Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

Another scientific illustration is Agassiz. Agassiz unconsciously wrought out and developed some of the most wondrous and beautiful proofs of evolution that the world has ever known; and yet he fought evolution to the last day of his life, simply because he had accepted the other theory. And he got it into his head that there was something about evolution that tended to injure religion and degrade man, not a rational objection, not a scientific objection, but a feeling, a prejudice.

There is another class of people that I must refer to. Institutions and organizations come into being, created, in the first place, as the embodiment and expression of new and grand truths; and after a Arile their momentum becomes such that the persons who are connected with them cannot control their movements, and these persons become victims of the organizations and institutions to which they belong. So, when a new truth appears, the old organization rolls on like a Juggernaut car, and crushes the life, so far as it is possible, out of everything in its way. Take, for example, and note what a power it is and what an unconscious bribe it is to those who belong to it, the great Anglican Church. A man's ambitions, if he has learning, power, ability, tell him that there is the Archbishopric of Canterbury ahead of him as a possibility. His hopes, the chances of promotion and power, are with the institution. And, then, it is such a tremendous social influence. It is no wonder, then, that men who are not over-strong, who have not the stuff in them out of which heroes are made, should cling to the institution and remain loyal to it, even while they are false to the truth that used to animate it and for which alone any institution ought to exist.

Let me give you another illustration. Edward Temple, late Bishop of London, and who is now the Archbishop of Canterbury, had a priest of the established Church come to him and make a confession of holding certain beliefs which he knew were heretical. The archbishop said to him frankly: As Edward Temple, I believe them, I am in sympathy with your views. As the head of the English Church, I must be opposed to them; and the opinions which you hold cannot be tolerated. That is what the influence of a great organization may come to.

Let me give you another concrete illustration. Here is our American Bible Society, which publishes and circulates millions of Bibles all over the world. It is obliged, as at present organized, to print and distribute the King James version of the Bible; but there is not a scholar or a minister connected with the organization anywhere who does not know at least, since the revision at any rate that in many important respects the King James version is not an accurate translation of the original, even if that is conceded to be infallible. So that this organization stands to-day in the position of being obliged to circulate all over the world for God's truth any number of teachings that are simply blunders of the translator, of the copyist, or interpolated passages that have come down from the past.

So men in every direction become persuaded that they must be loyal to the organization. I know cases where a minister in conversation with a friend has said: So long as I remain a member of this Church, I have got a great institution back of me, and I can accomplish so much socially and in every way on account of it. I know I do not believe half of the creed, but any number of other ministers are in the same box. And so they stay true to the organization, while truth to the truth is sacrificed.

One other influence that keeps so many of these old ideas alive or prolongs their existence beyond the natural term is right in here. Any number of men, educated, strong, prominent men, give their countenance and influence to the support of old-time religious organizations because they believe that somehow or other they are serviceable as a police force in the world, they keep people quiet, they help preserve social order. I have had people over and over again say that they believed it would be a great calamity to disturb the Roman Catholic Church, because it keeps so many people quiet. Do you know, friends, I regard this as the worst infidelity that I know of on the face of the earth. It is doubt of God, his ability to lead and manage his world without cheating it. It is doubt of truth, as to whether it is safe for anybody except very wise people, like a few of us! It is doubt of humanity, its capacity to find the truth, and believe in it and live on it. Do you believe that God has made this universe so that it is healthier for the masses to live on a lie than it is for them to live on the truth? Is that your confidence in God? Is that the kind of God you worship? It is not the kind I worship. There is no danger of the ignorant masses of the world getting wise too fast, judging by the experience of the past up to the present time. There is only one thing that is safe; and that is truth. Do you know what the trouble was at the time of the French Revolution? It was not that the people began to reason and think, and lost their faith, as so frequently said by superficial historians: it was that they waked up at last to the idea that the aristocracy and the priesthood had not only been fleecing them financially and keeping them down socially, but had been fooling them religiously, until at last they broke away, having no confidence left in God or priest or educated people or nobility or anything. No wonder they made havoc. If you want to make a river dangerous, dam it up, keep the waters back, until by and by the pressure from the hills and the mountains becomes so great that it can be restricted no longer; and it not only breaks through the dam, but bursts all barriers, floods the country, sweeps away homes, farms, cattle, human beings, towns, cities, leaving ruin in its path. Let rivers flow as God meant them to; and they will be safe.

So let the world learn,— learn gradually, and adapt itself to new truth as it learns, and there will be an even and orderly march of human progress. The danger is in our setting ourselves up as being wiser than God, wiser than the universe, and doling out to the multitude the little fragments of truth that we think are fitted for their digestion. The impertinence of it, and the impiety of it!

I must not stop to deal with other reasons which lie in my mind this morning. You can think along other channels for yourselves. I have simply wished to suggest that, in the kind of world we are living in, you may not be sure, at any particular age in history, that a set of ideas is going to be accepted by the multitude merely because they are true; and, because they are not accepted at once, you are not, therefore, to come to the conclusion that they are not true. There never has been a time in the history of the world when the truth was not in the minority. Go back to the time of Jesus: do you not remember how the people asked whether any of the scribes or the Pharisees believed on him? They were ready to accept him if they could go with the crowd; but it never occurred to them to raise the question as to whether it was their duty to go with him while he was alone, as to whether two or three might not represent some higher conception of God, some forward step on the part of humanity. Consider for just a moment, let it be in literature, in art, in government, in ethics, anywhere, find out where the crowd is, and you will find where the truth is not. Disraeli made a very profound remark when he said that a popular opinion was always the opinion which was about to pass away. By the time a notion gets accepted by the crowd, the deeper students are seeing some higher and finer truth towards which they are reaching.

The pioneers are always in the minority. The vanguard of an army is never so large as the main body that comes along behind after the way has been laid out for it.

"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust."