THE religious opinions of the average person in any community do not
count for much, if any one is studying them with the endeavor to find
out their bearing on what is true or what is false. This is true not
only of popular religious opinions, but of any other set of opinions
whatever; and for the simple reason that most people do not hold their
opinions as the result of any study, of any investigation, because they
have seriously tried to find out what is true, and have become
convinced that this, and not that, represents the reality of things.
Let us note for a moment and I do this rather to clear the way than
because I consider it of any very great importance how it is that the
great majority of people come by the religious opinions which they
happen to hold. I suppose it is true in thousands of cases that a man
or a woman is in this church rather than that merely as the result of
inheritance and childhood training. People inherit their religious
ideas. They are taught certain things in their childhood, they have
accepted them perhaps without any sort of question; and so they are
where they happen to be to-day. If you stop and think of it for just a
moment, you will see that this may be all right as a starting-point,
but is not quite an adequate reason why we should hold permanently, and
throughout our lives, a particular set of ideas. If all of us were to
accept opinions in this sort of fashion, and never put them behind us
or make any change, where would the growth of the world be? How would
it be possible for one generation to make a little advance on that
which preceded it, so that we could speak of the progress of mankind?
Then, when persons do make up their minds to change, to leave one
church and go to another, it is not an uncommon thing for them simply
to select a particular place of worship or a special organization for
no better reason than that they happen to like it, to be attracted to
it for some superficial cause. How many people who do leave one church
for another do it as the result of any earnest study, or real endeavor
to find the truth? And yet, if you will give the matter a moment's
serious consideration, you will see that we have no sort of right to
choose one theory rather than another, one set of ideas rather than
another, because we happen to like one thing, and not something else.
Liking or disliking, a superficial preference or aversion, is an
impertinence when dealing with these great, high, and deep questions of
God and the soul, of the true or the false.
Then I have known a great many people in my life who went to a
particular church for no better reason than mere convenience. It was
easily accessible, it was just around the corner, they did not have to
make any long journey, and did not have to put themselves out any to
get up a little earlier on Sunday morning, which they would otherwise
need to do. A mere matter of convenience! And this is so many times
allowed to settle some great question of right or wrong. Then you will
find those who select a particular church or a particular church
organization, become identified with it, merely because on a casual
visit to the place they were taken with the minister, happened to like
his appearance, his method of speaking, the way he presented his ideas.
Or perhaps they were attracted by the music. There are persons who
decide these great questions of God and truth and the soul for no more
important a reason than the organization and the capacity of the church
choir.
It is not an uncommon thing for people to attend some particular church
because it promises to be socially advantageous to them. It is
fashionable in a particular town. I have a friend, I still call him
friend, a Boston lawyer, who told me in conversation about this subject
one day that he deliberately went to the largest church he could find,
and that, if in the particular city in which he was residing the Roman
Catholic Church was in the majority, he should attend that. There are
thousands of persons who wish to be in the swim, and who are diverted
this way or that by what seems to them socially profitable. Think of
it, claiming to be followers of the Nazarene, who was outcast, spit
upon, treated with contempt, on whom the scribes and Pharisees of his
day looked down with bitterness and scorn, and who led the world for
the sake of his love for God out into a larger truth, who made himself
of no reputation, claim to be followers of him, and let a matter of
fashion decide whether they will go this way or walk in some other path
I Think of the irony of a situation like that!
Then, again, there are those who attach themselves to some one church
rather than to another because, after looking over the ground, they
made up their minds that it would be to their business advantage. They
will become associated with a set of people who can help them on in the
world. It is all very well, if there be no higher consideration, for a
person to be governed in his action by motives like these; but is it
quite right to decide a question of truth or falsehood, of God or duty,
of the consecration of the human soul, of the service of one's fellow-
men, on the basis of supposed financial advantage? There is hardly a
year goes by that persons do not come to me, considering the question
as to whether they will attend my church. I can see in a few minutes'
conversation with them that they have some purpose to gain. They wish
to be helped on in the prosecution of some scheme for their own
advancement. If they succeed, they are devout Unitarians and loyal
followers of mine. If not, within a few weeks I hear of them as devoted
attendants somewhere else, where they have been able to make their
personal plans a success.
