Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

And so I may believe that I, as a child of the infinite Father, am of infinite importance to him in this universe of his; and I can live a grand and noble life. Nobody can harm me but myself. Place an obstacle in my path, and, whether it be insurmountable or not, I may show myself a coward or a hero as I face it. Tell me I have made a mistake, I can repair it. Tell me I have committed some moral error, am guilty of sin, I confess it. But I can make all these mistakes and sins stairways up which I can climb nearer and nearer to God. You may test me with sorrows, affliction, take away my property, take away my health, take away my friends; and the way in which I receive these may either make me nobler or poorer and meaner, as I will. The sun shines upon the earth. It turns one clod hard, makes it incapable of producing anything. It softens and sweetens another, the same sun: the difference is in the way in which it is received. So these influences may touch me, may make me hard and bitter and mean and rebellious, or I may stand all, and say, as the old Stoics used to, "Even if the gods are not just, I w ill be just, and shame the gods."

So man may say, Whatever comes upon me, I will meet it like a man, and like a child of the Highest, and so make my life significant, a part of the divine plan, something glorious and real.

One thought more. When we have got through with this life, and stand on the shore of a sea whose wavelets lap the sands at our feet, and the ships of those that depart go out into the mist, and we wonder whither, what has doubt done, what has investigation done, touching this great hope of ours, as we face that which we speak of as the Unknown? So far as the old-time and traditional belief is concerned, I hold that doubt has been of infinite and unspeakable service. Certainly, I could rather have no belief at all than the old belief. Certainly, I would rather sink into unconsciousness and eternal sleep than wake to watch over the battlements of heaven the ascent of the smoke of the torment that goeth up forever and ever. But is there any rational ground for hope still? I cannot stop this morning even to suggest to you the grounds for the assertion that I am about to make. I believe that, if we have not already demonstrated eternal life, we are on the eve of such demonstration. I believe that another continent is to be discovered as veritably as Columbus discovered this New World. As he, as he neared the shore, saw floating tokens upon the waters that indicated to him that land was not far away, so I believe that tokens are all about us of this other country, which is not a future, but only a present, unseen and unknown to the most of us.

But grant, if you will, that that is not to be attained, modern investigation and doubt have done nothing to touch the grounds of the great human hope that springs forever in the breast, that hope which is born of love, born of trust, born of our dreams, born of our yearning towards the land whither our dear ones have departed.

Let me read you just a few lines of challenge to those that would raise a question as to the reality of this belief:

What is this mystic, wondrous hope in me, That, when no star from out the darkness bore Gives promise of the coming of the morn, When all life seems a pathless mystery Through which tear-blinded eyes no way can see; When illness comes, and life grows most forlorn, Still dares to laugh the last dread threat to scorn, And proudly cries, Death is not, shall not be? I wonder at myself! Tell me, O Death, If that thou rul'st the earth, if "dust to dust" Shall be the end of love and hope and strife, From what rare land is blown this living breath That shapes itself to whispers of strong trust, And tells the lie, if 'tis a lie, of life? Where did this wondrous dream come from? How does it grow as the world grows?

It must be a whisper of this eternal Being to our hearts; and so, in spite of all the advance of knowledge, all the criticism, it remains untouched, brightening and growing. And so there is reason, as we gaze out on the future, why we should look with contempt, if you will, upon the conditions that trouble us in this life, the burdens, the sorrows, the illnesses, when all that life means at its highest is that out of the conditions, whatever they are, I should shape a manhood, cultivate a soul, make myself worth living, fitting myself for that which gleams through the mist a promise, if you will, of something there beyond.

Now I wish simply to call your attention to the fact that doubt does not touch this eternal Power, does not touch the fact that this is a good Power, and that it is on the side of goodness, does not touch the fact that we are the children of that Power and may co-operate with it for good and share its ultimate triumph, does not touch the great hope that makes it worth while for us to suffer, to bear, to dare all things. And these great trusts, are they not all we need to be men, to be women, to conquer the conditions of life and prove ourselves children of the Highest?

EVOLUTION LOSES NOTHING OF VALUE TO MAN.

I TAKE two texts, one of them from the New Testament. It may be found in the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, the seventeenth verse, "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil." The other text is from Emerson: "One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost."