FOR a Scripture suggestion touching the principle involved in my
subject, I refer you to the words found in the fifth chapter of the
Gospel according to Matthew, the forty-third and the forty-fourth
verses, "Ye have heard that it hath been said; but I say unto you." I
take these phrases simply as containing the principle to which I wish
to call your earnest attention at the outset.
Jesus here recognizes the fact that the religious beliefs of one age
are not necessarily adequate to a succeeding age. So he says over and
over in this chapter, Ye have heard that it hath been said by the
fathers, by the teachers, the religious leaders in old times, so and
so: but I say unto you something else, something in advance, something
beyond.
If any one chooses to say that Jesus was infallible, inspired, and
therefore had a right to modify the teachings of the fathers, still
this does not change the principle at all. In any case he recognized
the fact that the beliefs of the old time might not be sufficient to
the new time.
And, even if any one should take the position that Jesus was the second
person in the Trinity, that he was the one who revealed the old-time
truth, and also revealed the new, still the principle is not changed:
it is conceded, whatever way we look at it. For, even if he were God,
he is represented as giving the people in the time of Moses, the time
of David, certain precepts, certain things to believe, certain things
to do, and then, recognizing at a later time that they were not
adequate, changing those precepts, and giving them something larger,
broader, deeper, to accept and to practise.
Because this principle is here involved, I have taken these words as my
Scripture point of departure.
Now to come to the question as to why Unitarians have no creed. Of
course, the answer, though it sounds like an Hibernicism, is to say
that they do have a creed. Not a creed in the sense in which some of
the older churches use the word. If by creed you mean a written or
published statement of belief, one that is supposed to be fixed and
final, one that is a test of religious fellowship, which is placed at
the door of the church so that no one not accepting it is able to
enter, why, then, we have no creed. But, in the broader sense of the
word, it means belief; and Unitarians believe quite as much, and, in my
judgment, things far nobler and grander, than those which have been
believed in the past.
We are ready, if any one wishes it, to write out our creed. We are
perfectly willing that it should be printed. We can put it into twelve
clauses, like the Apostles' Creed; we can make thirty-nine clauses or
articles, like the Creed of the Anglican Church; we can arrange it any
way that is satisfactory to the questioner. Only we will not promise to
believe all of it to-morrow; we will not say that we will never learn
anything new; we will not make it a test of fellowship; we will admit
not only to our meeting-house, but to our church organization, if they
wish to come, people who do not believe all the articles of the creed
that we shall write. Perhaps we will admit people who do not believe
any of it; for our conception of a church is not the old conception.
What was that? That it was a sort of ark in which the saved were taken,
to be carried over the stormy sea of this life and into the haven of
eternal felicity beyond. As opposed to that, our conception of the
church is that it is a school, it is a place where souls are to be
trained, to be educated; and so we would as soon refuse to admit an
ignorant pupil to a school as to refuse to admit a person on account of
his belief to our church. We welcome all who wish to come and learn;
and if, after they have studied with us for a year, they do not then
accept all the points which some of us believe, and hold to be very
important, we do not turn them out even on that account.
Unitarians, then, do have a creed, only it is not fixed, it is not
final, and it is not the condition of religious fellowship.
Now I wish to give you some of the reasons, as they lie in my mind, for
the attitude which we hold in regard to this matter.
I do not believe in having a fixed and final statement of belief which
we are not at liberty to criticise or question or change. Why? Because
I love the truth, because I am anxious to find the truth, because I
wish to be perfectly free to seek for the truth.
Our first reason, then, is for the sake of the truth.
Now let me present this to you under three or four minor heads. The
universe is infinite, God is infinite, truth is infinite. If, then, on
the background of the infinite you draw a circle, no matter how large
it may be, no matter how wide its diameter, do you not see that you
necessarily shut out more than you shut in? Do you not see that you
limit the range of thought, set bounds to investigation, and that you
pledge yourselves beforehand that the larger part of truth, of God, of
the universe, you will never study, you will never investigate?
