THE UNITARIANS.
"In the apostolical Fathers we find," writes the Rev. Islay Burns, "for
the most part only the simple Biblical statements of the deity and
humanity of Christ in the practical form needed for general edification.
Of those fathers Ignatius is the most deeply imbued with the conviction
that the crucified Jesus is God incarnate, and indeed frequently calls
Him, without qualification, God. The development of Christology in the
scientific doctrine of the Logos begins with Justin and culminates in
Origen. From him there proceed two opposite modes of conception, the
Athanasian and the Arian, of which the former at last triumphs in the
Council of Nice, and confirms its victory in the Council of
Constantinople." By the Ebionites Christ was regarded as a mere man. By
the Gnostics he was considered as superhuman; but in that capacity as one
of a very numerous class. The doctrine of the absolute unity of God,
alike in essence and personal subsistence, was held by the Monachians,
who are divided respectively into Dynamistic and Modalistic. As the
latter held that the whole fulness of the Deity dwelt in Christ and only
found in him a peculiar mode of manifestation, it was assumed that the
natural inference was that the Father himself had died on the Cross.
Hence to these heretics the name of Patripassians was applied by the
orthodox. Sabellius, who maintained a Trinity, not of divine Persons but
of successive manifestations under the names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
was one of the chief Patripassians. The Arian controversy, as Dean
Stanley shows, turned on the relations of the divine persons before the
first beginning of time.
If Dean Stanley be correct, at this time the Abyssinian Church is
agitated by seventy distinct doctrines as to the union of the two natures
in Christ. It is clear, then, no one man can epitomize all that has been
uttered and written on this pregnant theme, over which the Church
contended fiercely three hundred years. "Latin Christianity," writes
Dean Milman, "contemplated with almost equal indifference Nestorianism
and all its prolific race, Eutychianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism."
When the Reformation quickened free inquiry and religious life, Socinus
appeared; the epitaph on his tomb shows what his friends thought of his
doctrine. "Luther took off the roof of Babylon, Calvin threw down the
walls, Socinus dug up the foundations." Furious persecution was the fate
of the holders of his opinions; Servetus was burnt by Calvin; and Joan
Bocher was sentenced to a similar fate by the boy-king Edward VI. for
denying the doctrine of the Trinity. With tears in his eyes as he signed
the warrant, he appealed to the Archbishop. "My Lord Archbishop, in this
case I resign myself to your judgment; you must be answerable to God for
it."
Unitarianism has made way in England. When Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act
became law the Unitarians in England were a small sect, and had not a
single place of worship. It was not till 1779 that it ceased to be
required of Dissenting ministers that they should subscribe to the
Articles of the Church of England previous to taking the benefit of the
Toleration Act, and even this small boon was twice thrown out in the
Upper House by the King's friends and the Bishops. In 1813, however, one
of the most cruelly persecuting statutes which had ever disgraced the
British code received its death-blow, and the Royal assent was given to
an Act repealing all laws passed against those Christians who impugn the
commonly received doctrine of the Trinity. It was no easy matter to get
this act of justice done; the Bishops and the Peers were obstinate. In
1772, we read, the Bishop of Llandaff made a most powerful speech, and
produced from the writings of Dr. Priestley passages which equally
excited the wonder and abhorrence of his hearers, and drew from Lord
Chatham exclamations of "Monstrous! horrible! shocking!" A few years
after we find Lord North contending it to be the duty of the State to
guard against authorizing persons denying the doctrine of the Trinity to
teach. Even as late as 1824, Lord Chancellor Eldon doubted (as he
doubted everything that was tolerant in religion or liberal in politics)
as to the validity of this Act, and hinted that the Unitarians were
liable to punishment at common law for denying the doctrine of the
Trinity. Yet the Unitarians have a remote antiquity. They can trace
their descent to Apostolic times, and undoubtedly were an important
element in the National Church, in the days of William and the Hanoverian
succession.
Dr. Parr, says Mr. Barker, "spoke to me of the latitudinarian divines
with approbation. He agreed with me in thinking that the most brilliant
era of the British Church since the Reformation was when it abounded with
divines of that school;" and certainly Unitarians may claim to be
represented at the present day in Broad Churchmen within the
Establishment, and in divines of a similar way of thinking without. They
have been much helped by their antagonists. No man was less of a
Unitarian than the late Archbishop Whately, yet, in a letter to Blanco
White, he candidly confessed, "Nothing in my opinion tends so much to
dispose an intelligent mind towards anti-Trinitarian views as the
Trinitarian works."
