Christian, there are two quarters from which he might derive his ideas
of that character. He might draw near to him who is the only perfect
expression of Christianity, and when he had sat at the feet of Jesus,
listening with hushed heart, and then arisen and joined himself to the
meek Prophet of Mercy on his way of Love, he might receive from Christ
his impressions of Christianity and catch from the living Master the
type of a disciple: or he might turn for information to the Christians
of the day, selecting for examination the largest and most prominent
classes, and so gather from the common specimen his impressions of their
temper, their spirit, and their faith. Each of these modes of inquiry
would produce a result of Truth; but the one would be a Truth of
reality, and the other only a Truth of description; the one would
present to us what we were seeking, the true idea of a Christian; the
other would show with what degree of faithfulness Christians had
preserved the spirit of the original, or whether in the copy, in the
distant reflection, the features had been faded, marred, distorted; the
one would furnish us with the great Master’s idea of a Disciple, the
other would exhibit the Disciple as a representative of the Master, and
assuming to be his Image to the world; in a word, the one would be
Christ’s idea of a Christian; the other would be only a Christian’s idea
of Christ. Oh, thanks be to God for the _written_ Gospel, for the
Epistles written on men’s hearts, the living transcripts, give us no
worthy ideas of Christ; and were it not for those silent witnesses which
speak from a passionless page, and cannot be made to wear the garb of
party, which reflect Christ’s realities, and not man’s ideas, the Image
of Jesus had long since been irrecoverably lost!
Let us then for a moment place ourselves beside Jesus, and learn from
the Christ what it is to be a Christian. I hear him inviting the weary
and the heavy laden to come and find rest unto their souls. I listen for
that doctrine of rest, the faith that gives the sin-bound peace. I hear
him speak of God, and they are indeed healing words of peace, intended
to quell a superstition and a controversy: “God is a spirit: the hour
cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in
spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.”[22] I
hear him speak of Duty: “The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: This is the first
Commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. This do and thou shalt live.” I hear him speak of
Heaven: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
Heaven. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” “The kingdom of God cometh not with
observation, neither shall they say lo here, or lo there, for behold the
kingdom of God is within you.”[23] I hear him speak of Sin, melted, and
transformed into penitence: “To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth
little. Thy faith hath saved thee. Go in peace. Sin no more, lest a
worse thing come upon thee.” I hear him speak of DISCIPLESHIP: “He that
hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he
that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and
will manifest myself to him.”[24] “Herein is my Father glorified, that
ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. If ye keep my
commandments ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s
commandments, and abide in His love. Ye are my friends if ye do
whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the
servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends:
for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto
you.” “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have
love one to another.”[25]
We turn now from the words to the life of the great Teacher, in the
endeavour to get a more definite idea of Duty, Discipleship, and Faith.
The character of Jesus is the best, fullest, and truest interpretation
of the words of Jesus. His life is his own translation of his own
precepts into the language of action. We surely cannot be far from the
true sources of Christianity when we first drink his words into our
hearts, and then follow him with reverent steps and with gazing eyes, to
watch his own illustrations of those words, to behold the spirit
breathing in the life, and from the fulness of his character to learn
the fulness of his precepts. Surely Christ embodied and impersonated his
own teachings. Surely the life of Christ is undoubted Christianity.
Surely his character is Christian Duty; and his destiny Christian Faith.
Surely he knew and exhibited the practical tendencies of his own
doctrines; and surely to set him up at the fountain-head of our moral
being, as God’s image to the conscience, and to strive in all things to
be like unto him, “whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every
man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ
Jesus,”—cannot be to preach “another gospel,” or to mistake fatally the
essentials of Discipleship. “If a man love me, he will keep my words,
and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our
abode with him.”[26] The definition of a Christian, when deduced from
the words and the life of the Christ himself, thus comes out to be—one
who TRUSTS himself in all things to that God of whom Jesus was the
image; and who CONFORMS himself in all things to that will of God of
which Jesus was the perfect expression. “This is life eternal that they
might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast
sent.”[27]
Turn we now to a different quarter for an answer to our inquiry what it
is to be a Christian; from the one Master to the multitude of
professors; from the original image, distinct and bright, to the
transmitted reflections, all claiming to be genuine copies; from the
single voice, sweet and clear, to the confusion of jarring tongues; from
the pure fountain to the impure streams; from Christ to Christians. I am
entirely guiltless of the intention of satire, but it is quite
impossible to avoid the appearance of it in any attempt to give the
features of Christianity as they appear in the Christians of the day, in
those, that is, who claim to be Christians exclusively; for the tamest
truth of description excites ideas of the true Christ, so contrasted,
that it has without intention all the effect of sarcasm. Surely a
stranger to the only true source of our religion, examining its actual
forms as they exist in the world, and selecting its characteristics from
that which is largest and most prominent, would not be guilty of
misrepresentation, if he described a Christian as one who was shut up
within the narrowest circle of religious ideas; who identified himself