There is another point bearing on this matter. If a man pledges himself
to accept and abide by a fixed and final creed, he does it either for a
reason or without a reason. If he does it without a reason, then there
is, of course, no reason why we should follow his example. If he has a
reason, then two things: either that reason is adequate, sound,
conclusive, or it is not. If it is not adequate, then we ought to study
and criticise and find that out, and be free to discover some reason
that is adequate. If the reason for his holding the creed is an
adequate one, then, certainly, no harm can be done by investigation of
it, by asking questions.
If the men who hold these old creeds and defend them can give in the
court of reason a perfectly good account of themselves, if they can
bring satisfactory credentials, then all our questioning, all our
criticism, all our investigation, cannot possibly do the creeds any
harm. It will only mean that we shall end by being convinced ourselves,
and shall accept the creeds freely and rationally.
It has always seemed to me a very strange attitude of mind for a man to
feel perfectly convinced that a certain position is sound and true, and
to be angry when anybody asks a question about it. If there are good
reasons for holding it, instead of calling names, why not show us the
reasons? He who is afraid to have his opinions questioned, he who is
angry when you ask him for evidence, to give a reason for the position
that he holds, shows that he is not at all certain of it. He admits by
implication that it is weak. He shows an attitude of infidelity instead
of an attitude of faith, of trust.
There is no position which I hold to-day that I consider so sacred that
people are not at liberty to ask any questions about it they please;
and, if they do not see a good reason for accepting it, I am certainly
not going to be angry with them for declining to accept. The attitude
of truth is that of welcome to all inquiry. It rejoices in daylight, it
does not care to be protected from investigation.
Then there is another reason still, another point to be made in regard
to this matter. People are not very likely to find the truth if they
are frightened, if they are warned off, if they are told that this or
that or another thing is too sacred to be investigated. I have known
people over and over again in my past experience who long wished they
might be free to accept some grander, nobler, more helpful view of
truth, and yet have been trained and taught so long that it was wicked
to doubt, that it was wicked to ask questions, that they did not dare
to open their minds freely to the incoming of any grander hope.
If you tell people that they may study just as widely as they please,
but, when they get through, they must come back and settle down within
the limits of certain pre-determined opinions, what is the use of their
wider excursion? And, if you tell them that, unless they accept these
final conclusions, God is going to be angry with them, they are going
to injure their own immortal souls, they are threatening the welfare of
the people on every hand whom they influence, how can you expect them
to study and come to conclusions which are entitled to the respect of
thoughtful people?
I venture the truth of the statement that, if you should inquire over
this country to-day, you would find that the large majority of people
who have been trained in the old faith are in an attitude of fear
towards modern thought. Thousands of them would come to us to-day if
they were not kept back by this inherited and ingrained fear as to the
danger of asking questions.
Do I not remember my own experience of three years' agonizing battle
over the great problems that were involved in these questions, afraid
that I was being tempted of the devil, afraid that I was risking the
salvation of my soul, afraid that I might be endangering other people
whom I might influence, never free to study the Bible, to study
religious questions as I would study any other matter on the face of
the earth on account of being haunted by this terrible dread?
And, then, there is one other point. I must touch on these very
briefly. The acceptance of these creeds on the part of those who do
hold to them does not, after all, prevent the growth of modern thought.
It does hinder it, so far as they are concerned; but the point I wish
to make is this, that these creeds do not answer the purpose for which
they were constructed. They are supposed to be fixed and final
statements of divine truth, which are not to be questioned and not to
be changed.
Dr. Richard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, the famous Congregational minister,
said a few years ago that the idea of progress in theology was absurd,
because the truth had once for all been given to the saints in the
past, and there was no possibility of progress, because progress
implied change. And yet, in spite of the effort that has been made to
keep the faith of the world as it was in the past, the change is
coming, the change does come every day; and it puts the people who are
trying to prevent the change coming in an attitude of what shall I say
I do not wish to make a charge against my brethren, it puts them in a
very curious attitude indeed towards the truth. They must not accept a
new idea if it conflicts with the old creed, however much they may be
convinced it is true. If they do accept it, then what? They must either
leave the Church or they must keep still about it, and remain in an
attitude of appearing to believe what they really do not believe. Or
else they must do violence to the creed, reinterpreting it in such a
way as to make it to them what the framers of it had never dreamed of.