As a sect, the Unitarians are a small body, and at one time were much
given to a display of intelligent superiority as offensive in public
bodies as in private individuals. They were narrow and exclusive, and
had little effect on the masses, who were left to go to the bad, if not
with supercilious scorn, at any rate with genteel indifference. There
was in the old-fashioned Unitarian meeting-houses something eminently
high and dry. In these days, when we have ceased to regard heaven--to
quote Tom Hood--as anybody's rotten borough, we smile as a handful of
people sing--
"We're a garden walled around,
Planted and made peculiar ground;"
yet no outsider a few years ago could have entered a Unitarian chapel
without feeling that such, more or less, was the abiding conviction of
all present. "Our predominant intellectual attitude," Mr. Orr confesses
to be one reason of the little progress made by the denomination. A
Unitarian could no more conceal his sect than a Quaker. Generally he
wore spectacles; his hair was always arranged so as to do justice to his
phrenological development; on his mouth there always played a smile, half
sarcastic and half self-complacent. Nor was such an expression much to
be wondered at when you remembered that, according to his own idea, and
certainly to his own satisfaction, he had solved all religious doubts,
cleared up all religious mysteries, and annihilated, as far as regards
himself, human infirmities, ignorance, and superstition. It is easy to
comprehend how a congregation of such would be eminently respectable and
calm and self-possessed; indeed, so much so, that you felt inclined to
ask why it should have condescended to come into existence at all. Mrs.
Jarley's waxworks, as described by that lady herself, may be taken as a
very fair description of an average Unitarian congregation at a no very
remote date. Little Nell says, "I never saw any waxworks, ma'am; is it
funnier than _Punch_?" "Funnier?" said Mrs. Jarley, in a shrill voice,
"it is not funny at all." "Oh," said Nell, with all possible humility.
"It is not funny at all," repeated Mrs. Jarley; "it's calm, and what's
that word again--critical? No, classical--that's it; it's calm and
classical. No low beatings and knockings about; no jokings and
squeakings like your precious _Punch's_, but always the same, with a
constantly unchanging air of coldness and gentility." Now it was upon
this coldness and gentility that the Unitarians took their stand; they
eliminated enthusiasm, they ignored the passions, and they failed to get
the people, who preferred, instead, the preaching of the most illiterate
ranter whose heart was in the work.
In our day a wonderful change has come over Unitarianism. It is not, and
it never was, the Arianism born of the subtle school of Alexandrian
philosophy, and condemned by the orthodox Bishops at Nicea; nor is it
Socinianism as taught in the sixteenth century, still less is it the
Materialism of Priestley. Men of the warmest hearts and greatest
intellects belonging to it actually disown the name, turn away from it as
too cold and barren, and in their need of more light, and life, and love,
seek in other denominations what they lack in their own. The Rev. James
Martineau, a man universally honoured in all sections of the universal
church, confesses:--"I am constrained to say that neither my intellectual
preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with the Unitarian
heroes, sects, or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians,
all seem to me to contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to
exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of
the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest
obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to
writers not of my own creed. In philosophy I have had to unlearn most
that I had imbibed from my early text-books and the authors in chief
favour with them. In Biblical interpretation I derive from Calvin and
Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham. In devotional
literature and religious thought I find nothing of ours that does not
pale before Augustine Tauler and Pascal; and in the poetry of the Church
it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley or
Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor
and cold." This is the language of many beside Mr. Martineau--of all,
indeed, to whom a dogmatic theology is of little import compared with a
Christian life.
Let us attempt to describe Unitarianism negatively. In one of his
eloquent sermons in its defence, the late W. J. Fox said, "The humanity
of Christ is not essential to Unitarianism; Dr. Price was a Unitarian as
well as Dr. Priestley, so is every worshipper of the Father only, whether
he believes that Christ was created before all worlds, or first existed
when born of Mary. Philosophical necessity is no part of Unitarianism.
