then, here is another field where you had better be wary of doubt. Do not doubt yourself, do not doubt the possibilities of noble action, noble character, of achievement. We say of a young man entering life, brimful of enthusiasm, that all this will be toned down by and by; and we speak of it as though the enthusiasm itself somehow was a fault or a folly. And yet it is just this enthusiasm of the young men that moves and lifts the world. It is this faith in themselves and in the possibility of great things, it is this faith that lies at the heart of every invention, of every great discovery, of every magnificent achievement. Read the history of invention. The world is full of stories of men who got a new idea. They were laughed at, they were told it was impracticable; and, if they had been laughed out of it, it would have been impracticable. It was their faith in the possibility of some great new thing, their faith in the resources of the universe, their faith in themselves as able to discover some new truth and make it applicable to the needs of the world, it was this faith which has been at the root of the grandest things that have ever been done.