Do you not see the danger that there is here of a person's disingenuous
attitude towards the truth, danger to the moral fibre, danger to the
progress of man? Take as a hint of it the way the Bible has been
treated. People have said that the Bible was absolutely infallible:
they have taken that as a foregone conclusion; and then, when they
found out beyond question that the world was not created in six days,
what have they done? Frankly accepted the truth? No, they have tried to
twist the Bible into meaning something different from what it plainly
says. It expressly says days, bounded by morning and evening; but no,
it must mean long periods of time. Why? Because science and the Bible
must somehow be reconciled, no matter if the Bible is wrenched and
twisted from its real meaning.
And so with regard to the creeds. The creeds say that Christ descended
into hell; that is, the underworld. People come to know that there is
no underworld; and, instead of frankly admitting that that statement in
the creed is not correct, they must torture it out of its meaning, and
make it stand for something that the framers of it had never heard of.
I think it would greatly astonish the writers of the Bible and the
Church Fathers if they could wake up to-day, and find out that they
meant something when they wrote those things which had never occurred
to them at the time.
Is this quite honest? Is it wise for us to put ourselves in this
attitude?
I wish to speak a little further in this matter as to not preventing
the coming in of modern thought, and to take one illustration. Look at
Andover Seminary to-day. The Andover Creed was arranged for the express
purpose of keeping fixed and unchangeable the belief of the Church..
Its founders declared that to be their purpose. They were going to
establish the statement of belief, so that it should not be open to
this modern criticism, which had resulted in the birth of Unitarianism
in New England; and, in order to make perfectly certain of it, they
said that the professors who came there to teach the creed must not
only be sound when they were settled, but they must be re-examined
every five years. This was to prevent their changing their minds during
the five years and remaining on there, teaching some false doctrine
while the overseers and managers were not aware of it. So every five
years the professors and teachers of Andover have to reaffirm solemnly
their belief in the old creed.
It is not for me to make charges against them; but it is for me to make
the statement that so suspicious have the overseers and managers come
to be of some of the professors in the seminary that they have been
tried more than once for heresy; and everybody knows that the leading
professors there to-day do not believe the creed in the sense in which
it was framed.
And, to illustrate how this is looked upon by some of the students, let
me tell you this. My brother was a graduate of Andover; and not long
ago he said to me that when the time came around for the professors to
reaffirm their allegiance to the creed, one of the other students came
into his room one day, and said, "Savage, let's go up and see the
professors perjure themselves."
This was the attitude of mind of one of the students. This is the way
he looked at it. I am not responsible for his opinion; but is it quite
wise, is it best for the truth, is it for the interests of religion, to
have theological students in this state of mind towards their
professor?
Modern thought does come into the minds of men: they cannot escape it.
What does it mean? It means simply a new, higher, grander revelation of
God. Is it wise for us to put ourselves into such a position that it
shall seem criminal and evil for us to accept it? If we pledge
ourselves not to learn the things we can know, then we stunt ourselves
intellectually. If, after we have pledged ourselves, we accept these
things and remain as we are, I leave somebody else to characterize such
action, action which, in my judgment, and so far as my observation
goes, is not at all uncommon.
We then propose to hold ourselves free so far as a fixed and final
creed is concerned, because we wish to be able to study, to find and
accept the truth. There is another reason. For the sake of God, because
we wish to find and come into sympathy with him, and love him and serve
him, we refuse to be bound by the thoughts of the past.
What do we mean by coming into a knowledge of God? Let me illustrate a
moment by the relation which we may sustain to another man. You do not
necessarily come close to a man because you touch his elbow on the
street. The people who lived in Shakspere's London might not have been
so near to Shakspere as is Mr. Furness, the great Shakspere critic to-
day, or Mr. Rolfe, of Cambridge.
Physical proximity does not bring us close to a person. We may be near
to a friend who is half-way round the world: there may be sympathetic
heart-beats that shall make us conscious of his presence night and day.
