Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

It is this which was in the heart of Columbus as he sailed out towards the West. It is this which was in the heart of Magellan as he studied the shadow of the earth across the face of the moon, and believed in the story that shadow told him against the constituted authorities of the world.

But now let us turn sharply, and find out where doubt does come in, and where it is as honorable, as noble, as necessary as faith.

People misuse this word "faith." Doubt applies to all questions of fact that may be investigated, to all questions of history, to all questions open to the exercise of the critical faculty. For example, if I am told that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and I say I accept that statement on faith, I am abusing the dictionary. I have no business to accept it on faith. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. It is a pure matter of scholarship. It is a matter of study, of investigation, a matter of clear and hard intelligence and nothing more.

Suppose I am told that the Catholic Church is infallible, and I am asked to accept it as an article of faith. Here, again, the introduction of the word "faith" into a domain like that is an impertinence. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. That is a question of fact. We can read history for the last eighteen hundred years. We can find out what the Catholic Church has said and what the Catholic Church has done, as to whether it has proved itself absolutely infallible or not. It is a matter of study and decision intellectually; and it is my duty to doubt that which does not bring authentic credentials in a field like this.

Take the question of the authorship of the Gospel of John. Was it written by the apostle John, who lay in the bosom of Jesus, and was called the beloved disciple? Have I any business to say I have faith that it was written by him, and let it rest there? Faith has nothing to do with it. We can trace the history of that book, find out when first it was referred to, follow it back as far as possible, find out whether it was in existence before the apostle John had died or not. It is a pure matter of criticism, a matter of study; and I have no business to accept it as a matter of faith, because, if I do, I am in danger not only of deceiving myself, but of misleading the world. And truth, we cannot say it too often or too emphatically, truth is the only thing that is holy in investigations of this kind. Men's beliefs and mistakes, old, venerable, reverenced though they may have been by thousands and for hundreds of years, are no less unworthy longer to delude the minds of men. Truth is divine, truth is the one object of our search.

Now let us come to consider for a moment the nature of faith. I said a little while ago that the word is very frequently misused. Nine times out of ten, when I hear people using the word "faith" and I see the connection in which they use it, I discover they do not know the meaning of the word. That which has favor generally under the name of faith is simple credulity. It is closing the eyes and accepting something on somebody's authority without any investigation. That, remember, is not faith.

Let us see now if I can give you a clear idea of what faith really is; and now I have the Bible and I am glad to say it behind me. This magnificent chapter,* a portion of which I read as our lesson this morning, gives precisely the same idea of faith as that which I am going to outline. What is faith? Faith is a purely rational faculty. It is not irrational, but it is perfectly understandable. Suppose there is a man suddenly accused of a crime, and I never saw him before, I do not even know his name; but I go into court when he is brought up for trial, and I say that I have faith in that man, and I do not believe that he committed the crime. Do you not see that I am talking nonsense? I have no business to have faith in him, there is no ground for faith, it is an entire misuse of the word. But now take another case. Here is a man that I have known for twenty years. I have seen him in business. I have seen him in his home, among his neighbors and friends, and in the street. I have met him in all sorts of relations. I have talked with him, I have tested him. I have been intimate with him. He is suddenly accused of crime, and is brought into court. I appear, and say I have faith in that man, I do not believe that he committed the crime. I do not know that he did not commit it; but I have grounds here for faith. In the light of his past life, of his experience, of his temptations, of his opportunities to go wrong, and of his having gone right, in the light of all this past experience of years, I have faith in this man; and I say it, and I am talking reason and sense. In the other case I am talking folly.

Faith, you see, is a rational faculty. Let me give you another illustration. Suppose I am driving along through the country some morning when there is a very thick fog hanging over the landscape. The fog is so thick that I can see no more than ten or fifteen feet ahead of me; but I discover that I am near the bank of a river, and I come to the entrance to a bridge. I can see enough to know that here is an abutment of a bridge and an arch springing out into the fog. I drive on to that bridge with simple confidence. I do not know that there is any other end to the bridge. I have never seen it before. I have seen other bridges, however; and I know that, generally, bridges not only begin somewhere, but end somewhere. So, though I do not know for certain that the bridge ends on the other side of the river, for aught I know there may be a break in it, the bridge may not be completed, something may have happened to it, I confidently drive on; and in ninety-nine times out of a hundred my faith is justified by the result. This is a pure act of faith, but faith, do you not see, based in reality, springing out of experience, and so a purely rational act of the mind.

Let me give you one illustration of the scientific use of faith, very striking, beautiful, as it seems to me. The only time Mr. Huxley was in this country, I happened to be in New York, and heard him give the opening one of a brief course of three lectures in Chickering Hall. He was very much interested then in the ancestry of the horse. Most of you are probably aware of the fact that they have traced its ancestry to a little creature having five toes, like ordinary animals. At the time that Mr. Huxley was here, one link in this chain was missing; that is, one of the forms in the line of the horse's ancestors had not been discovered.

But here, for example, was the first one and the second one, we say, and the third one was missing, and here was the fourth one, and here was the horse itself. Now, in the light of the presumable uniformity of nature, Mr. Huxley went on to describe this missing animal. He said, if the remains of this creature are ever found, they will be so and so; and he went into an accurate detailed explanation as to what sort of creature it would be. He had not been at his home in England a year before Professor Marsh, of Yale College, discovered this missing link in Colorado, and it answered precisely to the description which Professor Huxley had beforehand given of it.