These are some of the reasons there are worthier ones than these which
influence the crowd. There are, I say, worthier ones. Let me hint one
or two. I do not think it is any sacrilege, or betrayal of confidence,
for me to speak a name. The late Frances E. Willard, one of the ablest,
truest, most devoted women I have ever known, frankly confessed to me
in personal conversation that she was more in sympathy with my
religious ideas than of those of the Church with which she was
connected, but her love, her tender love and reverence for her mother
and the memory of her mother's religion were such that she could not
find it in her heart to break away. She loved the services her mother
loved, she loved the hymns her mother sung, she loved the associations
connected with her mother's life. All sweet, beautiful, noble; but, if
nobody from the beginning of the world had ever advanced beyond
mothers' ideas where should we be to-day? Is it not, after all, the
truest reverence for mother, in the spirit of consecration she showed
to follow the truth as you see it to-day, as she followed it as she saw
it yesterday?
So much to justify the statement I made, that the average popular
belief on any subject is not a reliable guide to a person who is
earnestly desiring to find the simple truth.
Now let us come to the answer of the specific question which I have
propounded. Why are not all educated people Unitarians? I ask this
question, not because I originated it, but because it has been put to
me, I suppose, a hundred times. People say, You claim to have studied
these matters very carefully, you have tried to find the truth, you
think you have found it. You have followed what you regard as the true
method of search. If you have found the truth, and if other people,
using this same method and being as unbiased as you, could also find
it, how does it happen that Unitarians are in the minority? Why do not
all persons who study and who are educated accept the Unitarian faith?
This question, I say, has been asked me a great many times; and it is a
question that deserves a fair, an earnest and sympathetic answer. Such
an answer I am now to try to give.
In the first place, let me make a few assertions. I have not time to
prove them this morning; but they are capable of proof. The advantage
of a scientific statement is that, though you do not stop to prove it,
you know it can be proved any time, whenever a person chooses to take
the time or trouble. For example, if I state the truth of the
Copernican system, or that the earth revolves around the sun, and you
challenge me to prove it in two minutes, I may not be able to; it may
take longer than that; but I know it can be demonstrated to-morrow or
next week or any time, because it has been demonstrated over and over
again.
I wish now to assert the truth of certain fundamental principles; and
these principles, you note, are those which constitute the peculiarity
of the Unitarian people as a body of theological believers. For
example, that this which is all around us and of which we are a part is
a universe is demonstrated beyond question. It is one, the unity of the
universe. The unity of force, the unity of substance or matter, the
unity of law, the unity of life, the unity of humanity, the unity of
the fundamental principles of ethics, the unity of the religious life
and aspiration of the world, these, I say, are demonstrated. And do you
not see that demonstrating these carries along with it the
unquestioned, the absolute demonstration of the unity of the power that
is in the universe and manifests itself through it? The unity of God?
The Lord our God is one! And this is no question of speculation, it is
demonstrated truth. Now, as to any speculative or metaphysical division
of God's nature into three parts or personalities, there is not, and
there cannot be, in the nature of things, one slightest particle of
proof. The unity is demonstrated: anything else is incapable of
demonstration.
Next, the Unitarian contention I say Unitarian, not because we
originated it by any means, but simply because we first and chiefly
among religious bodies have accepted it as to the origin and nature of
man as science has unfolded it to us, thus precluding the possibility
of the truth of any doctrine of any fall. This is not speculation, it
is not whim. It is not something picked up by the way, that a man
chooses because he likes it, and because he does not like something
else. This is demonstrated truth, as clearly and fully demonstrated as
is the law of gravity or the fact that water will freeze at a certain
temperature. Then the question of the Bible. The Unitarian position in
regard to the origin, the method of composition, the authenticity and
the authority of Biblical books, is a commonplace of scholarship. There
is no rational question in regard to it any more. Next, the question of
the origin and nature of Jesus the Christ. The naturalness of his
birth, the naturalness of his death, his pure humanity, are made
clearer and surer by every new step which investigation takes; and
there is nothing in the nature of proof that is conceivable in regard
to any other theory. If any one chooses to accept it, well; but nobody
claims, or can claim, to prove it, to settle it, to demonstrate it as
true. It becomes an article of faith, a question of voluntary belief;
but there is no possibility of holding it in any other way. So as to
the nature of salvation. It is a matter of character; a man is saved
when he is right. And that he cannot be saved in any other way is
demonstrable and demonstrated truth.
Now, these are the main principles which constitute the beliefs of
Unitarians; and in any court of reason they are able to make good their
claim against any corner. And, if there be no other motive at work
except the one clear-eyed, simple desire to find the truth, there can
be no two opinions concerning any of them.
Why, then, are not all thoughtful, educated people Unitarians? Well may
the listener ask, in wonder, if the statements I have just been making
are true. Now I propose to offer some suggestions, showing what are
some of the influences at work which determine belief, and which have
very little to do with the question as to whether the beliefs are
capable of establishing themselves as true or not.
In the first place, let us raise the question as to what is generally
meant by education. We assume that all educated people ought to agree
on all great questions; and they ought, note now what I am saying, they
ought, if they are really and truly educated, and if with a clear and
single eye they are seeking simply the truth. But, in order to
understand the situation, we need to note a good many other things that
enter into this matter of determining the religious path in which
people will walk. Now what do we mean by education? Popularly, if a man
has been to school, particularly if he is a college graduate, if he can
read a little Latin and speak French, and knows something of music, if
he has graduated anywhere, he is spoken of as educated. But is that a
correct use of language? Are we sure that a man is educated merely
because he knows a lot of things or has been through a particular
course of study? What does a human education mean? Does it not mean the
unfolding, the development of our faculties in such a way that in the
intellectual sphere we can come into contact with and possession of the
reality of things, the truth? Intellectually, is there any other object
of education than to fit a man to find the truth? And yet let me give
you a case. Here is a man, I take it as an illustration simply, not
because I have anything particular against the Catholic Church any more
than against any other body of believers, who has been through a
Catholic college, has made himself master of Catholic doctrine, become
familiar with theological and ecclesiastical literature; suppose he
knows all the languages, or a dozen of them, having them at his
fingers' ends. Do you not see that as a truth-seeker in a free world he
may not be educated at all? He may be educated, as we say, or trained
is the better word, into acceptance of a certain system of traditional
thought, that can give no good reason for itself; for his prejudices,
his loves and hates may be called into play. He may be trained into the
earnest conviction that it is his highest duty to be loyal to a
particular set of ideas.
Take the way I was educated. I grew up reading the denominational
reviews, and the denominational newspapers. I was taught that it was
dangerous and wicked to doubt. I must not think freely: that was the
one thing I was not permitted to do. I went to a theological school,
and had drilled into me year after year that such beliefs, about God
and man and Jesus and the Bible and the future world, were
unquestionably true, and that I must not look at anything that would
throw a doubt upon them. And I was sent out into the world graduated,
not as a truth-seeker, but to fight for my system, as a West Point
graduate is taught that he must fight for his country without asking
any questions.
Do you not see that this, which goes under the name of education,
instead of fitting a man to find the truth, may distinctly and
definitely unfit him, make it harder for him to find any truth except
that which is contained in the system which has been drilled into him
from his childhood up and year after year? Education, in order to fit a
man to be a truth-seeker, must be something different from this merely
teaching a man a certain system, a certain set of ideas, and drilling
him into the belief that he must defend these ideas against all
corners.
A good many people, then, who are called educated, are not educated at
all. I have had this question asked me repeatedly: If your position is
true, here is a college graduate, and here is another; and here is a
minister of such a denomination, or a priest of the Catholic Church;
why do they not accept your ideas? Do you not see, however, that this
so-called education may stand squarely in the way?
Now, in the second place, I want to dwell a little on the difficulty of
people's getting rid of a theory which possesses their minds, and
substituting for it another theory. And I wish you to note that it is
not a religious difficulty nor a theological difficulty nor a Baptist
difficulty nor a Presbyterian difficulty: it is a human difficulty.
There is no body of people on the face of the earth that is large
enough to contain all the world's bigotry. It overflows all fences and
gets into all enclosures. Discussing the subject a little while ago, by
correspondence with a prominent scientific man in New England, I got
from him the illustrations which I hold in my hand, tending to set
forth how difficult it is for scientific men themselves to get rid of a
theory which they have been working for and trying to prove, and
substitute for it another theory. I imagine that there may be a
physiological basis for the difficulty. I suggest it, at any rate. We
say that the mind tends to run in grooves of thought. That means, I
suppose, that there is something in the molecular movements of the
brain that comes to correspond to a well-trodden pathway. It is easy to
walk that path, and it is not easy to get out of it. Let it rain on the
top of a hill; and, if you watch the water, you will see that it seeks
little grooves that have been worn there by the falling of past rains,
and that the little streams obey the scientific law and follow the
lines of least resistance. There comes a big shower, a heavy downfall;
and perhaps it will wash away the surface and change the beds of these
old watercourses, create new ones. So, then, when there comes a deluge
of new truth, it washes away the ruts along which people have been
accustomed to think; and they are able to reconstruct their theories.
Now let me give you some of these scientific illustrations. First, that
heat is a mode of motion was proved by Sir Humphry Davy and Count
Rumford before 1820. In 1842 Joule, of Manchester, England, proved the
quantitative relation between mechanical energy and heat. In 1863 note
the dates Tyndall gave a course of lectures on heat as a mode of
motion, and was even then sneered at by some scientific men for his
temerity. Tait, of Glasgow, was particularly obstreperous. To-day
nobody questions it; and we go back to Sir Humphry Davy and Count
Rumford for our proofs, too. It was proved scientifically proved then;
but it took the world all these years, even the scientific world, to
get rid of its prejudices in favor of some other theory, and see the
force of the proof.
Now, in the second place, it was held originally that light was a
series of corpuscles that flew off from a heated surface; but Thomas
Young, about the year 1804, demonstrated the present accepted theory of
light. But it was fought for years. Only after a long time did the
scientific world give up its prejudice in favor of the theory that was
propounded by Newton. But to-day we go back to Young, and see that he
demonstrated it beyond question.
In the third place, take another fact. Between 1830 and 1845 Faraday
worked out a theory of electrical and magnetic phenomena. It was proved
to be correct. Maxwell, a famous chemist in London, looked over the
matter, and persuaded himself that Faraday was right; but nobody paid
much attention to either of them; until after a while the scientific
world, through the work of its younger men, those least wedded to the
old-time beliefs, conceded that it must be true.
The Nebular Theory was proved and worked out by Kant more than a
hundred and thirty years ago. In 1799 Laplace worked it out again; but
it was a long time before it was accepted. And now we go back to Kant
and Laplace for our demonstration.
Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859. But it was
attacked by scientists as well as theologians on every hand. Huxley
even looked at it with a good deal of hesitancy before he accepted it.
To-day, however, everybody goes back to the "Origin of Species," and
finds the whole thing there, demonstration and all.
Lyell published a book on the antiquity of man in 1863. It was twenty-
five years before all the scientific men of the world were ready to
give up the idea that man had been on the earth more than six or eight
thousand years.
So we find that it is not theologians only; it is scientists, too, that
find it difficult to accept new ideas. I know scientific men among my
personal friends who are simply incapable of being hospitable to an
idea that would compel them to reconstruct a theory that they have
already accepted. Why are not all educated men Unitarians? Why do not
scientific men accept demonstrated truth when it is first demonstrated
as truth? It puts them to too much trouble. It touches their pride.
They do not like to feel that they have thrown away half their lives
following an hypothesis that is not capable of being substantiated.
Then, in the third place, there are men, and educated men as the world
goes, who deliberately decline to study new truth; and they are men in
the scientific field and in the religious field. They purposely refuse
to look at anything which would tend to disturb their present accepted
belief. In my boyhood I used to hear Dr. John O. Fiske, a famous
preacher in Maine. He told a friend of mine, in his old age, that he
simply refused to read any book that would tend to disturb his beliefs.
Professor William G. T. Shedd, one of the most distinguished
theologians of this country, a leading Presbyterian divine, published
so I am not slandering him by saying it a statement that he did not
consider any book written since the seventeenth century worth his
reading. And yet we have a new world since the seventeenth century, a
new revelation of God and of man. To follow the teaching of the
seventeenth century would be to go wrong in almost every conceivable
direction. What is the use of paying any attention to the theological
or religious opinions of a man who avows an attitude like that?
Faraday, to come now to a scientific illustration, so that you will not
think I am too hard on theologians, Faraday belonged to one of the most
orthodox sects in England; and he used to say deliberately that he kept
his religion and his science apart. He says, "When I go into my closet,
I lock the door of my laboratory; and, when I go into my laboratory, I
lock the door of my closet." He did very wisely to keep them apart;
for, if they had got together, there would certainly have been an
explosion.
Another scientific illustration is Agassiz. Agassiz unconsciously
wrought out and developed some of the most wondrous and beautiful
proofs of evolution that the world has ever known; and yet he fought
evolution to the last day of his life, simply because he had accepted
the other theory. And he got it into his head that there was something
about evolution that tended to injure religion and degrade man, not a
rational objection, not a scientific objection, but a feeling, a
prejudice.
There is another class of people that I must refer to. Institutions and
organizations come into being, created, in the first place, as the
embodiment and expression of new and grand truths; and after a Arile
their momentum becomes such that the persons who are connected with
them cannot control their movements, and these persons become victims
of the organizations and institutions to which they belong. So, when a
new truth appears, the old organization rolls on like a Juggernaut car,
and crushes the life, so far as it is possible, out of everything in
its way. Take, for example, and note what a power it is and what an
unconscious bribe it is to those who belong to it, the great Anglican
Church. A man's ambitions, if he has learning, power, ability, tell him
that there is the Archbishopric of Canterbury ahead of him as a
possibility. His hopes, the chances of promotion and power, are with
the institution. And, then, it is such a tremendous social influence.
It is no wonder, then, that men who are not over-strong, who have not
the stuff in them out of which heroes are made, should cling to the
institution and remain loyal to it, even while they are false to the
truth that used to animate it and for which alone any institution ought
to exist.
Let me give you another illustration. Edward Temple, late Bishop of
London, and who is now the Archbishop of Canterbury, had a priest of
the established Church come to him and make a confession of holding
certain beliefs which he knew were heretical. The archbishop said to
him frankly: As Edward Temple, I believe them, I am in sympathy with
your views. As the head of the English Church, I must be opposed to
them; and the opinions which you hold cannot be tolerated. That is what
the influence of a great organization may come to.
Let me give you another concrete illustration. Here is our American
Bible Society, which publishes and circulates millions of Bibles all
over the world. It is obliged, as at present organized, to print and
distribute the King James version of the Bible; but there is not a
scholar or a minister connected with the organization anywhere who does
not know at least, since the revision at any rate that in many
important respects the King James version is not an accurate
translation of the original, even if that is conceded to be infallible.
So that this organization stands to-day in the position of being
obliged to circulate all over the world for God's truth any number of
teachings that are simply blunders of the translator, of the copyist,
or interpolated passages that have come down from the past.
So men in every direction become persuaded that they must be loyal to
the organization. I know cases where a minister in conversation with a
friend has said: So long as I remain a member of this Church, I have
got a great institution back of me, and I can accomplish so much
socially and in every way on account of it. I know I do not believe
half of the creed, but any number of other ministers are in the same
box. And so they stay true to the organization, while truth to the
truth is sacrificed.
One other influence that keeps so many of these old ideas alive or
prolongs their existence beyond the natural term is right in here. Any
number of men, educated, strong, prominent men, give their countenance
and influence to the support of old-time religious organizations
because they believe that somehow or other they are serviceable as a
police force in the world, they keep people quiet, they help preserve
social order. I have had people over and over again say that they
believed it would be a great calamity to disturb the Roman Catholic
Church, because it keeps so many people quiet. Do you know, friends, I
regard this as the worst infidelity that I know of on the face of the
earth. It is doubt of God, his ability to lead and manage his world
without cheating it. It is doubt of truth, as to whether it is safe for
anybody except very wise people, like a few of us! It is doubt of
humanity, its capacity to find the truth, and believe in it and live on
it. Do you believe that God has made this universe so that it is
healthier for the masses to live on a lie than it is for them to live
on the truth? Is that your confidence in God? Is that the kind of God
you worship? It is not the kind I worship. There is no danger of the
ignorant masses of the world getting wise too fast, judging by the
experience of the past up to the present time. There is only one thing
that is safe; and that is truth. Do you know what the trouble was at
the time of the French Revolution? It was not that the people began to
reason and think, and lost their faith, as so frequently said by
superficial historians: it was that they waked up at last to the idea
that the aristocracy and the priesthood had not only been fleecing them
financially and keeping them down socially, but had been fooling them
religiously, until at last they broke away, having no confidence left
in God or priest or educated people or nobility or anything. No wonder
they made havoc. If you want to make a river dangerous, dam it up, keep
the waters back, until by and by the pressure from the hills and the
mountains becomes so great that it can be restricted no longer; and it
not only breaks through the dam, but bursts all barriers, floods the
country, sweeps away homes, farms, cattle, human beings, towns, cities,
leaving ruin in its path. Let rivers flow as God meant them to; and
they will be safe.
So let the world learn,-- learn gradually, and adapt itself to new
truth as it learns, and there will be an even and orderly march of
human progress. The danger is in our setting ourselves up as being
wiser than God, wiser than the universe, and doling out to the
multitude the little fragments of truth that we think are fitted for
their digestion. The impertinence of it, and the impiety of it!
I must not stop to deal with other reasons which lie in my mind this
morning. You can think along other channels for yourselves. I have
simply wished to suggest that, in the kind of world we are living in,
you may not be sure, at any particular age in history, that a set of
ideas is going to be accepted by the multitude merely because they are
true; and, because they are not accepted at once, you are not,
therefore, to come to the conclusion that they are not true. There
never has been a time in the history of the world when the truth was
not in the minority. Go back to the time of Jesus: do you not remember
how the people asked whether any of the scribes or the Pharisees
believed on him? They were ready to accept him if they could go with
the crowd; but it never occurred to them to raise the question as to
whether it was their duty to go with him while he was alone, as to
whether two or three might not represent some higher conception of God,
some forward step on the part of humanity. Consider for just a moment,
let it be in literature, in art, in government, in ethics, anywhere,
find out where the crowd is, and you will find where the truth is not.
Disraeli made a very profound remark when he said that a popular
opinion was always the opinion which was about to pass away. By the
time a notion gets accepted by the crowd, the deeper students are
seeing some higher and finer truth towards which they are reaching.
The pioneers are always in the minority. The vanguard of an army is
never so large as the main body that comes along behind after the way
has been laid out for it.
"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust."
That is Lowell's suggestion, in that famous poem of his. If we care for
truth, we shall not wait until it becomes popular. The truth in any
direction to-day, if we had the judgment of the world, would be voted
down. Christianity would be voted down among the religions;
Protestantism would be voted down in Christianity; and the highest and
finest thinkers in the Protestant churches would be voted down by the
majority of the members.
Do not be disturbed, then, or troubled, because you have not the crowd
and the shouting accompanying you on your onward march; and remember
that there must be something of heroism in this consecration to truth.
I wish to quote to you, as bearing on this truth, a wonderfully fine
word which I have just come across in a recent number of the
Cosmopolitan Magazine, the word of the Hon. Thomas B. Reed, the Speaker
of the House of Representatives. He says, "One with God may be a
majority; but crucifixion and the fagot may antedate the counting of
the votes." But, if it means crucifixion and the fagot, and we claim to
be followers of the Nazarene and worthy of him, even for that we shall
not shrink. It is our business simply to raise the question, and try to
answer it or ourselves, Which way must I go to follow the truth? And
that way I must tread, whether it means life or death, whatever the
consequences; for the truth-seeker is the only God-seeker.