We may be close alongside of a person, but alienated from him,
misunderstanding him, and really farther away from him than the
diameter of the solar system. If, then, we wish to get near to God, and
to know him, we must become like him. There must be love, tenderness,
unselfishness. We must have the divine characteristics and qualities;
and then we shall feel his presence, know and be near him.
People may find God, and still have very wrong theories about him; just
as a farmer may raise a good crop without understanding much about
theories of sunshine or of soil. But the man who does understand about
them will be more likely to raise a good crop, because he goes about it
intelligently; while the other simply blunders into it. So, if we have
right thoughts about God, it is easier for us to get into sympathy with
him. If we think about him as noble and sweet and grand and true and
loving, we shall be more likely to respond to these qualities that call
out the best and the finest feelings in ourselves.
I do not say that it is absolutely necessary to have correct theories
of God. There have been good men in all ages, there have been noble
women in all ages, in all religions, in all the different sects of
Christendom. There are lovely characters among the agnostics. I have
known sweet and true and fine people who thought themselves atheists. A
man may be grand in spite of his theological opinions one way or the
other. He may have a horrible picture of God set forth in his creed,
and carry a loving and tender one in his heart. So he may be better
than the God of his creed. All this is true; but, if we have, I say,
right thoughts about him, high and fine ideals, we are more likely to
come into close touch and sympathy with him.
And, then, and here is a point I wish to emphasize and make perfectly
clear, this arbitrary assumption of infallibility cultivates qualities
and characteristics which are un and anti-divine.
Let us see what Jesus had to say about this. The people of his time who
represented more than any others this infallibility idea were the
Pharisees. They felt perfectly sure that they were right. They felt
perfectly certain that they were the chosen favorites of God. There was
on their part, then, growing out of this conception of the
infallibility of their position, the conceit of being the chosen and
special favorites of the Almighty. They looked with contempt, not only
upon the Gentiles, who were outside of the peculiarly chosen people,
but upon the publicans, upon all of their own nation who were not
Pharisees, and who were not scrupulously exact concerning the things
which they held to be so important.
What did Jesus think and say about them? You remember the parable of
the Pharisee and the publican. Jesus said that this poor sinning
publican, who smote upon his breast, and said, "God be merciful to me a
sinner," was the one that God looked upon with favor, not the Pharisee,
who thanked God that he was not as the other people were. And, if there
is any class in the New Testament that Jesus scathes and withers with
the hot lightning of his scorn and his wrath, it is these infallible
people, who are perfectly right in their ideas, and who look with
contempt upon people who are outside of the pale of their own inherited
infallible creeds and opinions.
We believe, then, that the people who are free to study the splendors
of God in the universe, in human history, in human life, and free to
accept all new and higher and finer ideas, are more likely to find God,
and come into sympathetic and tender relations with him, than those who
are bound to opinions by the supposed fixed and revealed truths of the
past.
We reject, then, these old-time creeds for another reason, for the sake
of man. A long vista of thought and illustration stretches out before
me as I pronounce these words; but I can only touch upon a point here
or there.
One of the most disastrous things that have happened in the history of
the past and it has happened over and over again is this blocking and
hindering of human advance, until by and by the tide, the growing
current, becomes too strong to be held back any more; and it has swept
away all barriers and devastated society, politically, socially,
religiously, morally, and in every other way.
And why? Simply because the natural flow of human thought, the natural
growth of human opinion, has been hindered artificially by the
assumption of an infallibility on the part of those who have tried to
keep the world from growth.
Suppose you teach men that certain theological opinions are identical
with religion, until they believe it. The time comes when they cannot
hold those opinions any more, and they break away; and they give up
religion, and perhaps the sanctities of life, which they are accustomed
to associate with religion.
Take the time of the French Revolution. People went mad. They were
opposed not only to the State: they were opposed to the Church. They
tried to abolish God, they tried to abolish the Ten Commandments; they
tried to abolish everything that had been so long established and
associated with the old regime.
Were the people really enemies of God? Were they enemies of religion?
