If the prophecies of the Old Testament are not rightly interpreted of Jesus
our Christ, then there is no prediction whatever contained in it of that
stupendous event--the rise and establishment of Christianity--in comparison
with which all the preceding Jewish history is as nothing. With the
exception of the book of Daniel, which the Jews themselves never classed
among the prophecies, and an obscure text of Jeremiah, there is not a
passage in all the Old Testament which favours the notion of a temporal
Messiah. What moral object was there, for which such a Messiah should come?
What could he have been but a sort of virtuous Sesostris or Buonaparte?
* * * * *
I know that some excellent men--Israelites without guile--do not, in fact,
expect the advent of any Messiah; but believe, or suggest, that it may
possibly have been God's will and meaning, that the Jews should remain a
quiet light among the nations for the purpose of pointing at the doctrine
of the unity of God. To which I say, that this truth of the essential unity
of God has been preserved, and gloriously preached, by Christianity alone.
The Romans never shut up their temples, nor ceased to worship a hundred or
a thousand gods and goddesses, at the bidding of the Jews; the Persians,
the Hindus, the Chinese, learned nothing of this great truth from the Jews.
But from Christians they did learn it in various degrees, and are still
learning it. The religion of the Jews is, indeed, a light; but it is as the
light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing but
itself.
* * * * *
It has been objected to me, that the vulgar notions of the Trinity are at
variance with this doctrine; and it was added, whether as flattery or
sarcasm matters not, that few believers in the Trinity thought of it as I
did. To which again humbly, yet confidently, I reply, that my superior
light, if superior, consists in nothing more than this,--that I more
clearly see that the doctrine of Trinal Unity is an absolute truth
transcending my human means of understanding it, or demonstrating it. I may
or may not be able to utter the formula of my faith in this mystery in more
logical terms than some others; but this I say, Go and ask the most
ordinary man, a professed believer in this doctrine, whether he believes in
and worships a plurality of Gods, and he will start with horror at the bare
suggestion. He may not be able to explain his creed in exact terms; but he
will tell you that he _does_ believe in one God, and in one God only,--
reason about it as you may.
* * * * *
What all the churches of the East and West, what Romanist and Protestant
believe in common, that I call Christianity. In no proper sense of the word
can I call Unitarians and Socinians believers in Christ; at least, not in
the only Christ of whom I have read or know any thing.
April 14, 1830.