There is one class of Unitarians, to whom the author of this sermon seems to belong, who accept boldly the consequences of their premise, and maintain without disguise that all men are by nature the equals of Christ, and that there is no reason why they should not, by greater fidelity, surpass Christ. Up to this period of time, however, they have not afforded to the world any very notable specimen of the truth of their assertion. Another class attempt to get over the difficulty by a critical exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, denying the authenticity or the meaning of those parts which relate to the miraculous conception of Christ, his miracles, and his divinity. A representative of the extreme wing on the right of Unitarianism replied, when this point was presented to him: “Oh! we Unitarians reject the idea of the Trinity as represented by Calvinists and other Protestants, for they make it a tritheism; but we accept the doctrine as holy mother Church teaches it”; while a leader of the extreme left admitted the difficulty, and in speaking of Dr. Channing, who championed the idea of the filiation of man to God, he said: “No intelligent Unitarian of to-day would attempt to defend the Unitarianism of Dr. Channing.” He was right; for no Unitarian, on the basis of his belief, can say consistently the Lord’s Prayer; for the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation is a rigorous necessity to any one who admits the infinite and the finite, and the necessity of a union of love between them which authorizes the finite to call the Infinite Father! One may bestow sympathy upon the pious feelings of that class of Unitarians of which Dr. Channing is the representative, but the less
said about their theological science the better.
Our genuine mystic would not stop here. He would continue and show that the denial of the Incarnation involves the denial of the Trinity, and the denial of the Trinity reduces the idea of God to a mere abstraction. For all conception of real life is complex. Intellectual life in its simplest elements, in its last analysis, will be found to consist of three factors: Man as the thinker, one factor; the thing thought, the second factor; and their relation, the third factor—or the lover, the beloved, and their relation; again, the actor, the thing acted upon, and their relation. Man cannot think, love, or act where there is nothing to think, to love, or to act upon. Place man in an absolute vacuum, where there is nothing except himself, and you have man in posse, but not man as being, as existing, as a living man. You have a unit, an abstraction, nothing more. But pure abstractions have no real existence. Our conception of life in accordance with the law which governs our intelligence is comprised in three terms—subject, object, and their relation.[98] There is no possible way of bringing out of a mere unit, as our absolute starting point of thought, an intellectual conception of life. But the Unitarian idea of God is God reduced to a simple, absolute unit. Hence the Unitarian idea of God is not the conception of the real, living God,
but an abstraction, a non-existing God.
Our genuine mystic would proceed still further; for infused light and love from above do not suspend or stultify the natural action of our faculties, but quicken, elevate, and transform their operations. He would apply, by way of analogy, the same process of thought in confirmation of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. If there had been a time, he would say, when there was no object before God, then there would have been a period when God was not the real, living God, but only God in posse, non-existing. But this is repugnant to the real conception of God; therefore the true idea of God involves a co-eternal object. If, however, this co-eternal object was not equal to God in substance as well as in attributes, then there would have been a period when God did not exist in all his fulness. Now, this object, co-eternal and equal to God the Father, is what the Catholic doctrine teaches concerning Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father, “begotten before all ages, consubstantial with the Father.” But the Father and the Son being co-eternal and co-adequate, their relations to each other must have been eternal and equal, outflowing toward each other in love, commensurate with their whole nature. This procession of mutual love between Father and Son is what the Catholic doctrine teaches concerning the Holy Spirit. Thus we see, however imperfectly, that the Catholic doctrine concerning the Trinity presents to our minds nothing that is contrary to our reason, though it contains an infinite abyss beyond the present scope of our reason, but which we shall know when our reason is increased, as it will be, by
the gift of the light of glory. But every mystery of Christianity has an intelligible side to our natural reason, and by the light of faith it is the privilege and joy of a Christian while here upon earth to penetrate more deeply into their hidden, divine truth.
Again, the Unitarian is mistaken when he supposes that Catholics, in maintaining the Trinity, exclude the divine Unity. They include both in one. Herein again is found in man an analogy. Man is one in triplicity. Man is thought, love, and activity, and at the same time man is one. He thinks, he loves, he acts; there are not three distinct men, one who thinks, another who loves, and still another who acts. There is, therefore, a sense in which man is one in three and three in one. So there is in the Trinity. The Unitarians are right in affirming the divine Unity; their error consists in excluding the divine Trinity. All heresies are right in what they affirm, and wrong in what they exclude or deny; which denial is the result of their breaking away from that divine Unity in whose light alone every truth is seen in its co-relation with all other truths.
Our true mystic would not be content to rest here, but, soaring up upon the wings of divine light and love, and taking a more extended view, he would strive to show that where the doctrine of the Trinity is not held either explicitly or implicitly, there not only the theory of our mental operations and the intellectual foundation of religion dissolve into a baseless fabric of a vision; but that also the solid basis of society, the true idea of the family, the right conception of the state and its foundations, and the law of all genuine progress, are wanting, and
all human things tend towards dissolution and backward to the reign of old chaos.
We give another characteristic statement of the Rev. Edward E. Hale’s opening sermon which must have grated harshly on the ears of the more staid and conservative portion of his audience; it is under the head of “The immanent presence of God.” He says: