{ Normal Type,—Anglican, 3,600 High Church. { Exaggerated Type,—Tractarian, 1,000 { Stagnant Type,—High and Dry, 2,500

{ Normal Type,—Evangelical, 3,500 Low Church. { Exaggerated Type,—Recordite, 2,600 { Stagnant Type,—Low and Slow, 700

{ Normal Type,—Theoretical and Anti-Theoretical, 3,100 Broad Church. { Exaggerated Type,—Extreme Rationalists, 300 { Stagnant Type, 700

Twelve years ago the twenty-eight Bishops and Archbishops of England stood thus: thirteen belonged to the High Church, ten to the Broad Church, and five to the Low Church. A distribution made at the present time would be much more favorable to the second party.[230]

It is a remarkable feature of the activity of theological opinion in England that the same division of parties which exists in the Established Church also obtains in other religious bodies. We do not speak of the Dissenting Churches, all of which have their shades of sentiment, but of the smaller and less influential organizations. The Jews, Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Unitarians have each their old and new schools,—the former adhering to the old and established standards, the latter striving to harmonize with modern science and free inquiry. The Jews have their Mosaic, Talmudic, and Phillipsohnic groups,—the last taking its name from its leader, and corresponding with the First Broad Church within the pale of Christianity.[231] The Rationalistic party in the Roman Catholic Church is now aiming to harmonize Popery and the philosophy of the nineteenth century. It has no distinctive name, but numbers many adherents. The Quakers, besides possessing a strongly conservative wing, have their advocates of the "Inner Light," who are pushing this destructive doctrine "to the full consequences developed by the Second Broad Church party in the National Church." The Unitarians are divided into the staid disciples of Priestley and Belsham, and the New School, who stand on the same ground with Theodore Parker in the United States. These are cordial admirers of the Essays and Reviews, and would rejoice to see the land overspread with radical Rationalism.

FOOTNOTES:

[199] Essays Ecclesiastical and Social, pp. 62-63.

[200] Christian Work, June, 1863.

[201] Conybeare, Essays Ecclesiastical and Social, pp. 65-71.

[202] Tract No. 10.

[203] Sewel.

[204] Pusey, Preface to 18th vol. Library of Church Fathers.

[205] Conybeare, Essays Ecclesiastical and Social, p. 106.

[206] Essays Ecclesiastical and Social, pp. 106-108.

[207] National Review, Oct., 1856.

[208] Development of Christian Doctrine. Second Edition. London, 1846.

[209] Phases of Faith, pp. 233, 234. American Edition.

[210] Miss Cobbe, Broken Lights, p. 63. London Edition.

[211] Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 307.

[212] Ibid. Introduction, p. 56.

[213] Bibliotheca Sacra. Jan. 1858. An excellent summary of the opinions of Dr. Arnold.

[214] Stanley, Life and Correspondence of Arnold. American Edition, p. 135.

[215] Interpretation of Scripture, p. 493.

[216] Stanley, Life and Correspondence, pp. 341, 367.

[217] Fragment on the Church, p. 226.

[218] Christian Life, its Course, &c., p. 358.

[219] American Theological Review, July, 1863.

[220] Edinburgh Review, July, 1864.

[221] Miss Cobbe, Broken Lights, p. 63. London Edition.

[222] Tracts for Priests and People. Preface, pp. 3-5. Am. Edition.

[223] Hughes, in Tracts for Priests and People, p. 28.

[224] Hughes, in Tracts for Priests and People, p. 37.

[225] Garden, Tracts for Priests and People, p. 133.

[226] Davies, Tracts for Priests and People, p. 167.

[227] Ibid. p. 167.

[228] Broken Lights, pp. 73-74.

[229] Appleton's American Cyclopaedia. Art. Church of England. Though the writer of this article says nothing of the Irish clergy, he has not included them, of course; having no doubt used the Clergy List of England and the colonies alone.

[230] We have based our division of the English clergy upon the calculation of the late W. J. Conybeare, a Fellow in the University of Cambridge, and joint author with J. S. Howson, of Life and Epistles of St. Paul. (Essays Ecclesiastical and Social, pp. 157-158.) His figures applied to the year 1853, but we have included the subsequent increase of the clergy, and distributed the additional members according to the best information at command. If it be objected that we have classed too large a portion in the Broad Church, we reply, that if Dean Stanley's intimations concerning the absence of orthodox faith in the English clergy be well founded, we have fallen far short of attributing to that body a sufficient number of members. See his article in Edinburgh Review, July, 1864.

[231] Phillipsohn, Author of the Religious Idea in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Translated by Miss Ann Goldschmidt.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE UNITED STATES: THE UNITARIAN CHURCH—THE UNIVERSALISTS.

The aspect of novelty in the religious and theological history of the United States, is unparalleled in the history of any European nation, and is traceable in part to the peculiarities of our political origin and career. The founders of our government were wise students of the philosophy of history, and it was their opinion that many of the misfortunes which had befallen the countries of the Old World, were produced by the improper association of temporal and spiritual authority. They therefore made provision for the permanent separation of Church and State. Their design, however, was accomplished only by degrees. Previous to the Revolution, but two States, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, permitted religious toleration. It was declared in Maryland in 1776, and in 1786-89 was carried out in Virginia. The general government took the matter in hand in 1791; and, in that year, an amendment to the Constitution of the United States was adopted, which prohibited Congress in future from "passing any law establishing religion, or prohibiting its free exercise."[232]

It would seem that our forefathers were almost gifted with prophetic vision when they incorporated this statute with those other laws, which have contributed so much to our prosperity. It would not have been in harmony with their spirit, if, while constituting an independent government, they had made the Church dependent.

The principle of the union of church and state presupposes a greater degree of social purity than has existed in any nation. Moreover, the Church is thereby led to assume an authority to which she has no claim and which Christ never intended her to possess. Milton, whose clear and practical views of civil and ecclesiastical relations were only equaled by his lofty poetic conceptions of man's moral nature and history, says: "When the church, without temporal support, is able to do her great works upon the enforced obedience of man, it argues a divinity about her. But when she thinks to credit and better her spiritual efficacy, and to win herself respect and dread by strutting in the false vizard of worldly authority, it is evident that God is not there, but that her apostolic virtue is departed from her, and has left her key-cold; which she perceiving, as in a decayed nature, seeks to the outward fermentations and chafings of worldly help and external flourishes, to fetch, if it be possible, some motion into her extreme parts, or to hatch a counterfeit life with the crafty and artificial heat of jurisdiction. But it is observable that so long as the church, in true imitation of Christ, can be content to ride upon an ass, carrying herself and her government along in a mean and simple guise, she may be as she is a Lion of the tribe of Judah; and in her humility all men, with loud hosannas, will confess her greatness. But when, despising the mighty operation of the Spirit by the weak things of this world, she thinks to make herself bigger and more considerable, by using the way of civil force and jurisdiction, as she sits upon this Lion she changes into an ass, and instead of hosannas, every man pelts her with stones and dirt."[233]

The peculiarities which have characterized the history of the American church are well defined, and of the greatest value in all estimates of the theological status of the popular mind. They are grouped by Professor Smith in the following concise terms: "First. It is not the history of the conversion of a new people, but of the transplantation of old races, already Christianized, to a new theatre, comparatively untrammeled by institutions and traditions. Second. Independence of the civil power. Third. The voluntary principle applied to the support of religious institutions. Fourth. Moral and ecclesiastical, but not civil power, the means of retaining the members of any communion. Fifth. Development of the Christian system in its practical and moral aspects, rather than in its theoretical and theological. Sixth. Stricter discipline in the churches than is practicable where church and state are one. Seventh. Increase of the churches, to a considerable extent, through revivals of religion, rather than by the natural growth of the children in an establishment. Eighth. Excessive multiplication of sects; and divisions on questions of moral reform."[234]

When we consider the intimate relations between France and this country during the first stage of our national existence, it becomes a matter of surprise that French infidelity did not acquire greater influence over our people. It was not wholly without power, and the first twenty-five years of our history witnessed greater religious disasters than have appeared at any subsequent time. Still it may be said with truth that skeptical tendencies have never gained a permanent position in the United States, though our immunity from their sway has not been the result of indifference toward the great movements of Europe. The American has never been a cold observer of the hemisphere from which his forefathers came. We appropriate the treasures of the Old World, and love to call them our own. We are as proud of the martyrology and literature of England as if Latimer and Ridley had died for their faith on Boston Common, or Shakspeare and Milton had lived on the banks of the Hudson. The early legislation of our government having left the individual conscience to the exercise of its own convictions, each citizen has been more interested in whatever religious opinions might appear from European sources.