Materialism is no part of Unitarianism. The denial of angels or devils
is no part of Unitarianism." Unitarianism has no creed, yet briefly it
may be taken to be the denial of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, or
of the natural depravity of man, or that sin is the work of the devil, or
that the Bible is a book every word of which was dictated by God, or that
Christ is God united to a human nature, or that atonement is
reconciliation of God to man. Furthermore, the Unitarians deny that
regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit, or that salvation is
deliverance from the punishment of sin, or that heaven is a state of
condition without change, or that the torments of hell are everlasting.
It may be that the Broad Churchman entertains very much the same
opinions, but then the Unitarian minister has this advantage over the
Church clergyman, that he is free. He has not signed articles of belief
of a contrary character. He has not to waste his time and energy in
sophistications which can deceive no one, still less to preach that
doctrine so perilous to the soul, and destructive of true spiritual
growth, and demoralizing to the nation, that a religious, conscientious
man may sign articles that can have but one sense and put upon them quite
another. Surely one of the most sickening characteristics of the age is
that divorce between the written and the living faith, which, assuming to
be progress, is in reality cowardice.
In our day we have seen something of an Evangelical Alliance, that is, a
manifestation of the great fact that people are yearning after a Catholic
union, and are caring less and less for denominational differences. The
Unitarians all speak and write of the orthodox as of a body of Christians
perfectly distinct from themselves. Yet there is an approximation
between them, nevertheless. Unitarianism, as it becomes a living
faith--as it leans to the theology of the sweetest singers and most
impassioned orators of the universal Church--becomes in sentiment and
practice orthodox; while orthodoxy, as it grows enlightened, and burst
the bonds of habit, and, laden with the spoils of time, gathers up the
wisdom and the teaching of all the ages underneath the sun, sanctions the
Rationalism and the spirit of free inquiry for which Unitarianism has
ever pleaded and its martyrs have died in our own and other lands.
Actually, at the meeting of the British and Foreign Unitarian Society, an
effort was made to get rid of the title altogether, and to call
themselves instead a British and Foreign Free Christian Association, on
the plea that the Christian Church consists of all who desire to be the
children of God in the spirit of Jesus Christ His Son, and that,
therefore, no association for the promotion of a doctrine which belongs
to controversial theology can represent the Church of Christ. To this
Unitarianism has attained in our time. This is the teaching of Foster,
and Ham, and Ierson, and Martineau--a teaching seemingly in accordance
with the spirit of the age. Unitarian theology is always coloured with
the philosophy of the hour, and consequently it is now spiritual and
transcendental instead of material and necessitarian.
As regards London, the statistics of Unitarianism are easy of collection.
In their register we have the names of fifteen places of worship, where
Holy Scripture is the only rule of faith, and difference of opinion is no
bar to Christian communion. In reality Unitarians are stronger than they
seem, as in their congregations you will find many persons of influence,
of social weight, of literary celebrity. For instance, Sir Charles Lyell
and Lord Amberley are, I believe, among the regular attendants at Mr.
Martineau's chapel in Portland Street. At that chapel for many years
Charles Dickens was a regular hearer. The late Lady Byron, one of the
most eminent women of her day, worshipped in Essex Street Chapel, when
Mr. Madge preached there. In London the Unitarians support a domestic
mission, a Sunday-school association, an auxiliary school association,
and a London district Unitarian society.
AGGRESSIVE UNITARIANS.
It is not often that Unitarianism is aggressive, or that it seeks the
heathen in our streets perishing for lack of knowledge. Apparently it
dwells rather on the past than the present, and prefers the select and
scholarly few to the unlettered many. Most Unitarian preachers lack
popular power; hence it is that their places of worship are rarely
filled, and that they seem tacitly to assume that such is the natural and
necessary condition of their denomination. It is with them as it used to
be with the old orthodox Dissenters in well endowed places of worship
some thirty or forty years ago. Of them, I well remember one in a
leading seaport in the eastern counties. I don't believe there was such
another heavy and dreary place in all East Anglia, certainly there never
was such a preacher; more learned, more solemn, more dull, more
calculated in a respectable way to send good people to sleep, or to
freeze up the hot blood and marrow of his youthful hearers. Once and but
once there was a sensation in that chapel. It was a cold evening in the
very depth of winter. There was ice in the pulpit, and ice in the pew.