and his opinions with absolute Truth; who idolized himself and his sect
as the only friends of God; who was so unconscious of a liability to
err, that he breathed, unknowingly, an atmosphere of infallibility, and
insulted the Rights of other men, not more fallible than himself,
without perceiving the invasion;—one so used to arrogate to himself and
to his own party, all excellence and all truth, that he starts in
surprise, innocent of what can be meant, when he is told that he is
pressing on the liberties of other minds, who, with as deep an interest
as he can have in their own salvation, have searched into these things
and read differently the mind of God;—as one who regards a few
metaphysical propositions, confessedly unintelligible, as the only hope
of human salvation, and who, in the confidence of this faith, speaks to
his fellow men as if he had secret council with God; assumes to be on “a
religious level” nearer to the spirit of the Most High, who, on that
more elevated standing, drops more readily into his heart communications
from Heaven;—and who, when he pays any regard to other men at all, looks
down upon them from an eminence; assumes as proved their ignorance,
their errors, and their sins; insults their opinions; treats with no
brotherly respect the convictions of Truth and the dictates of
Conscience which to them are Voices from the living God; denies that
they have equal zeal for truth, or equal ability to discover it; scoffs
at the idea of religious equality, and looks amazed when others tell
him, though it be in apostolic words, that they will not “give place by
subjection, no, not for an hour;” and finally adds mockery to insult and
wrong, by telling the men whom he so treats, that all this is Christian
affection, and an interest in their souls.
It is painful to put last in order, not the true, but the untrue idea of
a Christian, and therefore to set us right, I will present the original
picture again in apostolic words. “Hereby we do know that we know him if
we keep his commandments.” “Whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the
love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.” “If ye know
that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is
_born_ of him.” “Let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is
righteous, even as he is righteous.”[28]
There is still another way of bringing into comparison the spirit of
Christ and the character of that Christianity which assumes to itself to
be the only fruit of his spirit. We can compare the existing state of
the Christian world with the expectations of Jesus, with that state of
things to which he looked forward as the Reign of his spirit, the
Kingdom of the true Gospel upon earth. If the Christianity that prevails
has not realized the expectations of Christ, then its practical tendency
is evidently not in the direction of the true Gospel; it is, to the
extent of the failure, a departure from the power and character of the
original spirit. Christ could not be mistaken about the proper
operations of his own spirit; and the system whose operations do not
fulfil his promises cannot contain a full and perfect ministration of
his spirit. And this argument will amount to something like a
demonstration, if we can show, first, that this system which has failed
to realize the expectations of Jesus as to the condition of his Church,
has, for large tracts both of time and space, been the prevailing
influence of the Christian world, with nothing to obstruct it, so that
it has had full and free scope to work its own works, and to manifest
its own spirit; and secondly, if we can point to _the something_ in that
system, which manifestly has caused it to be destructive of those hopes,
and to work counter to this expectation of Christ.
There is no sublimer idea of Christianity than its delightful vision of
a UNIVERSAL CHURCH; the kingdom of the Gospel becoming a kingdom of
Heaven on earth; uniting the nations by a spiritual bond; in every heart
among the families of men kindling the same solemn ideas, and opening
the same living springs; subduing the differences of class and country
by the affinities of worship, by kindred images of Hope, of Duty, and of
God, becoming a meeting place for the thoughts of men; including every
form and variety of mind within that spiritual faith which leads onwards
to the infinite, yet presents distinct ideas to the heart of childhood,
and feeds the sources of an infant’s prayer; assembling in their
countless homes the Brotherhood of man around the spiritual altar of one
Father and one God, whose presence is a Temple wherein all are gathered,
and whose Spirit, dwelling in each heart, meets and returns the seekings
of all his children.
Such was the Christian vision of the CHURCH UNIVERSAL, of the union of
all good men in the worship of one God under the leadership of his
Image, growing up into him in all things, which is the head, even
Christ.
Such was the sublime idea that filled the mind of Jesus when he looked
forward in heavenly faith to the reign of his spirit, the kingdom of his
Gospel in the world. “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold;
them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be
one fold and one shepherd.”[29] “Neither pray I for these alone, but for
them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all
may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they also
may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
Such also was the magnificent and healing view that filled the hearts of
the Apostles when they protested against burdens being laid upon
Christ’s freemen; rebuked the first manifestations of a sectarian
Christianity; and would acknowledge no distinctions between those who
were walking in the steps of the same master, and moulding their souls
into the same similitude of Christ. “There is one body, and one spirit,
even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through
all, and in you all. But unto every one is given grace, according to the
measure of the gift of Christ. Till we all come in the unity of the
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: from whom the whole
body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint
supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every
part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in
love.”[30] “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. And
there are differences of administration, but the same Lord. And there
are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all
in all.” “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the
members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.
