Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

So much to justify the statement I made, that the average popular belief on any subject is not a reliable guide to a person who is earnestly desiring to find the simple truth.

Now let us come to the answer of the specific question which I have propounded. Why are not all educated people Unitarians? I ask this question, not because I originated it, but because it has been put to me, I suppose, a hundred times. People say, You claim to have studied these matters very carefully, you have tried to find the truth, you think you have found it. You have followed what you regard as the true method of search. If you have found the truth, and if other people, using this same method and being as unbiased as you, could also find it, how does it happen that Unitarians are in the minority? Why do not all persons who study and who are educated accept the Unitarian faith? This question, I say, has been asked me a great many times; and it is a question that deserves a fair, an earnest and sympathetic answer. Such an answer I am now to try to give.

In the first place, let me make a few assertions. I have not time to prove them this morning; but they are capable of proof. The advantage of a scientific statement is that, though you do not stop to prove it, you know it can be proved any time, whenever a person chooses to take the time or trouble. For example, if I state the truth of the Copernican system, or that the earth revolves around the sun, and you challenge me to prove it in two minutes, I may not be able to; it may take longer than that; but I know it can be demonstrated to-morrow or next week or any time, because it has been demonstrated over and over again.

I wish now to assert the truth of certain fundamental principles; and these principles, you note, are those which constitute the peculiarity of the Unitarian people as a body of theological believers. For example, that this which is all around us and of which we are a part is a universe is demonstrated beyond question. It is one, the unity of the universe. The unity of force, the unity of substance or matter, the unity of law, the unity of life, the unity of humanity, the unity of the fundamental principles of ethics, the unity of the religious life and aspiration of the world, these, I say, are demonstrated. And do you not see that demonstrating these carries along with it the unquestioned, the absolute demonstration of the unity of the power that is in the universe and manifests itself through it? The unity of God? The Lord our God is one! And this is no question of speculation, it is demonstrated truth. Now, as to any speculative or metaphysical division of God's nature into three parts or personalities, there is not, and there cannot be, in the nature of things, one slightest particle of proof. The unity is demonstrated: anything else is incapable of demonstration.

Next, the Unitarian contention I say Unitarian, not because we originated it by any means, but simply because we first and chiefly among religious bodies have accepted it as to the origin and nature of man as science has unfolded it to us, thus precluding the possibility of the truth of any doctrine of any fall. This is not speculation, it is not whim. It is not something picked up by the way, that a man chooses because he likes it, and because he does not like something else. This is demonstrated truth, as clearly and fully demonstrated as is the law of gravity or the fact that water will freeze at a certain temperature. Then the question of the Bible. The Unitarian position in regard to the origin, the method of composition, the authenticity and the authority of Biblical books, is a commonplace of scholarship. There is no rational question in regard to it any more. Next, the question of the origin and nature of Jesus the Christ. The naturalness of his birth, the naturalness of his death, his pure humanity, are made clearer and surer by every new step which investigation takes; and there is nothing in the nature of proof that is conceivable in regard to any other theory. If any one chooses to accept it, well; but nobody claims, or can claim, to prove it, to settle it, to demonstrate it as true. It becomes an article of faith, a question of voluntary belief; but there is no possibility of holding it in any other way. So as to the nature of salvation. It is a matter of character; a man is saved when he is right. And that he cannot be saved in any other way is demonstrable and demonstrated truth.

Now, these are the main principles which constitute the beliefs of Unitarians; and in any court of reason they are able to make good their claim against any corner. And, if there be no other motive at work except the one clear-eyed, simple desire to find the truth, there can be no two opinions concerning any of them.

Why, then, are not all thoughtful, educated people Unitarians? Well may the listener ask, in wonder, if the statements I have just been making are true. Now I propose to offer some suggestions, showing what are some of the influences at work which determine belief, and which have very little to do with the question as to whether the beliefs are capable of establishing themselves as true or not.

In the first place, let us raise the question as to what is generally meant by education. We assume that all educated people ought to agree on all great questions; and they ought, note now what I am saying, they ought, if they are really and truly educated, and if with a clear and single eye they are seeking simply the truth. But, in order to understand the situation, we need to note a good many other things that enter into this matter of determining the religious path in which people will walk. Now what do we mean by education? Popularly, if a man has been to school, particularly if he is a college graduate, if he can read a little Latin and speak French, and knows something of music, if he has graduated anywhere, he is spoken of as educated. But is that a correct use of language? Are we sure that a man is educated merely because he knows a lot of things or has been through a particular course of study? What does a human education mean? Does it not mean the unfolding, the development of our faculties in such a way that in the intellectual sphere we can come into contact with and possession of the reality of things, the truth? Intellectually, is there any other object of education than to fit a man to find the truth? And yet let me give you a case. Here is a man, I take it as an illustration simply, not because I have anything particular against the Catholic Church any more than against any other body of believers, who has been through a Catholic college, has made himself master of Catholic doctrine, become familiar with theological and ecclesiastical literature; suppose he knows all the languages, or a dozen of them, having them at his fingers' ends. Do you not see that as a truth-seeker in a free world he may not be educated at all? He may be educated, as we say, or trained is the better word, into acceptance of a certain system of traditional thought, that can give no good reason for itself; for his prejudices, his loves and hates may be called into play. He may be trained into the earnest conviction that it is his highest duty to be loyal to a particular set of ideas.

Take the way I was educated. I grew up reading the denominational reviews, and the denominational newspapers. I was taught that it was dangerous and wicked to doubt. I must not think freely: that was the one thing I was not permitted to do. I went to a theological school, and had drilled into me year after year that such beliefs, about God and man and Jesus and the Bible and the future world, were unquestionably true, and that I must not look at anything that would throw a doubt upon them. And I was sent out into the world graduated, not as a truth-seeker, but to fight for my system, as a West Point graduate is taught that he must fight for his country without asking any questions.

Do you not see that this, which goes under the name of education, instead of fitting a man to find the truth, may distinctly and definitely unfit him, make it harder for him to find any truth except that which is contained in the system which has been drilled into him from his childhood up and year after year? Education, in order to fit a man to be a truth-seeker, must be something different from this merely teaching a man a certain system, a certain set of ideas, and drilling him into the belief that he must defend these ideas against all corners.