What then has been the reception in America of that system of skepticism which has produced ravages on the Continent, and now forbodes evil in our English mother-land? Is Rationalism likely to run its destructive cycle in the United States? Has the American church no antidote for the great theological errors of the present age?

The denomination most intimately associated with Rationalistic tendencies is the Unitarian Church. Boston is its centre, and New England the principal sphere of its existence.

The Venerable Stoddard, of Northampton, Massachusetts, became convinced that the custom of excluding unregenerate persons from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was sinful; and in 1708 published a sermon declaring his views on that subject. He held that the participation of unregenerate people in the communion was highly beneficial to them; and that it was in fact a means by which they might become regenerated. He defended his belief so zealously that he soon had the pleasure of seeing many followers gathering about him. The doctrine was termed the Half-Way Covenant System, and was adopted in the church at Northampton. Jonathan Edwards succeeded Stoddard, who was his grandfather; and, a few years after the great revival in which the former took an active part, he adopted the opinion that the Half-Way Covenant was injurious. Edwards refused to practice it, and in his Treatise on the Qualifications for Full Communion, he declared the necessity of regeneration. He was accordingly dismissed from his church.

This was the germ of American Unitarianism. Stoddard's adherents clung to their loose view of communion, while the friends of Edwards, being more spiritual, and many of them the fruits of the Whitefieldian revival, sustained the orthodox construction with energy. The Half-Way Covenant in due time called a party into existence, which "avoided all solicitude concerning their own spiritual condition or that of others; were repugnant to the revival spirit; must have a system of doctrines which could contain nothing to alarm the fears or disturb the repose of the members of the party. The doctrines of apostasy, dependence on grace for salvation, necessity of atonement, and special influence of the Holy Spirit, were all thought to be alarming doctrines. They were therefore laid aside silently and without controversy. Men were suffered to forget that the Son of God, and the Spirit, have anything to do with man's salvation."[235]

King's Chapel, Boston, was the first Episcopal church of New England. Its rector leaving with the British troops upon their evacuation of the town, Rev. James Freeman was chosen in April, 1783, to occupy the vacant position. The services of the church were conducted after the Episcopal form, the Book of Common Prayer being still used. Mr. Freeman's views underwent a change, and he delivered a course of doctrinal sermons in which he indicated decided Unitarian proclivities. Accordingly he introduced a revised liturgy, corresponding with Dr. Samuel Clarke's Revision of the Liturgy of the Church of England, from which the doctrines of the Trinity and of the divinity of Christ were excluded. The congregation addressed a letter to Bishop Provost, of New York, in which inquiry was made, "whether ordination of Rev. Mr. Freeman can be obtained on terms agreeable to him and to the proprietors of this church." The bishop proposed to refer the question to the next general convention. But the congregation, disliking such hesitation, determined to ordain their rector themselves. Accordingly, on November 18th, 1787, the senior warden laid his hand on Mr. Freeman's head, and pronounced the declaration of ordination. The people responded "Amen;" and thus was effected the first ordination of a Unitarian minister in the United States.[236]

Wide circulation had already been given to Emlyn's Inquiry into the Scripture Account of Jesus Christ, which, in 1756, had been republished in Boston from the English edition. Before the close of the century the doctrines peculiar to Unitarianism became widely disseminated in that city and in other portions of the State. Belsham issued in London, 1812, his Memoir of Lindsey, which contained startling disclosures of the doings of the Unitarians in America. Belsham's informants were leading Unitarians of Boston, among whom was Dr. Freeman, whose letters covered a period of sixteen years, from 1796 to 1812. He communicated all the secret movements, growth, and dimensions of the party. Only a few copies of Belsham's work came to America, and they were hidden, lest any of the orthodox might see them. Finally, Dr. Morse obtained one, and soon published a pamphlet revealing its astounding contents. It now came to light, for the first time, that Unitarianism was a strong party; that every Congregational church in Boston, except the Park Street and Old South, had become Unitarian; and that there were seventy-five churches in other parts of New England which had adopted the same views. The Unitarians were now compelled to come out of their hiding-place, and the orthodox watched their movements with intense interest.

The zeal of the adherents of Unitarianism, however, did not diminish by exposure, and a very important event occurred, which indicated that their labors were successful. Dr. Ware, an avowed anti-Trinitarian, was chosen to the professorship of theology in Harvard College, in place of the deceased Dr. Tappan. The appointment created a profound excitement among the orthodox clergy, who were indignant at the procedure. But remonstrance was useless. Unitarianism was triumphantly domiciled at Cambridge, and many who designed preaching its tenets became attendants upon the lectures of Professors Ware and Andrews Norton. As a probable consequence of the great change in Harvard, the Andover Theological Seminary was established,[237]—an institution which, from its origin to the present time, has shed a beneficent lustre upon the entire country. Its students have never ceased to be ornaments to the American pulpit, while some of the number, proving themselves worthy successors of Carey, Marshman, Coke, and Ward, have labored in heathen lands with apostolic zeal.

The celebrated controversy between Drs. Channing and Worcester, occasioned by a pamphlet which appeared in Boston in 1815, under the title of American Unitarianism, led to the withdrawal of the Unitarians from the orthodox, and their formation into a distinct organization. Pursuing an aggressive policy, they organized congregations in various parts of New England, and in the cities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Charleston. This was the heroic age of the Unitarian church of America.

Channing became immediately the leader of the new sect. He represents the best type of Unitarianism. Pure in life, ardent in his attachments, and heroic in spirit, he was well adapted to advance the cause which he had espoused. He had no taste for controversy, but the circumstances connected with the prevalent theology made such a deep impression on his mind that he felt it his duty to aid in the revival of what he deemed a more liberal faith. Not indorsing the extreme Unitarianism of Priestley and Belsham, he took a middle ground between it and New England Calvinism. He was attentively heard in his church at Boston, and was listened to by large audiences wherever he preached or lectured.

His writings embrace a variety of topics, the chief of which, apart from religious themes proper, are slavery, temperance, education, and war. Within a few years his views have attracted increased attention in Europe. In France, MM. Laboulaye, de Remusat, and Renan have discussed them at length. Of his mental transitions, an admiring writer says: "From Kant's doctrine of the reason he derived deeper reverence for the essential powers of man; by Schelling's intimations of the Divine Life, everywhere manifested, he was made more devoutly conscious of the universal agency of God; and he was especially delighted with the heroic stoicism of Fichte and his assertion of the grandeur of the human will. But for his greatest pleasure and best discipline he was now indebted to Wordsworth, whom he esteemed next to Shakspeare, and whose 'Excursion' came to him like a revelation. With Wordsworth's mingled piety and heroism, humanity and earnest aspiration, with his all-vivifying imagination, recognizing greatness under lowliest disguises, and spreading sweet sanctions around every charity of social life, and with his longings to see reverence, loyalty, courtesy, and contentment established on the earth, he most closely sympathized. From this time he began to engage more actively in political and philanthropic movements."[238]

Channing believed that orthodoxy was incalculably mischievous in its estimate of Deity and of human depravity. "God, we are told," says he, "must not be limited; nor are his rights to be restrained by any rights in his creatures. These are made to minister to their Maker's glory, not to glorify themselves. They wholly depend on him, and have no power which they can call their own. His sovereignty, awful and omnipotent, is not to be kept in check, or turned from its purposes, by any claims of his subjects. Man's place is the dust. The entire prostration of his faculties is the true homage he is to offer to God. He is not to exalt his reason or his sense of right against the decrees of the Almighty. He has but one lesson to learn, that he is nothing, that God is All in All. Such is the common language of theology."[239]

