Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

The next step, then: in the words of Lucretia Mott, we believe that truth should be taken for authority, and not authority for truth. The only authority in the world is the truth. The only thing to which intellectually a free Unitarian can afford to bow is ascertained and demonstrated truth. We believe, then, in revelation.

In the next place, we believe in incarnation. Not in the complete incarnation of God in one man, in one country, in one age, in the history of the world. We believe in the incarnation of God progressively in humanity. All that is true, all that is beautiful, all that is good, is so much of God incarnate in his children, and reaching ever forth and forward to higher blossoming and grander fruitage. The difference between Jesus and other men, as we hold it, is not a difference in kind: it is a difference in degree. So he is the son of our Father, our elder brother, our friend, our leader, our helper, our inspiration.

The next principle of Unitarianism is that character is salvation. We do not even say that character is a condition of salvation. Character is salvation. A man who is right, who is in perfect accord with the law and life of God, is safe, in this world, in all worlds, in this year, in all future time.

And, then, lastly, we believe in the eternal and universal hope. We believe that God, just because he is God, is under the highest conceivable obligation, not to me only, but to himself, to see to it that every being whom he has created shall sometime, somewhere, in the long run, find that gift of life a blessing, and not a curse.

We believe in retribution, universal, quick, unescapable; for we believe that this is mercy, and that through this is to come salvation.

These, then, are the main principles, as I understand them, of
Unitarianism.

There is one point more now that I must touch on. When I was considering the question of giving this series of sermons, one of my best friends raised the question as to whether I had better put the word Unitarian? into the title. He was afraid that it might prejudice people who did not like the name, and keep them from listening to what I had to say. This is a common feeling on the part of Unitarians. I was trained as a boy, and through all my youth and early manhood in the ministry, to look with aversion, suspicion, on Unitarianism, and to hate the name. But to-day, after more than twenty years of experience in the Unitarian ministry, I have come to the conviction, which I wish to suggest to you, that it is the most magnificent name in the religious history of the world; and I, for one, wish to hoist it as my flag, to inscribe it on my banner, not because I care for a name, but because of that which it covers and comprehends.

Now, not in the slightest degree in the way of prejudice against other names or to find fault with them, let me note a few of them, and then compare Unitarianism with them. Take the word "Anglican," for example, the name of the Church of England. What does it mean? Of course, you know it is simply a geographical name. It defines nothing as to the Church's government or belief or anything else. There is the word "Episcopal," which simply means a church that is governed by bishops; that is all. Take the word "Presbyterian," from a Greek word which means an elder, a church governed by its old men or its elders. No special significance about that. Then "Baptist," signifying that the people who wear that name believe that baptism always means immersion, indicating no other doctrine by which that body is known, or its method of government. "Congregational," no doctrine significance there. It simply means a church whose power is lodged in the congregation. It is democratic in its methods of government. "Methodist,", applied to the members of a particular church because they were considered over-exact or methodical in their ways. There is no governmental significance there. The name Catholic? or Universal? is chiefly significant from the fact that the claim implied by it is not true. Now let us look for a moment at the word Unitarian, and see whether it has a right to be placed not only on a level with these, but infinitely above and beyond them in the richness, in the wonder of its meaning. Let me lead you to a consideration of it. I want you to note that unity? is the one word of more significance than any other in the history of man; and that it is growing in its depth, its comprehensiveness. What have we discovered? We have discovered in this modern world, only a few years ago, that this which we see, the earth, the stars, and all the wonders of the heavens, is one, a universe. Not only that. We have discovered the unity of force. There are not, as primitive man supposed, a thousand different powers in the universe, antagonistic and fighting with each other. We have learned to know that there is just one force in the universe. That light, heat, electricity, magnetism, all these marvellous and diverse varieties of forces, are one force, and can be at the will and skill of man converted into each other.

Next, we have learned that there is one law in the universe. Should we not be Unitarians? Should we not believe in the unity of God, when we can see, as far as the telescope can reach on the one hand and the microscope on the other, one eternal, changeless Order?

Another point. We have learned the unity of substance. We know how Comte, the famous French scientist, advised his followers not to attempt to find out anything about the fixed stars, because, he said, such knowledge was forever beyond the reach of man. How long had Comte been dead before we discovered the spectroscope? And now we know all about the fixed stars. We know that the stuff we step on in the street this morning as we go home from church is the same stuff of which the sun is made, the same stuff as that which flamed a few years ago as a comet, the same stuff as that which shines in Sirius, in suns so many miles away that it takes millions of years for their light to reach us. One stuff, one substance, throughout the universe; and this poor old, tear-wet earth of ours is a planet shining in the heavens as much as any of them, of the same glorious material of which they are made.