Were they enemies of truth? No: it was a caricature of God that they
were fighting, it was a caricature of religion that they were opposed
to. When Voltaire declared that the Church was infamous, it was not
religion that he wished to overthrow: it was this tyranny that had been
associated with the dominance of the Church for so many ages.
This is the result in one direction of attempting to hold back the
natural growth and progress of the world. If you read the history of
the Church for the last fifteen hundred years until within a century or
two, and by the Church I mean that organization that has claimed to
speak infallibly for God, you will find that it has been associated
with almost everything that has hindered the growth of the world. I
cannot go into details to illustrate it. It has interfered with the
world's education. There is only one nation in Europe to-day where
education has not been wrenched out of the hands of the priesthood in
the interests of man, and that even by Catholics themselves; and that
country is Spain. It pronounced its ban on the study of the universe
under the name of science. It made it a sin for Galileo to discover the
moons of Jupiter. And Catholic and Protestant infallibility alike
denounced Newton, one of the noblest men and the grandest scientists
that the world has ever seen, because in proclaiming the law of
gravity, they said, he was taking the universe out of the hands of God
and establishing practical atheism.
So almost everything that has made the education, the political, the
industrial, the social growth of the world, this infallibility idea has
stood square in the way of, and done its best to hinder. Take, for
example, an illustration. When chloroform was discovered, the Church in
Scotland opposed its use in cases of childbirth, because it said it was
a wicked interference with the judgment God pronounced on Eve after the
fall.
So, in almost every direction, whatever has been for the benefit of the
world has been opposed in the interests of old-time ideas, until the
whole thing culminated at last in this: Here is this nineteenth century
of ours, which has done more for the advancement of man than the
preceding fifteen centuries all put together. Political liberty,
religious liberty, universal education, the enfranchisement and
elevation of women, the abolition of slavery, temperance, almost
everything has been achieved, until the world, the face of it, has been
transformed. And yet Pope Pius IX., in an encyclical which he issued a
little while before his death, pronounced, ex-cathedra and infallibly,
the opinion that this whole modern society was godless. And yet, as I
said, this godless modern world has done more for man and for the glory
of God than the fifteen hundred years of church dominance that preceded
it.
For the sake of man, then, that intellectually, politically, socially,
industrially, every other way, he may be free to grow, to expand, to
adopt all the new ideas that promise higher help, hope, and freedom,
for the sake of man, we refuse to be bound by the inherited and fixed
opinions of the past.
Now two or three points I wish to speak of briefly, as I near the
close.
We are charged sometimes, because we have no creed, with having no bond
of union whatever. As I said a few Sundays ago, they say that we are
all at loose ends because we are not fixed and bound by a definite
creed.
What is God's method of keeping a system like this solar one of ours
together? Does he fence it in? Does he exert any pressure from outside?
Or does he rather place at the centre a luminous and attractive body,
capable of holding all the swinging and singing members of the system
in their orbits, as they play around this great source of life and of
light? God's method is the method of illumination and attraction. That
is the method which we have adopted. Instead of fencing men in and
telling them to climb over that fence at their peril, we have placed a
great, luminous, attractive truth at the centre, the pursuit of truth,
the love of truth, the search for God, the desire to benefit and help
on mankind. And we trust to the power of these great central truths to
attract and keep in their orbits all the free activities of the
thousands of minds and hearts that make up our organization.
Then there is one more point. Suppose we wanted an infallible creed;
suppose it was ever so important; suppose the experience of the world
had proved that it was very desirable indeed that we should have one.
What are we going to do about it? I suppose that men in other
departments of life than the ecclesiastical would like an infallible
guide. Men engaged in business would like an infallible handbook that
would point them the way to success. The gold hunters would like an
infallible guide to the richest ores. Navigators on the sea would like
infallible methods of manning and sailing their ships. The farmer would
like to know that he was following an infallible method to success. It
would be very desirable in many respects; it would save us no end of
trouble.
But it is admitted that in these other departments of life, whether we
want infallible guides or not, we do not have them. And I think, if you
will look at the matter a little deeply and carefully, you will become
persuaded that it would not be the best for us if we could. Men not
only wish to gain certain ends, but, if they are wise, they wish more
than that, to cultivate and develop and unfold themselves, which they
can only do by study, by mistakes, by correcting mistakes, by finding
out through experience what is true and what is false. In this process
of study and experience they find themselves, something infinitely more
important than any external fact or success which they may discover or
achieve.