Against these views he asserts man's free agency and moral dignity. His creed is the greatness of Human Nature; such greatness as is seen in the "intellectual energy which discerns absolute, universal truth in the idea of God, in freedom of will and moral power, in disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, in the boundlessness of love, in aspirations after perfection, in desires and affections which time and space cannot confine, and the world cannot fill. The soul, viewed in these lights, should fill us with awe. It is an immortal germ, which may be said to contain now within itself what endless ages are to unfold. It is truly an image of the infinity of God, and no words can do justice to its grandeur."[240] Instead of looking without for a basis of religion, we must commence at home, within ourselves. "We must start in religion from our own souls, for in them is the fountain of all divine truth. An outward revelation is only possible and intelligible on the ground of conceptions and principles previously furnished by the soul. Here is our primitive teacher and light. Let us not disparage it. There are, indeed, philosophical schools of the present day, which tell us that we are to start in all our speculations from the Absolute, the Infinite. But we rise to these conceptions from the contemplation of our own nature; and even if it were not so, of what avail would be the notion of an Absolute, Infinite existence, an Uncaused Unity, if stripped of all those intellectual and moral attributes which we learn only from our own souls? What but a vague shadow, a sounding name, is the metaphysical Deity, the substance without modes, the being without properties, the naked Unity which performs such a part in some of our philosophical systems. The only God whom our thoughts can rest on and our hearts can cling to, and our consciences can recognize is the God whose image dwells in our own souls. The grand ideas of Power, Reason, Wisdom, Love, Rectitude, Holiness, Blessedness, that is, of all God's attributes, come from within, from the action of our own spiritual nature. Many indeed think that they learn God from marks of design and skill in the outward world; but our ideas of design and skill, of a determining cause, of an end or purpose, are derived from consciousness, from our own souls. Thus the soul is the spring of our knowledge of God."[241]

The creed of the Unitarians must be studied as one would take soundings at sea. The measurement of one place is no guarantee of the depth in another. What was believed twenty years ago, may not be endorsed by the leaders of to-day. One writer of their fold says: "Unitarianism is loose, vague, general, indeterminate in its elements and formularies."[242] When George Putnam installed Mr. Fosdick over the Hollis Street Church, he said with commendable candor, "There is no other Christian body of which it is so impossible to tell where it begins and where it ends. We have no recognized principles by which any man who chooses to be a Christian disciple, and desires to be numbered with us, whatever he believes or denies, can be excluded."

But Unitarianism has ever remained true to a few points. One of them is antagonism to orthodoxy. It was an old cry of the German skeptics, "Away with orthodoxy. It fetters us to forms and creeds, makes us blind devotees to system, converts us into bigots, and dwarfs reason into an invisible pigmy." Yet we frequently meet with language of similar import in the present day. If we did not know its authorship we could easily tell the ecclesiastical fountain whence it flows. "The implications of false and shallow reasoning," says an American Unitarian divine, "partial observation, intellectual grouping, moral obliquity, spiritual ignorance,—in short, of puerility and superstition involved in a large part of the appeals, the preaching, the cant terms, the popular dogmas, the current conversation of Christendom,—are discouraging evidences how backward is the religious thought of our day, as compared with its general thought; how little harmony there is between our schools and our churches, our thinkers and our religious guides, our political and national institutions and our popular theology. It is not Christianity—the rational, thorough, all-embracing Gospel of Christ,—which throws its blessed sanctities over and around our whole humanity,—which owns and consecrates our whole nature and our whole life—which is thus taught. It is a system which is narrower than Judaism, and compared with which Romanism is a princely and magnificent theology. I say advisedly, that if Protestantism endorses the vulgar notions of a God-cursed world,—a fallen race,—a commercial atonement,—a doomed and hell-devoted humanity,—a mysterious conversion,—a Church which is a sort of a life-boat hanging round a wreck that may carry off a few women and selfishly-affrighted men, leaving the bolder, braver, larger portion to go down with the ship; if this be the sum and substance of religion,—if these notions be the grounds of the late religious excitement and the doctrines which gave it power,[243]—then it is not so true to human nature, its wants and woes, its various and manifold tastes, talents, and faculties, as the old Catholic system,—and that, instead of trembling at the growth and prospects of Romanism in this country, we should more reasonably rejoice in its triumphs, as the worthier occupant of the confidence and affection of the people. But this narrow system, with all its arrogant claims to be the only Evangelical faith, is not Protestantism; or, rather, is not mere Protestantism."[244]

But the indeterminateness of Unitarian theology does not warrant us in passing over its tenets, as stated by writers held in good repute in that Church. It would be unfair, however, to claim that these are doctrines to which each must inflexibly adhere. The Unitarians neither exact nor desire conformity to authority; in fact they have no authority. Reason is left to place its own construction upon the truths of revelation. What, then, is the general Unitarian sentiment on those subjects whose essential importance is acknowledged by all Evangelical Churches?

INSPIRATION AND THE SCRIPTURES. Channing and Dewey have held loftier views of the Bible and its divine origin than their less devout brethren. The latter has said that, "The matter is divine, the miracles real, the promises glorious, the threatenings fearful; enough that all is gloriously and fearfully true to the divine will, true to human nature, true to its wants, anxieties, sorrows, sins, salvation, and destinies; enough that the seal of a divine and miraculous communication is set upon that holy Book."[245] But reverence for the Scriptures is rapidly on the decline among the Unitarians,—the direct result of the influence of the German and English Rationalists. They call all believers in orthodox opinions, "Bibliolaters." They spurn the thought of an infallible Bible. "No wonder," they say, "that the Bibliolaters quail before the iconoclasm of Bishop Colenso, and, in their rage, call aloud for his excision from the Church; for, if a single one of the difficulties he accumulates can be proved a reality, the whole edifice of their faith topples to its fall.... We believe that safety and sense can alone be found in our theory, which regards Scripture as credible though human, as inspired not in its form, but in its substance, of various and, in many cases, of unknown authorship, and representing different stages of culture. We cannot accept all its documents as of co-ordinate authority; nor in every one of its statements can we recognize a product of inspiration. We do not conceive ourselves bound, therefore, to defend the geology of Moses, or to admire the conduct of the Israelites in the extermination of the Canaanites; or to infuse a recondite spiritual meaning into the amatory descriptions and appeals of the Song of Solomon."[246]

GOD AND CHRIST. God is the Universal Father. It must be forgotten that he is king; his paternal character alone must be borne in mind. He is a God of one person, not of three, and the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere hinted at in the Bible, but is of Platonic origin. The Christian Fathers did not contend that it was contained therein. The view of three persons in one God is "self-contradictory, opposed to all right reason, positively absurd."[247] Christ is inferior and subordinate to God. He is God in the same sense as the angels, Moses, Samuel, the Kings and Judges of Israel. They were gods in one respect,—the word of God was spoken to them. Christ is the chief one "to whom the word of God came."[248] In the New Testament, Christ is uniformly kept distinct from the Father, and the attributes which he possessed, wisdom, knowledge, and power, were endowments from God.