The very lamps seemed as if it was impossible for them to burn, as the
preacher in his heaviest manner discoursed of themes on which seraphs
might love to dwell. All at once rushed in a boy, exclaiming "Fire,
fire!" The effect was electric--in a moment that sleepy audience was
startled into life, every head was raised and every ear intent. Happily
the alarm was a false one, but for once people were awake, and kept so
till the sermon was done. It is the aim of Mr. Applebee in the same way
to rouse up the Unitarians, and in a certain sense he has succeeded. He
has now been preaching some eighteen months in London, in the old chapel
on Stoke Newington Green, where, for many years, Mrs. Barbauld was a
regular attendant, and where long the pulpit was filled by no less a
distinguished personage than Burke and George the Third's Dr. Price; the
result is that the chapel is now well filled. It is true it is not a
very large one; nevertheless, till Mr. Applebee's advent, it was
considerably larger than the congregation. Before Mr. Applebee came to
town he had produced a similar effect at Devonport; when he settled there
he had to preach to a very small congregation, but he drew people around
him, and ere he left a larger chapel had to be built. I take it a great
deal of his popularity is due to his orthodox training. It is a fact not
merely that Unitarianism ever recruits itself from the ranks of
orthodoxy, but that it is indebted to the same source for its ablest, or
rather most effective ministers.
In the morning Mr. Applebee preaches at Stoke Newington; in the evening
he preaches at 245, Mile End. It seems as if in that teeming district no
amount of religious agency may be ignored or despised. In the morning of
the Sabbath as you walk there, you could scarce fancy you were in a
Christian land. It is true, church bells are ringing and the
public-houses are shut up, and well-clad hundreds may be seen on their
way to their respective places of worship, and possibly you may meet a
crowd of two or three hundred earnest men in humble life singing revival
hymns as they wend their way to the East London Theatre, where Mr. Booth
teaches of heaven and happiness to those who know little of one or the
other; nevertheless, the district has a desolate, God-forsaken
appearance. There are butchers' shops full of people, pie-shops doing a
roaring trade, photographers all alive, as they always are, on a Sunday.
If you want apples or oranges, boots or shoes, ready-made clothes,
articles for the toilette or the drawing-room, newspapers of all
sorts--you can get them anywhere in abundance in the district; and as you
look up the narrow courts and streets on your left, you will see in the
dirty, eager crowds around ample evidence of Sabbath desecration. I
heard a well-known preacher the other day say it was easy to worship God
in Devonshire. Equally true is it that it is not easy to worship Him in
Mile End or Whitechapel. The Unitarians assume that a large number of
intelligent persons abstain from attending a religious service on Sundays
in the most part "because the doctrines usually taught" are "adverse to
reason and the plain teaching of Jesus Christ." Under this impression
they have opened the place in Mile End. In a prospectus widely
circulated in the district, they publish a statement of their creed as
follows: 1. That "there is but one God, one undivided Deity, and one
Mediator between God and man--the man Christ Jesus." 2. That "the life
and teachings of Jesus Christ are the purest, the divinest, and truest;"
His death consecrating His testimony and completing the devotion of His
life; his resurrection and ascension forming the pledge and symbol of
their own. 3. "That sin inevitably brings its own punishment, and that
all who break God's laws must suffer the penalty in consequence;" at the
same time they "reject the idea with abhorrence that God will punish men
eternally for any sins they may have committed or may commit." Such is
the formula of doctrine, on which as a basis the Unitarian Mission at
Mile End has been established, and to a certain extent with some measure
of success. It is charged generally against Unitarians that they have no
positive dogma. The Unitarianism of Mr. Applebee has no such drawback.
He has a definite creed, which, whether you believe it or not, at any
rate you can understand. In the eyes of many working men, that is of the
class to whom he preaches at Mile End, he has also the additional
advantage of being well known in the political arena. As a lecturer on
behalf of advanced principles in many of our large towns he has produced
a very great effect. I confess I have not yet overcome the horror I felt
when I saw at the last election how night after night he spoke at
Northampton on behalf of Mr. Bradlaugh's candidature. Surely a
secularist can have no claim as such on the sympathies of a Christian
minister. Yet at Northampton Mr. Applebee laboured as if the success of
Mr. Bradlaugh were the triumph of Gospel truth, and as if in the pages of
the _National Reformer_ the working men, to whom it especially appeals,
might learn the way to life eternal. But Mr. Applebee is by no means
alone. In Stamford Street Chapel and in Islington you have what I
believe the Unitarians would consider still more favourable specimens of
aggressive Unitarianism.