... At the time your letter reached me we were holding our annual
fair, and since then I have been much occupied with preparing for
Christmas. To-day am home-bound by the snow,--it being knee-deep
between our front door and the gate, and as I have to walk half a
mile to take the street cars to the city, and as it is raining on
top of the deep snow, concluded it was really too bad for me to
venture. Have read myself out, and being very much occupied during
the week, will take advantage of the holy-day to speak on a holy
topic. You suggested that we send "papers representing Unitarian
ideas rather than tracts;" but papers do not contain our doctrines
so explicitly. Since your last letter, have mailed to you two
tracts on "Inspiration" and "Incarnation" which I thought well
answered the thoughts expressed in your letter.
You will see from them that Unitarians are little troubled about
Inspiration and the Divinity, or the Deity of Christ as we prefer
to state it. We do believe in his divinity, for we hold that all
men are divine, while we deny his being Deity. We lay greater
stress on the divinity of human nature, and therefore we do not
feel that Jesus is degraded by calling him man, for we exalt man.
If we considered man totally depraved, then to call Jesus a mere
man might seem to lower him; but when we think of the possibilities
of man, and that he has it within himself to reach up to the
highest manhood, and to become in a measure a saviour of the world,
then to compare him with Jesus--the most glorious of men--is not
lessening the divinity of the Christ, it seems to me. Or, if we
held Jesus to be God, a being different from man, and so far
superior to us that we never could attain to his goodness, then we
never could compare the two. Jesus is an example to us because we
also are divine as he is; for he prays "that they all may be one,
as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in
us." If man had not been of the same nature as himself, would he
have thus spoken? I advise you to send to the Western Unitarian
Sunday School Society for Rev. William C. Gannett's Sunday School
Lesson, "The Christmas Poem and the Christmas Fact," if you wish to
understand how Unitarians of the present day understand Christ.
Though you may not accept, you will have our idea of the birth
legends in our Gospels.
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