THE HOLY GHOST. The Holy Ghost is not a person, but is merely sent from the Father, or proceeds from him. The apparent presence of the Holy Ghost in Christ's farewell discourse is only a personification resulting from the peculiar nature of the Greek language, and the necessity of its syntax. Not being a person, the Holy Ghost cannot be God, and is, therefore, not self-existent, underived, and unoriginated. Wherever it is described as a person it is only the writer's striking form of speech; it is solely personification, just as we often find the case with the Law, Wisdom, Scripture, Sin, and Charity.[249]

HUMAN DEPRAVITY. The Unitarians have no place in their creed for man's natural sinfulness. It is, they say, a doctrinal innovation, having been propagated by Augustine in the fifth century. That God should create men who are naturally sinners is inconsistent with his parental character. "The doctrine is itself repulsive. The human mind revolts at it. If God our Creator has implanted within us a natural sense of right and wrong, that sense arraigns his character and conduct in creating us thus corrupt."[250] There is no such thing, the Unitarians contend, as the fall of man. Adam was what we are. "Had he not sinned," one of their writers affirms, "our race would have continued perfect and happy without the necessity for progress, or the need of any of those educational and recuperative processes to which Providence has resorted. Let those who can believe this! Let those also who can, call the unfallen Adam and Eve satisfactory patterns and types of our complete humanity. Imagine a world of Adams and Eves, living in a garden, on spontaneous fruits, ignorant of the distinction between good and evil, and without any capacity of moral change or improvement! Can any amount of credulity enable an enlightened and candid mind of the present day to think this world originally made to be occupied by such a race; that unfallen Adams and Eves could ever have developed its resources, or their own powers, and capacities of moral and spiritual happiness? Can any subtlety perceive a true distinction between their condition and that of the innocent but feeble islanders of some few spots in the Pacific?[251] Can any degree of superstition regard a state of unfallen holiness, which allowed our first parents to succumb in the midst of perfect bliss, and under God's own direct care and instructions, before the first temptation, as superior to our present moral condition? If Adam fell, the race rose by his fall; he fell up, and nothing happier for our final fortunes ever occurred than when the innocents of the garden learned their shame, and fled into the hardships and experiences of a disciplinary and growing humanity.... The radical vice of the popular way of thinking about moral evil lies in the supposition that ... a state of spotless innocency is better than a state of moral exposure and moral struggle; and that all our humanity is not entitled to use development and play, in its grand career of being. On the other hand, the true theory of humanity presents us with a race brought into this world for its education, starting with moral and intellectual infancy, and liable to all the mistakes, weaknesses, and follies, which an ungrown and inexperienced nature begets."[252] There is far more virtue in the world than there is vice. We grossly mistake when we make notoriously vicious characters the type of humanity at large. "Man by nature, as born and brought into this world, is innocent, pure; guiltless because sinless; fitted for just that religion which Christ revealed to operate successfully and gloriously upon; not indeed holy, but capable of becoming so."

THE ATONEMENT. The orthodox view of the atonement is denied by the Unitarians. Sacrifices are of human origin, those of the Mosaic religion being solely ritual, and symbolical acts of faith and worship. Christ's death did not appease the wrath of God in any sense, nor is anything said in the Scriptures concerning Christ's sufferings as causing or exciting the grace or mercy of God. It is not stated that God is reconciled to us, but we to him. Christ suffered as an example. A writer already quoted says: "Especially were the anguish and patience of his final sufferings and his awful death upon the cross appointed and powerful means of affecting the mind of man."[253] Another author affirms: "Christ saves us, so far as his sufferings and death are concerned, through their moral influence and power upon man; the great appeal which they make being not to God, but to the sinner's conscience and heart; thus aiding in the great work of bringing him into reconciliation with or reconciling him to his Father in heaven.... Reconciliation is accomplished by Christ; by all that he was and is; all that he taught, did, and is doing; and by all that he suffered for our sake. Not by one but by all of these are we saved."[254] Christ's sacrifice was not made to God, for he did not need to be propitiated or rendered merciful, but simply with reference to man alone,—for his good; God's justice needed no pacification. "There can be no greater or more blinding heresy than that which would teach that Christ's sufferings, or any sufferings in behalf of virtue and human sins and sorrows, are strictly substitutional, or literally vicarious. The old theologies, perplexed and darkened with metaphysics and scholastic logic—the fruit of academic pride and the love of ecclesiastical dominion—labored to prove and to teach that Christ, in his short agony upon the cross, really suffered the pains of sin and bore the actual sum of all the anguish from remorse and guilt due to myriads of sinners, through the ages of eternity.... Our sense of justice and goodness so far as God himself is concerned, is vastly more shocked by the proper penalties of sin being placed upon the innocent than had they been left upon the guilty, where they belong.... The truth is, literal substitution of moral penalties is a thing absolutely impossible! Vicarious punishment, in its technical and theological sense, is forbidden by the very laws of our nature and moral constitution."[255]

REGENERATION. This is a universal want, but it is entirely consistent with the purity of human nature. The natural birth gives no moral character; it is to be formed, and when formed, is called the "new birth." This is all that Christ meant when he said to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." Regeneration must not, therefore, be considered a consequence of human depravity, but a result of human purity. It is the development of that which is already good within us.

FUTURE PUNISHMENT. The Unitarians of America have, for the most part, adopted the Restitutional theories of Hartley and Priestley. Mr. Ballou claims "the whole body of Unitarians as Universalists." Punishment may be inflicted after death, but it will be temporary. "The punishments of hell are disciplinarian, and do not forbid the hope of remission and relief."[256]

The best method of determining the present spirit of Unitarianism is to observe the reception which it gives to the Rationalism that has grown up luxuriantly of late in England. The welcome has been most cordial. A Unitarian clergyman has become the American editor of the Essays and Reviews;[257] and hails the appearance of such a book as representing a new and better era in modern theology. He holds that the real "life of Anglican theology is now represented by such men as Powell and Williams and Maurice and Jowett and Stanley;" that the Broad Church is the only one which fully embodies true progress and conservatism; that Rationalism is the only alternative of Romanism; and that, as a matter of course, the former should be adopted. He expresses the hope that the spirit of Rationalistic criticism, "which is now leavening the Church of England, may find abundant entrance into all the churches of our land," and that the Essays and Reviews, "its genuine product, may contribute somewhat thereto."[258]

The quarterly organ of the Unitarians, The Christian Examiner, has passed an encomium on the same exponent of English Rationalism, in which it manifests no tempered gladness at skepticism within the pale of the church. It says, with undisguised satisfaction, that "either these seven essayists must have been in very close and intimate confidential relations as friends or fellow-students, and have held many precious conferences together in which they were mutually each other's confessors; or, there must be quite a large number of very able and very heretical sinners in the Church of England, within easy hail of each other, and so thick in some neighborhoods that it is the readiest thing in the world to pick out a set of them who, 'without concert or comparison,' will contribute all the parts of a fresh and unhackneyed system of opinion."

One of the most direct and outspoken of all the organized attacks of American Rationalism upon evangelical Christianity occurred at the first public anniversary of the Young Men's Christian Union, of New York. Its importance was due to the diversity of unevangelical bodies there represented, and to the celebrity of several of the speakers. Unitarianism, Swedenborgianism, and Universalism mingled in happy fraternity. The speakers were Drs. Osgood, Bellows, Sawyer, and Chapin; Rev. Messrs. Barrett, Peters, Mayo, Higginson, Miel, Blanchard, and Frothingham; and Richard Warren and Horace Greeley, Esquires.

The Union seems to have been designed as a counterpoise to the large and flourishing Young Men's Christian Association, which is comprised of earnest and active members of all orthodox denominations. The platform of the former may be determined from the following significant language: "The Anniversary of the Young Men's Christian Union was the first instance in which so many of the leading minds in the various branches of the liberal and progressive portion of the Christian church have met on one common platform, for the purpose of discussing the practical bearings of that higher type of Christianity which refuses to be limited by any dogma, or fettered by any creed."[259] One of the speakers, in explaining the relations of the Union to the church, said: "We maintain, then, that we are in the church, are the church—not a part of it, but the whole church,—having in us the heart and soul of orthodoxy itself, the essence of all that gave life to its creed, the utmost significance and vital force of what it taught and still teaches, in what we conceive to be a stuttering and stammering way, in a cumbrous and outworn language, with a circuitous and wearisome phraseology; but meaning really what we mean, and doing for men essentially what we are doing. All that we claim is a better statement of the old and changeless truth, a disembarrassed account of the ever true and identical story.... We have not separated ourselves from the brethren [orthodox]; we hold them in our enclosure; we are always ready to receive them, to welcome them. We are not expecting they will receive us, on account of their providential position. We have an intellectual perception of what the times demand and what the future is to be. We can see clearer than they. We can see why they are wrong; they cannot see why we are right—but they will presently.... The actual presence of God in the world, in all his love and mercy, supplying our deficiencies, helping our infirmities, consecrating and transforming matter, giving sanctity and beauty to life—this is what the renewing of the old faith offers to humanity.

