Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

And, then, if you only remember that in this universe and coder the universal law of cause and effect you are building to-morrow out of to-day, and next week and next year, and all he future, that every thought, every word, every action, is cemented together as a part of this structure that you build, hat you can make your own future for good or ill, and that you cannot build it successfully except in accordance with he eternal laws of things, then you find that here are the most insistent and tremendous motives it is possible for the human mind to conceive.

This life of ours, if we lead it nobly and truly, then, we shall find to be a growth into the likeness of the Divine, a growth into an increasing opportunity to share the work of our Father in building and helping men, and that, as the result of this, joy, infinite joy, is to fill our hearts until we share the very blessedness of our Father.

God made our lives to be a song Sweet as the music of the spheres, That still their harmonies prolong For him who rightly hears. The heavens and the earth do play Upon us, if we be in tune: Winter shouts hoarse his roundelay, And tender sweet pipes June. But oftentimes the songs are pain, And discord mars our harmonies: Our strings are snapped by selfish strain, And harsh hands break our keys. But God meant music; and we may, If we will keep our lives in tune, Hear the whole year sing roundelay, December answering June. God ever at his keyboard plays, Harmonics, right; and discords, wrong: "He that hath ears," and who obeys, May hear the mystic song.

SIN AND ATONEMENT.

For the sake of clearness, and in order that you may definitely comprehend the doctrine of sin and atonement which I believe to be the true one, I need in the first place to outline as a background that which lies at the foundation of all the popular theologies of Christendom. I am perfectly well aware that at least a part of the time, while I am doing this, I shall be traversing ground with which you are already familiar. Some of it, however, I think may be somewhat strange to you.

The tradition begins with the story of a war in heaven. In some way rebellion began among the angels; and he who had been Lucifer, the light-bearer, prince among the glorious sons of God, took up arms of rebellion against the Almighty. Naturally, he failed in this inevitably losing battle, and was cast out into the abyss, with a third part of all the angels, who had followed him. Then the tradition goes on: God decided to create the world, that the sons of men born and trained here might ultimately take the places that had been held by the angels who had been cast out on account of their sin. But Satan, seeing this fair and beautiful earth, this wondrous handiwork of God, determined, if possible, to thwart and defeat the purposes of the Almighty. He therefore invades this beautiful world. He finds Adam and Eve in their condition of perfect felicity, innocent, but inexperienced; and they fall a ready prey to his intention.

They then share his rebellion, accept him instead of God as king. Henceforth they are followers of him in his age-long warfare against light and truth, and, unless in some way saved, are to be sharers of his eternal destiny, cast out into chains and darkness forever.

Now comes the necessity for noting for a moment the nature of sin on this theory. You see it is not ignorance, it is not weakness merely, it is not inherited passion only: it is conscious and purposeful rebellion against God, putting yourself at enmity with his truth, his righteousness, his love. In action it is some specific deed done against God or against his truth or his right. As a state of mind, it is a heart perverted, choosing always that which is evil, a heart at enmity with God and with all that is good; and the theologians have always been obliged, as a matter of consistency, to hold, no matter how noble, how unselfish men might appear to be, that the natural man has inherently, always, necessarily been evil. He carries about with him the taint of original sin; that is, sin of constitution, ingrained, inherited, that which is of the very fibre of his being. This is the character of man as required by the old theological systems; and this is how it happened to come about. Evil is not something natural, not imperfection, not something undeveloped, not yet outgrown. Sin originated outside of this world, invaded it, and worked its ruin and destruction.

Now comes the device that has been called the Atonement, by which it is supposed that God is going to be able to save at least a part of this rebellious humanity. There have been a good many different theories of the atonement that have been held, eighteen or twenty varieties of the doctrine, three or four of which I must outline, in order to make them clear to your mind, that you may see what have been the devices by which the theologians have supposed that they could find a way for the deliverance of man from this condition of loss, and fit him to share the felicity for which he was originally intended.

Of course, the main point in the whole scheme is that the Second Person of the Trinity becomes incarnate, comes down here to this world, is born, grows up, teaches, suffers and at last is put to an ignominious death. This is the central idea of the doctrine of the atonement; or, rather, the Christ is the central figure in that doctrine. But how is it supposed to work out the atonement that is necessary, in order that man may be saved? You will see that the world, according to the ideas I have been delineating, is in a condition of rebellion. What men need is to be persuaded that they are wrong, convinced of sin, in theological language, and then made repentant, and in some way be forgiven for the wrong which they have done.