For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews
or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink
into one spirit.” “That there should be no schism in the body; but that
the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one
member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be
honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ
and members in particular.”[31]
Such is the Christian and Apostolic view of the Church of Christ on
earth. Turn we now to the actual Church. Is it a realization of this
divine image of the mind of Jesus? Is there in it a unity of spirit in
the bond of peace? Do the branches abide in the Vine? Do the scattered
and warring members make one spirit in one body? Alas! could there be a
sadder mockery, than to pretend to seek in our prevalent Christianity
any features corresponding to this divine conception?
Trinitarian Christianity is founded upon a principle directly opposed to
the realization of this prospect and vision of Jesus. It declares that
there shall be no unity but a doctrinal unity. It rejects that moral and
spiritual union which is the bond of peace, and which, as subsisting
among his followers, Christ looked forward to as the great proof to the
world that God had sent him;—and it declares that there shall be no
bonds but the bonds of Creeds. It breaks up the Christian world into
distinct and mutually repulsive parties; each claiming—not to be
disciples of the life of Christ—not to be one with him as he was one
with God, in will, aspiration, and purpose of soul, but—to be in
possession of the exact doctrinal ideas which constitute a saving faith,
of a certain intellectual process of belief, through which alone God
conducts the sinner into Heaven, and without which no soul, whatever may
be its spiritual oneness with Jesus and his Father, can be saved. Now it
is clear that a system such as this, requiring not a unity of spirit,
but a unity of opinion, cannot be that primitive Gospel, which,
according to the expectation of the Saviour, was to gather all the
believers under Heaven into a universal Church. Trinitarianism, as a
system, does not, and cannot, work out these fruits of the spirit of
Christ. It does not gather, but scatters; it does not collect into one;
but disunites, severs, and casts out. It disowns all harmony but the
harmony of metaphysical conceptions. It has no wider way of salvation,
no broader bond of peace, no more open road to Heaven, than a
coincidence of ideas, on the essence of the Deity, the mysterious modes
of the divine existence; a person in whom there are two natures; and
then, again, a nature in which there are three persons; and this as
preparatory to a moral process, in which a penalty is paid by
substitution for a guilt incurred by substitution. I ask not now whether
these ideas are true; whether they are realities of God’s mind; but I
ask, Have they ever been, or can they ever be, bonds of union for a
Church Universal? Are these the grand affinities towards which all
hearts shall be drawn; and which, breaking down our minor distinctions
into less than nothing, shall bind together the families of man in the
fellowship of one spirit? You all know, every man knows, that a
uniformity of opinion is an impossibility; that God has nowhere provided
the means for producing it; that nowhere does it exist; no—not in that
closely-fenced and strictly-articled Church, whose bosom at this very
hour is rent by heresies, even as, throughout all her history, they
shattered the unity and split the bosom even of infallible Rome; and
seeing, therefore, that there is no such doctrinal unity on earth, if
Jesus understood his own gospel, this cannot be the oneness with his
Father and himself, to which he looked forward as the Reign of his
Spirit in the world. And yet the Trinitarian Church of England, one of
whose Ministers when, on a late occasion, denouncing Unitarian heresies,
took the opportunity to give the relief of expression to his horror of
other heresies in the bosom of his own communion, and openly denounced
as heretics ordained clergymen and dignitaries of his own Church,—this
Church of England, notwithstanding all this, still claims to be the
great bulwark, among Protestants, of the unity of the Faith, the
dignified rebuker of schisms and sects; and still offers to the harassed
and distracted, to the rent and divided body of Christ, a creed—and what
a creed!—as the only bond of agreement and of peace.