"The indistinct perception of this faith and the divine craving to see it clearly, and bring it to the sight of others, has led to the existence and organization of the Liberal churches, and indirectly to the formation of the Young Men's Christian Union. Faith in man as the child of God, his word and residence, authorizing the freest use of thought, the profoundest respect for individual convictions, the firmest confidence in progress and in the triumph of truth; inspiring good will, humane affections, philanthropic activity, and personal holiness; faith in God as the Father of man—man's universal Saviour and inspirer—man's merit consists wholly in being his child and the pupil of his grace in nature, life, the church, and the unseen world—these are the permanent articles of Christian faith, which is not so much faith in Christ, as Christ's faith."[260]

It is difficult to conceive how the most of the speakers at the anniversary in question could have better served the interests of a bold and unmitigated system of Rationalism. The great evil of the day is declared to be dogmatism, against which every true friend of progress must deal his most destructive blows. Liberal minds must break loose from the fetters of authority, and give play to their own infallible reason. The Protestant evangelical church is placed upon the same footing with Romanism; both of which organizations unchurch all who do not conform to their creed. "The truth is," says a speaker, "this Protestant evangelical church is in the same chronic delusion as its enemy, the Roman Catholic church; it can propose no plan of Christian union which will include the Christians of the country. Its only idea of union is the conspiracy of a few sects to take the kingdom of heaven by violence; monopolize its honors in this world and the world to come; and either compel the rest of mankind to come into its arrangement, or be turned into everlasting perdition—a proceeding which the American people, with due respect to the undeniable rights of this church, begs leave respectfully to decline,—and further to intimate, that it is not at all alarmed about the eternal consequences of a refusal to accede to the pretensions of an ecclesiasticism that assumes to be God's vicegerent to the United States of America."[261]

Great fault is found with the doctrines of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, and the efficacy of Christ's blood for man's salvation. God is in man; and man's moral instincts, intellectual mould, and spiritual senses are infinitely wiser than we conceive them to be. They are infallible in what they say of God, and are the best criteria of truth. How much the world has been given up to the worship of the Bible! "The Bibles will be left here to burn in the general conflagration with the other temporary representations of the Word of God, which is the eternal Reason, the foundation of our being." This Reason is the "elder Scripture of God,—the soul, the inspired child of the heavenly and eternal Father." The answer is given to the question, Why does orthodoxy believe in the efficacy of Christ's blood to save the souls of men? "It is because man distrusts his reason, and invents the infallible church, and then the infallible Scriptures, to supply his necessity of anchorage. He cannot think the God of the universe can be willing to save such a miserable sinner, and he invents a God of the church, who will. He does not believe anything men can do will entitle them to heaven, or that human lives can make them acceptable in the sight of God."[262]

From the preceding statements it will not be surprising to find some of the speakers apologizing for outright infidelity. "Mr. President," says one, "you, in the judgment of very many, are an infidel. The members of this Christian association occupy what is regarded an infidel position. And that very admirable constitution, which I have read to-day, if presented at a council of churches, commonly reputed orthodox, would be considered, doubtless, the platform of an infidel association.... Infidels, in all generations of the church, have been progressive in every direction; the believers in the present and the future; the people who had confidence in the improvability of man, and the perennial inspirations of God; the men and women who were persuaded that all the spheres of wisdom and excellence were opened to human powers, and that man was welcomed to all the treasure they contain.... They are a thoughtful, earnest, hopeful people, bent on finding the truth, and doing their duty."[263] Such infidels as these are claimed to have blessed the world. All liberal minds ought to catch their spirit and administer every possible blessing to struggling humanity. But there is a species of narrow-minded infidelity which must be shunned; and it is the only kind of which we need to forebode any evil. "The only infidelity to be feared," says Mr. Frothingham, "the only real infidelity which is a sin in the sight of God, is a disbelief in the primary faculties of the human soul; disbelief in the capability of man's reason to discriminate between truth and error in all departments of knowledge, sacred or profane; disbelief in the heart's instinctive power to distinguish good from evil; disallowance of the claims of conscience to pass a verdict upon matters of right and wrong, whenever and wherever brought up. They are the infidels who are untrue to the light they have; who deny the plenary inspiration of that elder Scripture written by the finger of God upon the human heart; who overlay their reason with heaps of antiquated traditions; who bid their conscience stand dumb before appalling iniquities in obedience to the ill-read letter of an ancient record; who, in the interest of power, wealth, worldliness, not seldom of unrighteousness and inhumanity, plead for a Tract society, a Bible, or a church; who compass sea and land to make a proselyte, and when he is made, are quite indifferent as to his being a practical Christian; who collect vast sums of money annually for the ostensible purpose of saving men's souls, practically to the effect of keeping their souls in subjection and blindness. As I read the New Testament, I find that Jesus charged infidelity upon none but such as these; the people who made religion a cloak for pride, selfishness, and cruelty; the conspicuously saintly people, who could spare an hour to pray at a street corner, but had not a minute for a dying fellow-man lying in his blood in a lonely pass. In the judgment of these, Jesus was the prince of unbelievers. Punctilious adherence to the letter, practical disbelief in the spirit—this is infidelity."[264]

The most important event in the history of the American Unitarian Church was the National Convention which met in New York, April 5th, 1865, and was presided over by Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts. Six hundred ministers and laymen, representatives of one hundred and ninety churches, were in attendance. The debates indicated wide diversity of sentiment, but there was no open rupture. The sessions were pervaded by a spirit of devoted loyalty to the civil government, liberality toward all Christian bodies, and zeal in organizing educational and missionary agencies throughout the country. An annual National Conference of Unitarian Churches was appointed for the future. The Convention was unable to arrive at a common system of belief. The following declaration of faith was presented by A. A. Low, Esq.:

"Whereas, Associate and efficient action can only be expected of those who agree in certain leading doctrinal statements or positions, Resolved, That without intending any intolerance of individual opinion, it is the right and duty of this convention to claim of all who take part in its proceedings, an assent to the fundamental doctrines hitherto held by the Unitarian body by reason of which it has acquired its standing in the Christian world, and asserts it lineage in the Christian Church; and, to this end, this convention declares as essentially belonging to the Unitarian faith: 1st. Belief in the Holy Scriptures as containing a revelation from God to man—and, as deduced therefrom, 2d. Belief in one God, the Father; 3d. Belief in one Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, the Son of God, and his specially appointed Messenger and Representative to our race, gifted with supernatural power, "approved of God by miracles and signs and wonders which God did by him," and thus, by divine authority, commanding the devout and reverential faith of all who claim the Christian name; 4th. Belief in the Holy Ghost, the Comforter; 5th. Belief in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and life everlasting."

These resolutions were at first laid on the table, but afterward referred to a special committee. The refusal of the Convention to adopt them indicates very clearly the unwillingness of a large portion of the Unitarian clergy of the United States to occupy an evangelical position.[265]

Closely allied to the Unitarians in spirit and in doctrine are the Universalists, who date the beginning of their strength in the United States from the arrival of the Rev. John Murray, in 1770. They unite with the Unitarians in rejecting the triune character of God, and hold that their view of the divine unity is as old as the giving of the law on Sinai. The doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere stated in the Scriptures, for God would then have given us a religion enveloped in mystery, which procedure he has studiously avoided. The Trinitarian view entertained by the orthodox is not only a self-contradiction, but would be a violation of the harmony and order everywhere perceptible in nature.[266]

Christ is next to God in excellence; he is "God manifest in the flesh;" that is, God has given him more of his glory than any other creature has enjoyed. Christ was simply sent by God to do a certain work, and served only as a delegate when he spoke and acted as one having authority.[267] The Holy Spirit exerts an influence upon the heart by purely natural methods. The new birth is therefore merely the result of ordinary means for human improvement.

