Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

That is Lowell's suggestion, in that famous poem of his. If we care for truth, we shall not wait until it becomes popular. The truth in any direction to-day, if we had the judgment of the world, would be voted down. Christianity would be voted down among the religions; Protestantism would be voted down in Christianity; and the highest and finest thinkers in the Protestant churches would be voted down by the majority of the members.

Do not be disturbed, then, or troubled, because you have not the crowd and the shouting accompanying you on your onward march; and remember that there must be something of heroism in this consecration to truth. I wish to quote to you, as bearing on this truth, a wonderfully fine word which I have just come across in a recent number of the Cosmopolitan Magazine, the word of the Hon. Thomas B. Reed, the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He says, "One with God may be a majority; but crucifixion and the fagot may antedate the counting of the votes." But, if it means crucifixion and the fagot, and we claim to be followers of the Nazarene and worthy of him, even for that we shall not shrink. It is our business simply to raise the question, and try to answer it or ourselves, Which way must I go to follow the truth? And that way I must tread, whether it means life or death, whatever the consequences; for the truth-seeker is the only God-seeker.

WHERE IS THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH?

As you are aware, there are certain churches that have taken the name of Evangelical, thereby, of course, putting forth the claim that in some special or peculiar way they have the gospel in keeping. For "Evangel" is the word translated "gospel," "Evangelist" is a "preacher of the gospel," "Evangelical" is the appropriate name for the church whose ministers preach the gospel. And the word "gospel," as you know, translated, means good news. It is the proclamation of hope, of something that the world has been groping in darkness for, a message that should lift the burden off the human heart, make men stronger to endure, fill them with cheer in the midst of life's difficulties and dangers, and give them a trust with which to walk out into the darkness that lies at the end.

A certain section, I say, of the Christian Church has appropriated this name; and by common consent it has been conceded to it. And as usage makes language, and the dictionaries only record the results of popular usage, why, of course, we must confess that this use of words is right. Right in that sense, I say. But I wish to go back of this popular usage this morning, and raise the question as to whether these churches that claim the title are the ones to whom it peculiarly or exclusively belongs. I wish to put forward the claim that we, though the idea is entirely against popular thought, are really the ones who are preaching the gospel of God, and that the liberals of the world come nearer today to proclaiming the actual original gospel of Jesus the Christ than do any other body of Christians in the world. I wish to do this, not in any spirit of antagonism, but simply by way of clear definition, and that we may understand where we are, and may unfalteringly and trustingly and loyally and hopefully go on to do the highest work that was ever committed to human hands.

At the outset, though it will necessitate my saying certain things which I have said to you before, I must outline briefly that body of doctrine which goes by the name of "Evangelical." I will not go back two or three hundred years to include in it such dogmas as Foreordination, Election, the Damnation of non-Elect or non-Baptized Infants, though these doctrines still remain in the creeds. I will take what must be considered the simpler and fairer course of confining myself to setting forth those beliefs which are generally accepted, and which are made a part of the creed of the so-called "Evangelical Alliance" that is, an organization including representatives of all the great so-called Evangelical Churches. These beliefs, in brief, are that God created the world perfect in the first place, but that in a very short time it was invaded by the evil powers, and mankind rebelled against the Creator, and became the subjects of the devil as the god of this world. Then man, by thus rebelling against God, lost his intellectual power to discern truth, became mentally unable to discover spiritual truth, to find the divine way in which he ought to walk; and that he became morally incapable, so that, even when the truth was presented to him, he felt an aversion towards it, and was disinclined to accept it. The next point is this being the condition of things that God began to reveal himself to the world, first, by angel messengers, by prophets, by inspired men, and that then at last, through certain chosen mediums, he wrote a book telling men the truth about their condition, about his feeling towards them, about what they ought to do, and the destiny involved in the kind of life they should live here. After the world had been in existence about four thousand years, according to this teaching, and very little headway had been made even among the chosen people, the few that had been selected from the great outside and wandering nations, God himself comes down to earth, by means of a woman specially prepared to be his mother he is born without a human father. He lives, he suffers, he dies. This, after one theory or another, I need not go into them, to make it possible for God to forgive, and to enable him to save those who should accept the terms which he should offer.

Then, after his withdrawal from the earth, his Church is organized under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. Its mission is to proclaim the gospel among all nations. That proclamation has gone on; but after two thousand years not a third of the world has heard the gospel, not a third of the people who walk the planet knows anything about the book that has been written. But they still stumble along in darkness, worshipping anything except the one only and true God. So that this effort up to the present time would strike us, if we judged it as a human device, as being a sad and lamentable failure.

The upshot of this, according to the Evangelical creed, is that the great majority of the world is to be permanently lost. Only a few, those who are converted or those becoming members of the true Church, connected with it sacramentally or in some way, only the few are to be saved, and the great majority outcast forever.

This, in substance, makes up what has been called the gospel; and those who claim that they are preaching the gospel are preaching these things as true. I am well aware and I would not have anybody suppose that I overlooked it that this creed is undergoing very striking and marked changes, and that a great many of those things which some of us look upon as more objectionable are being left out of sight, and not preached, as they used to be, though they still remain in the creeds.

I am aware, for example, that what it is to be orthodox or evangelical has been reduced to very low terms as compared with those which I have just set forth; that is to say, reduced to very low terms in certain quarters. For instance, Dr. Lyman Abbott, of Brooklyn, tells us that we need not believe in the infallibility of the Bible any more; that we need not believe in the old-time Trinity; that we need not believe that Jesus was essentially different from a man; we need not believe in the virgin birth, unless we find it easy to accept it. But the two things which he tells us we must believe in order to be orthodox, or evangelical, are that in some way, though he does not define how, the Bible contains a special message from God to the world, and that in some way Jesus particularly and specially represents God, and that he reveals him to men, so that, when he speaks, he speaks with authority, as representing divine truth. Everlasting Damnation eliminated, Foreordination not referred to, the Trinity transformed, Infallibility no longer insisted on, the humanity of Jesus granted, to be orthodox, according to Dr. Abbott, has become a comparatively simple thing.