Either, then, Christ miscalculated the workings of his own spirit, when
he contemplated a Universal Church as its natural fruit; or
Trinitarianism, when it destroys the spiritual union of the Church, a
moral oneness with Jesus and with his Father, by its demand for a
doctrinal conformity, is, to the extent of this operation, an
Antichrist, a departure from the healing and uniting spirit of the true
Gospel. Let me, for the sake of distinctness, put you in possession of
the exact difference between the fundamental principles of Unitarian and
Trinitarian Christianity. To a Unitarian the essentials of Christianity
are; that a man takes into his heart the moral image of Jesus, and loves
it supremely, and trusts it absolutely as his example of perfection, and
his leader up to God. If I was asked to define a Christian, I would say
that he was one who took Jesus Christ as he is presented in the gospels,
as his best idea of Duty, and his best programme of Heaven; the very
ideal of the religious spirit and life; the perfect image of God; and
the perfect model for man. These are a Unitarian’s essentials of
Christianity. To a Trinitarian the essentials of a Christian are these:
not that he receive Jesus as his image of God, his model of Duty, and
his type of Heaven,—but that he receive a certain metaphysical Creed,
certain doctrinal ideas, which “except he keep whole and undefiled,
without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” Now, a union of all
_hearts_, under the leadership of one Christ, and in the love and
reverence of one moral Spirit, is a possible thing; but a union of all
_minds_ in the reception of certain metaphysical ideas which the minds
of Milton, of Newton, and of Locke, could not find, either in Reason or
in Scripture, is not a possible thing: and therefore my first assertion
of the “practical importance” of the Unitarian Controversy is to this
effect:—that Trinitarianism, by its fundamental principle of a doctrinal
conformity, a principle not known to the true gospel, is the originating
cause of all religious disunion and strife; the creator of all schisms,
sects, and heresies; the great and effectual antagonist of any
realization of that sublimest and most heavenly conception of the
Saviour—a Universal Church, cherishing the same Hopes, studying the same
Models, trusting to the same Image of God to guide us to His presence,—a
union of all hearts, seeking to be one, even as God and Christ were one,
in the fellowship of the same spirit. This is my heaviest indictment
against the practice of Trinitarianism, that it destroys Christ’s
delightful image of his Spirit’s Reign on earth, and creates in its
place—what shall I say?—the strife and disunion, the fears of the weak
and the arrogance of the coarse; the wranglings of creeds and the
absence of love; the heat of controversy and the chill of religion,
through the midst of which we are now passing.[32]
Trinitarianism has long been the prevailing influence of the Christian
world; it holds all the religious power of these countries in its own
hands; there is nothing external to prevent its carrying into existence
its own ideas; and if in the day of its power it has not wrought the
works and realized the hopes of Christ, it must be because it has worked
in another spirit, and preached another gospel; adding to the primitive
“glad tidings” of “repentance and remission of sins,” other conditions
which are not glad tidings, and which are not Christ’s. Now not only can
we point to the actual failure in proof of the absence of the true
spirit, _but we can lay our finger upon the element of mischief_, and
demonstrate it to be the parent of the evils we deplore, the frustrator
of the hope of Christ. Trinitarianism, by demanding a doctrinal
assimilation, an intellectual instead of a spiritual union, and
wielding, as it does, the prevailing influences of religion, has, in the
day of its power, forcibly prevented the formation of that universal
Church which Christ contemplated. And until it drops from its essentials
the doctrinal oneness, and substitutes in its place a spiritual oneness
derived from obedience to God as he is manifested in Jesus, it cannot
gather into one fold, and constitute the kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
Now let us suppose, for a moment, that this doctrinal conformity is
required by Christianity, and that not TRUST in Christ, but belief of
Creeds, constitutes acceptance of the gospel. Then comes the question,
and a most perplexing one it would be, how can any one be sure that the
creed he trusts to contains exactly the ideas to which God has annexed
safety? Supposing creeds to be the essentials of Christianity, then how
can any Christian be sure that he has got the true creed? I can easily
conceive with what fear, with what apprehensions of mind, with what a
paralyzed intellect, and unconfiding heart, sinking the love of truth in
selfish terrors, a man trembling under the conviction that his
everlasting safety depended upon his reception of a doctrine, would come
to the examination of the Scriptures; I can well conceive how his
judgment would be gradually bereft of all calm and trustful
independence; how his fears and passions would slavishly draw him over
to whatever party predominated in intolerance, and in the confidence of
their assumptions, frightening him into the belief that safety was with
_them_, for that if creeds were the essentials of salvation, the more of
creed the more of certainty;—but after all this sacrifice has been
submitted to, after terror has wrought its work, and the intellect has
surrendered to the passions—after the man in the pursuit of selfish
safety has given up his Reason and his free mind, and stooped his neck
to the yoke,—I cannot see how in any way he has altered or bettered his
position; I cannot see how he has attained the end for which he has paid
such degrading wages; how he can be certain that he has got the creed
which ensures salvation;—and after having sold his birthright, parted
with his free soul for the sake of a safety built upon doctrines, he
discovers at last, _unless he is a Roman Catholic_, that he has no
absolute certainty of these doctrines being the true ones; he is still
left in doubt whether after all he is in possession of the particular
creed that works salvation—whether, after all, he has not bowed down his
soul for nothing. If God requires from men certain doctrinal convictions
as necessary to salvation, then how can any man be sure that he has got
the true convictions? Even the verbal and plenary inspiration of the
Bible, if we believed in it, which we do not, would not relieve a
Protestant Trinitarian of this difficulty: for those who agree in
believing the Bible in every word inspired, can draw from it very
different meanings, as none have reason to know better than the divines
of the English Church.