The most important article of the Universalist creed is the final salvation of all men. The goodness of God is infinite, and therefore he will save all his rational creatures through Christ, his Son and Ambassador. Man suffers in this world the natural consequences of his wayward conduct; but when the penalty is once inflicted, there is no need of vengeance. The chief end of suffering in the present life is man's improvement and restoration to perfect happiness. Pain ordained for its own sake, and perpetuated to all eternity, would be a proof of infinite malignity. By virtue of God's benevolence, man's suffering has a beneficent element, and must therefore be temporary and result in good.[268] When Christ comes to raise the dead, he will relieve from misery all the sons of men, give them a new life, and take them to himself.[269]

The adherents of Universalism insist upon philanthropy and the brotherhood of man. They hold that orthodox theology fosters harsh notions of God's character, fills the mind with superstition, and is the source of some of the most flagrant evils of the present age. "We regret," says one of their writers, "that the acknowledged faith and opinions have done no more to elevate the affections, and improve the condition of man. They have utterly failed to correct the heart or the life. They have disturbed his present peace, and darkened his prospects for the future. Thousands of the young and innocent have been induced to relinquish whatever is most beautiful in life—to give up all that renders religion attractive and divine, for a miserable superstition, which, like the Upas, fills the very atmosphere with death. I am reminded that this dark theology, like a great idol, has been rolling its ponderous car over the world for ages—I follow its desolating track, by the wreck of noble minds—by the fearful wail of the lost spirit, and the crushed hopes and affections of those I love! Oh! when I look at this picture, drawn with the pencil of reality, in all its deep shadows and startling colors, the brain is oppressed and the heart is sick; and while I would stifle the inquiry, it finds an utterance:—In the name of reason, of humanity and heaven, is there no hope for man?"[270]

This declamatory lament over the theology of the evangelical Christian church is a repetition of an old skeptical charge. It is the expression of a spirit similar to that which animated the German Rationalists, prompted the criticism of Colenso and of the Essays and Reviews, and is now ready to welcome any effort that may promise a revolution of the popular religious sentiment in Great Britain and the American Republic. Orthodoxy is unhesitatingly pronounced a public curse. In reply, we would request our skeptical opponents to remember the historical record of their principles, as seen in the social convulsions of Germany, in the immorality and revolutions of France, and in the religious indifference and prostration of England in the eighteenth century. We would remind them, further, that orthodox theology has here been in the ascendant, and that in no land are public morals purer, the laws more just, humanitarian enterprises better supported, material interests more progressive, or education better fostered than in the United States. The American Church laments that her faith has not been stronger and her zeal more fervent, but her history, with all its dark pages of hesitation and inefficiency, is the answer which she returns to the accusations of her Rationalistic opponents. Meanwhile, she proposes to continue her labor for human salvation, by the promulgation of her present system of theology, nor will she consider her mission accomplished until the gospel of Christ has been preached to every creature.

FOOTNOTES:

[232] Smith, History of the Church of Christ in Chronological Tables, p. 74.

[233] The Reason of Church Government against Prelacy. Ch. II.

[234] History of the Church of Christ, &c., p. 74.

[235] Baird, Religion in America, pp. 547-562.

[236] Unitarianism in its Actual Condition. Edited by Rey. J. R. Beard, D. D. pp. 1-4. London, 1846.

[237] Sprague, Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit. Historical Introduction, p. xii.

[238] Appleton's American Cyclopaedia. Art. Wm. Ellery Channing. W. L. Symonds, Esq., is the author of this biography.

[239] Works, Introductory Remarks, p. viii.

[240] Ibid. p. vi.

[241] Works, Introductory Remarks, pp. xviii-xix.

[242] Ellis, Half Century of Unitarianism, p. 34.

[243] These words refer to the great Revival in the winter of 1857-58.

[244] Bellows, Restatements of Christian Doctrine, p. 164-165.

[245] Controversial Sermons, No. 1.

[246] Orr, Unitarianism in the Present Time, pp. 54, 58, 59.

[247] Farley, Unitarianism Defined, p. 24.

[248] Farley, Unitarianism Defined, p. 26.

[249] Ibid. pp. 122, 123, 136.

[250] Ibid. pp. 156, 157.

[251] Will the Reverend author be kind enough to inform the public of the name and exact locality of these innocent islanders?

[252] Bellows, Restatements of Christian Doctrine, pp. 228-230.

[253] Works of H. Ware, jr., vol. iv. p. 91.

[254] Farley, Unitarianism Defined, pp. 208-210.

[255] Bellows, Restatements of Christian Doctrine, pp. 306, 307.

[256] Orr, Unitarianism in the Present Time, p. 8.

[257] F. H. Hedge, D. D.

[258] Essays and Reviews, Introduction to Boston Edition.

[259] Religious Aspects of the Age. Preface, p. 3.

[260] Bellows, in Religious Aspects of the Age, pp. 109-111.

[261] Mayo, in Religious Aspects of the Age, pp. 68, 69.

[262] Bellows, in Religious Aspects of the Age, pp. 102, 103.

[263] Frothingham, Ibid. pp. 121-126.

[264] Religious Aspects of the Age, pp. 131-132.

[265] American Unitarianism is numerically decreasing. The most favorable estimate of its membership (Schem, Ecclesiastical Year-Book, p. 78), is thirty thousand. From Dr. Sprague's Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit, pp. xx.-xxi., we derive the following statistical account of its present strength:

There are in the United States about 263 Societies, of which Massachusetts has 164, and the city of Boston 21; Maine has 16, New Hampshire 15, Vermont 3, Rhode Island 3, Connecticut 2, New York 13, New Jersey 1, Pennsylvania 5, Maryland 2, Ohio 5, Illinois 11, Wisconsin 2, and Missouri, Kentucky, Minnesota, South Carolina, Louisiana, California, and the District of Columbia, each one. There are about 345 ministers. There are two theological schools, one at Cambridge, founded 1816; the other at Meadville, Pa.; first opened in 1844, and incorporated in 1846. The Periodicals are, The Christian Examiner, tri-monthly, Boston; The Monthly Religious Magazine and Independent Journal, Boston; The Sunday School Gazette, semi-monthly, Boston; The Christian Register, weekly, Boston; and the Christian Inquirer, weekly, New York. The missionary and charitable societies are, the American Unitarian Association, founded in 1825, and incorporated in 1847; the Unitarian Association of the State of New York; Annual Conference of Western Unitarian Churches; the Sunday School Society, instituted in 1827, and reorganized in 1854; the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, Piety, and Charity, incorporated in 1805; the Massachusetts Evangelical Missionary Society, instituted in 1807; the Society for Promoting Theological Education, organized in 1816, and incorporated in 1831; the Society for the Relief of Aged and Destitute Clergymen, formed in 1848, and incorporated in 1850; the Ministerial Conference; the Association of Ministers at large in New England, formed in 1850; the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches of Boston, organized in 1834, and incorporated in 1839; the Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute, Boston, 1849; the Young Men's Christian Union, Boston, organized in 1851, and incorporated in 1852; the Boston Port Society, incorporated in 1829; and the Seamen's Aid Society of Boston, formed in 1832.

[266] Williamson, Exposition and Defense of Universalism, pp. 11-13.

[267] Skinner, Universalism Illustrated and Defended, pp. 51-56.

[268] Appleton's American Cyclopaedia, Art. Universalists.

[269] Williamson, Exposition and Defense of Universalism, pp. 140-155.

[270] Brittan, Universalism as an Idea, pp. 12, 13. We get the following statistics concerning the present condition of the Universalists as a denomination from their Register of 1862: 23 State Conventions; 87 Local Associations; 1,279 Societies and 998 Churches; 724 Preachers; 8 Academies; 3 Colleges; 17 Periodicals. St. Lawrence University, N. Y., has a Library of 5,000 vols; and Tuft's College, Mass., which opened in 1854, one of 10,000 volumes. The Unitarians excel the Universalists in humanitarian efforts, but the latter surpass the former in periodical literature.



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE UNITED STATES CONTINUED: THEODORE PARKER AND HIS SCHOOL.

The early Unitarian Church of America was ardent in its attachment to the doctrine of miracles. An article which appeared in the Christian Examiner less than forty years ago, provoked great opposition because of its severe strictures on this branch of Christian evidence. The writer held that miracles, even if proved to have occurred, can establish nothing in favor of a religion which has not already stood the test of experience; and that the doctrines of Christianity must first be determined reasonable before we are compelled to believe that miracles were wrought in attestation of them. The elder school of Unitarians denounced his statements as open infidelity. A violent controversy ensued, but no schism took place. Theodore Parker stood at the head of the radical movement, and afterward labored unremittingly to disseminate his theological opinions. In him American Rationalism finds its complete personification. He represents the application of German infidelity to the Unitarianism of New England.

