But we would not have our readers think that all Unitarians agree
with the Rev. E. E. Hale in his estimate of the visible or practical side of the church. We quote from a leading article in the Liberal Christian of August last, under the head of “Spirit and Form in Religion,” the following passage:
“It seems painfully indicative of the still undeveloped condition of our race that no truce or medium can be approximated in which the two great factors of human nature and society, the authority and supremacy of spirit and the necessity and usefulness of form, are reconciled and made to serve each other or a common end. Must inward spirituality, and outward expression of it in forms and worship, be for ever in a state of unstable equilibrium? Must they ever be hostile and at cross-purposes? Must all progress be by a displacement in turn of each other—now an era of honored forms, and then of only disembodied spirituality? There is probably no entire escape from this necessity. But, surely, he is the wisest man who can hold this balance in the evenest hand; and that sect or school, whether political, social, or religious, that pays the finest justice and the most impartial respect to the two factors in our nature, spirit and form, will hold the steadiest place and do the most good for the longest time. This is the real reason why Quakerism, with all its exalted claims to respect, has such a feeble and diminishing importance. It has oil in the lamp of the purest kind, but almost no wick, and what wick it has is made up of its thee-ing and thou-ing, and its straight coat and stiff bonnet. These are steadily losing authority; and when they are abandoned, visible Quakerism will disappear. On the other hand, Roman Catholicism
maintains its place against the spirit of the age, and in spite of a load of discredited doctrines, very largely because of its intense persistency in forms, its highly-illumined visibility, its large-handed legibleness; but not without the unfailing aid and support of a spirit of faith and worship which produces a devoted priesthood and hosts of genuine saints. No form of Christianity can boast of lovelier or more spiritual disciples, or reaches higher up or lower down, including the wisest and the most ignorant, the most delicate and the coarsest adherents. It has the subtlest and the bluntest weapons in its arsenal, and can pierce with a needle, or mow with a scythe, or maul with a mattock.”
The same organ, in a later number, in speaking of the Saratoga conference, says:
“The main characteristic of the meeting was a conscientious and reverent endeavor to attain to something like a scientific basis for our faith in absolute religion, and in Christianity as a consistent and concrete expression of it,”
and adds that the opening sermon of the Rev. Mr. Hale “had the merit of starting us calmly and unexcitedly on our course.” Our readers will form their own judgment about what direction the course leads on which the Rev. Edward E. Hale started the Unitarians assembled at Saratoga in their seeking after a “scientific basis” for “absolute religion, and Christianity as a concrete expression of it”!
[89] “A Free-born Church.” The sermon preached before the National Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches at Saratoga, Tuesday evening, Sept. 12. The Liberal Christian, New York, Sept. 16, 1876.
[90] An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 14. Appleton, N. Y.
[91] Matt. xvi. 18.