Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

The prophets, you see, were climbing up to that magnificent ideal so finely set up by Jesus as reported in the Gospel from which I read our lesson this morning. They had not only believed that God was to be worshipped after these external fashions, but that there was some special place, not only where it was easier to think of him, but where he demanded the offering should be brought. He said to the woman at the well: You think it is Mount Gerizim where the people ought to worship, and the Jews think it is Mount Moriah; but I say unto you that neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem shall men worship the Father. God is spirit, the universal spirit, every place a temple, every spot hallowed, if only those that worship him do so in spirit and in truth.

You see, then, how up these stairways of gradual approach the human race, in the person of its highest and finest representatives, has climbed, how near it has come to the spiritual ideal of God and the spiritual thought of that which he requires at our hands.

Is worship, then, so far as external form is concerned, to pass away? By no manner of means, as I think. As you analyze any one of these old primitive acts of worship, no matter how crude, no matter how cruel, how bloody, how repulsive it may be to-day from the outlook of our higher civilization, you will note that it has in it an element which, I believe, is permanent, and can never be outgrown. Whatever else there is, there is always the sense of a Presence, Invisible, mighty, high, and, from the point of view of the worshipper, holy and set apart. There is always the feeling of being in the shadow of the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity. There is always the sense of uplooking, of worship, in the higher sense of that term. Always, at any rate, the germ of these; and this, it seems to me, we may be sure and certain, however it may clothe itself in the future, shall never pass away.

I wish now, if there are any who think it is not befitting the greatness, the nobleness of man that he should bow himself in the presence of the highest, humiliate himself, if you choose to use that term, in acts of worship, I wish now, I say, to consider worship under two or three aspects, and see what it means. And, in the first place, I ask you to note that the ability to worship is always the measure of the rank of a being, it is the test and the standard of greatness.

As you look over the animal world, which one of them are we accustomed to think of as coming the nearest to man? What one do we love to have most with us, to associate most with our joys, with the peace of our homes? Is it not the dog? And as you examine the dog, study carefully his nature and characteristics, do you not note that there is in his nature a hint, a suggestion, of that which is the root of all worship? The dog is the one animal with which man is accustomed familiarly to associate himself, who looks up with an incipient reverence, love, almost worship, to his master. And it is this quality in the dog that enables him to look up, and, however dimly, feel the life of some one that is above him, that lifts him into our society, and makes us feel this tenderness of heart-kinship with that which is finest in his nature.

And man is man simply because he is able to look above himself. The old Greeks had an anticipation of that idea when they called man anthropos; for the meaning of the word is the upward-looker. As in imagination you go back and down to the time when man first appeared, developed from the lower life which preceded him, the first thing you can think about him as human is the opening of his eyes in wonder, the lifting of his face in curiosity and question, and the birth of adoration in his soul. This is that which made him man.

You go and study the lowest type of barbaric life to-day; and you will find that the barbarian has very little curiosity as compared with the civilized man. You will find that it is very difficult to astonish him with anything. He does not wonder. He takes everything for granted. He does not see clearly and deeply enough to appreciate the marvel. Let me illustrate from a specimen of barbaric life itself. A few years ago the chief of an Indian tribe was brought from the plains of the West to visit Washington. The idea was to impress him as much as possible with the idea of our civilization, so that he might report it to his people when he went home. After they had crossed the Mississippi on their way to the West, the gentleman in whose care he was travelling asked the chief what the one thing which he had seen during his trip was which had impressed him the most; and he said at once the St. Louis bridge. But his companion said, Are you not astonished at the Capitol of Washington? "Yes," he said, "but my people can pile stones on top of each other; but they cannot make a cobweb of steel hang in the air."

You see how that perception lifted him above the average level of his people? He was showing his capacity for higher and nobler civilization. It is just this ability in the man to wonder, to see something to wonder at, to worship, to admire, which lifts him one grade higher than that of the average level of his tribe. So that which makes man a man is the capacity in him to admire. All admiration is the essence, the root, of worship. And, the more things a man admires, the greater and nobler type of man he is seen to be. If he can admire music, if he can admire painting, if he can admire sculpture, if he can admire poetry, if he can admire literature of every kind, if he can admire grand architecture, the beautiful monuments of the world, we say, Here is a large, all-round type of man. We estimate his dignity, his greatness, by the capacity that he shows for worship in its lower type; for worship is simply looking up with admiration.

There is another quality about this worship that I wish to speak of. It is the power that is capable of transforming a man, making him over into the likeness of that which he admires. You find the man without this capacity, and you know it is hopeless to appeal to him, hopeless to set up ideals, hopeless to place before him enticing examples. There is nothing in him to which these things appeal. Take Alexander the Great. It is said he carried around with him a copy of the Iliad, and that Achilles was his ideal of a hero. Do you not see how this admiration transformed the life of the young king, and made him after the type of that which he admired? It does not make any difference what this special admiration may be. Let a man admire Beethoven, and he will cultivate instinctively the qualities that make the beauty and greatness of Beethoven's character and the wonders of his career.

This ideal may be in a book, it may be embodied in fiction. I have liked always, either on the walls of my room or on the walls of my heart, to have certain portraits of persons whom I have loved, who are no longer living; and they are to me constant stimulus. They speak to me by day, and in my dreams at night their eyes follow me, and seem to look into my soul; and in their presence I could not do a mean, an unmanly thing. I love, I reverence, I worship these lofty ideals. And the quality of these characters filters down through and permeates the thought and the life.