This celebrated advocate of temperance and freedom was prompted by a deep and unselfish love of his race. He was descended from a soldier of the Revolutionary army, and inherited that indomitable will, strong patriotic impulses, and native talents, which had characterized his ancestry for several generations. His mental qualities were of a lofty type. He was a linguist who, in correctness of speech and facility of acquisition, had few equals on this side of the Atlantic. His eloquence was stirring and popular, while his pen was facile and fruitful. Commencing to preach in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, the unusual character of his pulpit ministrations attracted public attention. On being invited to Boston, he assumed the pastoral relation over a newly-formed church, the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society. In addition to his sermons, he lectured in all parts of the Northern States, and found time to write regularly for periodicals, compose original works, and make translations of German authors with whom his own theological opinions were in sympathy.

Though often in feeble health, he seldom allowed physical languor to intermit his work. When threatened with consumption he was induced to spend some time at Santa Cruz, whence he sailed for Italy. He died at Florence in the spring of 1860, not having completed his fiftieth year, and after a pastorate of only fourteen years at the Melodeon. He had often expressed a desire in earlier life that, like Goethe and Channing, he might not be deterred from labor by the prospect of immediate death. Shortly before his decease he addressed to his congregation in Boston a lengthy letter containing his experience as a minister. He now lies in the little cemetery outside the walls of Florence; his tombstone, at his own request, simply recording his name and the dates of his birth and death. He bequeathed his library, containing over thirteen thousand volumes, to the Free Library of Boston.

Our chief concern is with Mr. Parker as a theologian. He was a stranger to moderation in every form. Having conceived certain skeptical views, he knew no terms strong enough to condemn the whole evangelical scheme. His chief defects of style are abruptness and occasional vulgarity, which no man more regretted than their author in his calmer hours. But there can be no apology for his dealing with serious subjects in that vein of sarcasm which reminds us of the grossness of the coarser brood of infidels. An English critic, noticing this defect, says: "His vigor of style was deformed by a power of sarcasm, which often invested the most sacred subjects with caricature and vulgarity; a boundless malignity against supposed errors.... He equals Paine in vulgarity and Voltaire in sarcasm."[271]

Parker felt that a bold course must be taken or orthodoxy could not be made to yield its position. His biographer informs us that when he was less than seven years of age "he fell out with the doctrines of eternal damnation and a wrathful God."[272] In later life, when striving to find the sources of what he considered the evils of the popular theology, he fixed upon two common idols: "the Bible, which is only a record of men's words and works; and Jesus of Nazareth, a man who only lived divinely some centuries ago. The popular religion is wrong in that it tells man he is an outcast, that he is but a spurious issue of the devil, must not pray in his own name, is only sure of one thing—and that is damnation. Man is declared to be immortal, but it is such immortality as proves a curse instead of a blessing. In fact this whole orthodox theology rests on a lie."[273]

His positive faith is comprehended in his own term, "the Absolute Religion." God has created man with an intuitive religious element, the strongest and deepest in human nature, indestructible, and existing everywhere. Its legitimate action is to produce reverence, and ascends into trust, hope, and love, or descends into doubt, fear, and hate. Religion is not confined to one age, or people, or sect. It is the same thing in each man, "not a similar thing—but the same thing." Three forms of religion have existed, and each in turn has ruled the mind,—Fetichism, Polytheism, and Monotheism. The first can be distinctly traced in the mythical stories of Genesis, the second in pagan nations, and the third in these later times. Now, it is a very small matter in which one of these forms man has worshiped or may still worship. If he worship at all, he adores the true God, "the only God, whether he call on Brahma, Jehovah, Pan, or Lord, or by no name at all.... Many a swarthy Indian, who bowed to wood and stone; many a grim-faced Calmuck, who worships the great God of storms; many a Grecian peasant, who did homage to Phoebus-Apollo when the sun rose or went down; yes, many a savage, his hand smeared all over with human sacrifice, shall come from the east and the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and Jesus,—while men who called daily on the only living God, who paid their tribute and bowed at the name of Christ, shall be cast out because they did no more."[274]

Christianity, with Parker, is not the absolute religion, because a better may be developed. The great difference between it and other religions is: first, in the point whence it sets out, other religions starting from something external and limited, but Christianity from the spirit of God in the soul of man speaking through reason, conscience, and the religious sentiment; second, it is not a system but a method of religion and life; and, third, its eminently practical nature. The Deity adored by many people is a pure fabrication, for superstition projects its own divinity, which of course will be after its own impure mould. Men call the phantom God, Moloch, or Jehovah, and then attempt to please the capricious being whom they have conjured up. The true idea of God is his infinite presence in each point of space; this immanence in matter is the basis of his influence; this imposition of a law is the measure of God's relation to matter; and the action of the law is therefore mechanical, not voluntary or self-conscious.

The Bible, according to the same method of argumentation, is as much a human book as the Principia of Newton. Some things in it are true, but no reasonable man can accept others. It is full of contradictions; "there are poems which men take as histories; prophecies which have not been and never will be fulfilled; stories of miracles that never happened; stories which make God a man of war, cruel, rapacious, revengeful, hateful, and not to be trusted. We find amatory songs, selfish proverbs, skeptical discourses, and the most awful imprecations human fancy ever clothed in speech." The minds of the writers of the Old Testament were not decided in favor of the exclusive existence of Jehovah, and all the early books betray more of a polytheistic belief than we find in the prophets. The legendary and mythical writings of the Hebrews prove unmistakably that man was first created in the lowest savage life; that his religion was the rudest worship of nature; and that his morality was that of the cannibal. All the civilized races have risen through various forms of developing faith before reaching refinement and true religion. We do not know who are the writers of most of the Scriptural books. Their records are at variance with science. The account of Jehovah's determination that the carcasses of Israel should fall in the wilderness because of disobedience, is a "savage story of some oriental who attributed a blood-thirsty character to his God, and made a deity in his own image, and it is a striking remnant of barbarism that has passed away, not destitute of dramatic interest; not without its melancholy moral."[275]

The prophets are claimed to have written nothing in general above the reach of human faculties. The whole of the Old Testament is only a phantom of superstition to scare us in our sleep.[276] The statements of the evangelists have a very low degree of historical credibility. Miracles are not impossible, because God is omnipotent; but our main difficulty is, that we cannot believe the accounts descriptive of them. The testimony and not the miracle is at fault. Inspiration is not at all peculiar to the Scriptures. All nations have had their inspiration; this is a natural result of the perfection of God, for he does not change; and the laws of mind are like himself, unchangeable. Inspiration, being similar to vision, must be everywhere the same thing in kind however much it differs in degree. The quantity of our inspiration depends upon the use we make of our faculties. He who has the most wisdom, goodness, religion, and truth is the most inspired. This inspiration reveals itself in various forms, modified by country, character, education, peculiarity. Minos and Moses were inspired to make laws; David, Pindar, Plato, John the Baptist, Gerson, Luther, Boehme, Fenelon, and Fox were all inspired men. The sacraments of the Church were never designed to be permanent. In illustration of them, Parker sacrilegiously quotes,

"Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite."