So I believe that a similar thing is true in the religious life. It
might be a great saving of trouble if we were sure we had an infallible
guide. I am inclined to think that a great many persons who go into the
Roman Catholic Church, in this modern time, go there because they are
tired of thinking, and wish to shift the responsibility of it on to
some one else.
It is tiresome, it is hard work. Sometimes we would like to escape it:
we would like infallible guides. But I have studied the world with all
the care that I could; and I have never been able to find the materials
out of which I could construct an infallible guide, if I wanted it ever
so much.
Whether it is important or not to have infallible teaching in the
theological realm, there is no such thing as infallibility that is
accessible to us; and I, for one, do not believe that it would be best
for us if there were. God is treating us more wisely and kindly than,
if we were able, we would treat ourselves; because it is not the
discovery of this or that particular fact or truth that is so important
as is the development of our own intellectual and moral and spiritual
natures in the search for truth.
Lessing said a very wise thing when he declared that, if God should
offer him the perfect truth in one hand and the privilege of seeking
for it in the other, he should accept the privilege of search as the
nobler and more valuable gift, because, in this seeking, we develop
ourselves, we cultivate the Divine, and work our natures over into the
likeness of God.
And now at the end I wish simply to say that God has given us the
better thing in letting us freely and earnestly and simply investigate
and look after the truth, cultivating ourselves in the process, and
being wrought over ever more and more into the likeness of the divine.
And I wish also to say, for the comfort of those who may think that
this lack of infallible guides is a serious matter, it may astonish you
to have me say it, that there is not a single matter of any practical
importance in our moral and religious life concerning which there is
any doubt whatsoever. If anybody tells you that he is not living a
religious life or not living a moral life, for the lack of light and
guidance, do not believe him.
What are the things that are in question? What are the things of which
we are sure? Take, for example, the matter of Biblical criticism, as to
who wrote the book of Chronicles, as to whether Deuteronomy was written
by Moses or compiled in the time of King Josiah. Are there any great
spiritual problems waiting for those questions to be settled? Do you
need to have that matter made clear before you know whether you ought
to be an honest man in your business, whether you ought to judge
charitably of a friend who has gone astray, whether you ought to be
helpful towards your neighbors, whether you ought to be kind to your
wife, and whether you ought to lovingly train and cultivate your
children?
Take another of the great questions, as to the authorship of the Gospel
of John. I shall be immensely interested in the settlement of that if
the time ever comes when it is settled; but it would be a purely
critical interest that I should have. I am not going to wait until that
is settled before I lead a religious life. I am not going to let that
stand in the way of my helping on the progress of the world.
I tell you, friends, that these matters that are in doubt, that need an
infallibility to settle them, are not the practical matters at all. We
look off into the vast universe around us, and question about God. Is
he personal? Can we have the old ideas about him? One thing is settled:
we know we are the product of and in the presence of an Eternal Order,
and that knowing and keeping the laws of the universe mean life and
happiness, but the opposite means death. That is the practical part of
it.
We know that the Power that is in this universe is making gradually
through the ages for righteousness; and we know that the righteous and
helpful life is the only manly life for us to lead, for our own sake,
for the sake of those we can touch and influence.
Are we going to wait for criticism to settle metaphysical problems
before we do anything about these great practical matters?
Whatever your theory about Jesus may be, you can at least be like him,
and wait; and, when you see him, you will love him, and know the truth
about him, if you cannot before.
Matthew Arnold, an agnostic, has put into two or three lines, which I
wish to read now at the end, what might well be the creed of the person
who doubts so much that he thinks nothing is settled. If you cannot say
any more than this, here is all that is absolutely necessary to the
very noblest life:
"Hath man no second life? Pitch this one high. Sits there no Judge in
heaven our sin to see? More strictly, then, the inward judge obey. Was
Christ a man like us? Ah I let us try If we, then, too, can be such men
as he."