The Christian Church is held to be a purely human mechanism, and the great defect of Protestantism is its limit of the power of private inspiration. God still inspires men as much as ever, and is immanent in spirit as in space. This doctrine, which is Spiritualism, "relies on no church, tradition, or Scripture, as the last grand and infallible rule; it counts these things teachers, if they teach, not masters; helps, if they help us, not authorities. It relies on the Divine presence in the soul of man; the eternal word of God, which is truth, as it speaks through the faculties he has given. It believes God is near the soul as matter to the sense; thinks the canon of revelation not yet closed, nor God exhausted. It sees him in Nature's perfect work; hears him in all true Scripture, Jewish or Phoenician; stoops at the same fountain with Moses and Jesus, and is filled with living water. It calls God, Father, not King; Christ, brother, not Redeemer; Religion, nature. It loves and trusts, but does not fear. It sees in Jesus a man living manlike, highly gifted, and living with blameless and beautiful fidelity to God, stepping thousands of years before the race of man; the profoundest religious genius God has raised up; whose words and works help us to form and develop the native idea of a complete religious man. But he lived for himself; died for himself; worked out his own salvation, and we must do the same, for one man cannot live for another more than he can eat or sleep for him. It is not the personal Christ but the spirit of Wisdom, Holiness, Love that creates the well-being of man; a life at one with God. The divine incarnation is in all mankind."[277]

Such is the faith avowed and enforced by Theodore Parker. It goes but little beyond a belief in God's existence and general participation in human life. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish his views of Deity from Pantheism; but on more than one occasion he expressed his total dissent from the peculiarity of the Hegelian system. He holds that all we see about us and feel within us testifies of God. Neither speculative nor practical atheism can produce good in the world; we must believe in God's existence, else we have no power whatever to explain the harmony in nature, providence in individual and national life, existence and immortality of the soul, and the suffering to which we fall heir.[278] But Theism clears up every difficulty, and sheds its light upon all departments of human life. This alone can overthrow the popular orthodox theology and enthrone the religion of the Absolute, or true Spiritualism in its stead.

It is a question of grave importance how far the skepticism of Unitarianism, Universalism, and Pantheism has been influential upon the American Church, and how great is the number of those who have become more or less tinctured with the Rationalism of the last five years' importation. Parker claimed that the liberal or Rationalistic thinkers were largely on the increase; but he also informs us that the translation by himself of De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testament, not only proved a financial failure, but that it has had "no recognition nor welcome in America; that it has never had a friendly word said for it in any American journal."[279] Skepticism has been proclaimed principally by public lectures, and, in this form, has made little pretension to logical, exegetical, or metaphysical power. Youths have manifested a decided taste for the works of Carlyle, Emerson, and Parker, while the Phases of Faith is one of the most thumb-worn of all the volumes of our circulating libraries. Yet American Rationalism still lacks consistency and system.

The history of Rationalism proves that the evil is of slow and insidious growth. The young are most susceptible of its influence. The Sunday Schools of the various evangelical Churches are usually supplied with large libraries of religious books. But many works of pernicious tendency have been known to find a place upon shelves designed for better service.

A recent juvenile publication of skeptical character has probably been read by many children whose parents had taught them that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.[280] This neat and attractive little volume is worthy of the disciples of Paulus and Semler. It is an advocate, under the most fascinating garb, of the very Rationalism which now threatens the American Church. The author claims that the patriarchal history is made up of little scraps of poetry; the fall of our first parents was their seeing a dark veil one day in their wandering, and they, in consequence thereof, went out of the pleasant place where they had been dwelling; the deluge was simply a metaphorical description of the increase of evil among men; the ark was only a mystical vessel typifying faith, truth, and other correctives of sorrow and sin; "there never was a single man Noah, who put all those creatures into a boat and saved himself;" no sacrifice appeared to Abraham when about to offer Isaac, but "his lifted arm seems to be seized as by the hand of an angel;" the crossing of the Red Sea by Israel, and the destruction of Pharaoh and his host, were the natural results of tide and storm; the bitter waters were sweetened by a friendly weed that grew close at hand; the speaking of Balaam's ass was only the twirling of his long ears and loud braying; and the walls of Jericho fell merely by the natural force of loud, fearless, and honest speaking,—just as West India Slavery tumbled down by the agency of the noble voices that thundered, trumpet-like, in righteous indignation against it.

While speaking of Mr. Frothingham's juvenile work, we do not forget that he has lately sounded the alarm of "Liberal Christianity" for those who have passed the age of childhood. Many of his Unitarian brethren will hardly agree with his radical Rationalism. Belonging to the extreme Left Wing, he holds that it is the province of liberal Christians to slough off the absurd doctrines now prevalent,—"not to remould the age,—to recast it, to regenerate it, to cross it or struggle with it, but to penetrate its meaning, enter into its temper, sympathize with its hopes, blend with its endeavors. The life of the time appoints the creed of the time, and modifies the establishment of the time. The great mark of our generation is a deep faith in the soul's power to take care of itself, and a desire that it may exercise that power to the utmost. Away with fears! Away with despairs! Away with devils! Away with perdition! Away with doom! Protestantism has the poison in its heart. From our own liberal theology, the elements of unnaturalism, preternaturalism, supernaturalism, have disappeared almost as completely as they have from the systems of science. The grand achievement of Christianity was the emancipation of human nature from its terrible Jewish thraldom. Its revelation seems to have been, that men could judge for themselves what is right,—could please God by being true to themselves,—could find the blessed life by returning to the simplicity of little children,—and could bring in the kingdom of heaven by yielding to the solicitations of kindness. Man greater than the Sabbath; man greater than the temple; man greater than the priesthood or the law. The religion was a consecration of Nature; the abolishment of the old oppressive hierarchies, and a cordial invitation to the heart to make a religion for itself. Just so far as it was in the deepest and purest sense 'natural' religion,—just so far as it emancipated the moral forces of humanity,—was it quick and quickening.... Human nature, under liberty, will vindicate itself as a divine creation. The freer it is, the more harmonious, orderly, balanced, and beautiful it is.... Nature's seers, running their eye along the line of the moral law, catch vistas in the future brighter than those that now are fading from the Old Testament page; and Nature's prophets, putting their ear to the ground, hear the murmur of nobler revelations than were ever given to the old oracles now moving their stiffened lips in death. Humanity's heresiarchs are lordlier than inhumanity's priests. The soul's image-breaking is diviner than the prelate's worship. Knowledge distances faith. Human solidity more than makes good the Catholic's Communion. The revelation of universal law makes the belief in miracle seem atheistical; and the irresistible grace of the spirit that lives, and moves, and discloses its being in humanity, sweeps past the dispensations of Catholic and Protestant Christendom, as the eagle distances the dove."[281]

We would not utter a syllable of needless alarm; but is it not time that the American Church take note of the efforts by which the Rationalists of every grade are striving to take away the cardinal truths of the Christian revelation? Their predecessors in Europe sought to make children ashamed of the old truths by casting sarcasm on the strong faith and evangelical piety of the forefathers. They then aimed to show that the Church and theology are altogether behind the age, and that science and art are advancing with a rapidity which must leave all dogmatism and authority far behind. They afterward examined the Scriptures by the light of Reason alone, and, by this idea, deluded multitudes of the young and inexperienced into the darkness and doubt which were never removed.

This last effort may be the next one to which American Rationalism will address itself. The Church in this country has partaken of the pride awakened by our unexampled national prosperity; and many of her noblest sons had well-nigh come to the conclusion, before the outbreak of the late civil war, that she must inevitably prosper, simply because of the remarkable temporal blessings which God had lavishly given. But without faith nothing can be accomplished, and three decades may be sufficient to so change the whole aspect of our religious life that the Church may become thoroughly Rationalistic; her sanctuaries frequented, and her posts of honor occupied, by the worshipers of Reason. The fidelity of the past will not be able to meet the emergency of the present. The Church in the wilderness was not permitted to lay up manna in advance.

Our civilization is undergoing a complete revolution. The field is newly ploughed by the events of the last few years, and it becomes the Church to scatter the seeds of truth with an unsparing hand. If this land is to be blessed with pure faith, as in past years, a faith strong enough to repel every blow of Skepticism, to the Church, as an instrument, and not to our natural growth, shall be attributed this popular prosperity. If we would secure for future years an uncorrupted faith, the enaction of pure laws, the introduction of the Gospel into every social class, an increased enthusiasm in missionary labors, the intense union of all parts of our country, and the united progress of piety and theological science, the duty of the present hour must be discharged.

FOOTNOTES:

[271] Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, p. 324.

[272] Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, vol. i., p. 30.

[273] Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, pp. 5, 6.

[274] Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, p. 111.

[275] Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, pp. 333, 4.

[276] Ibid. p. 350.

[277] Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, pp. 477, 478.

[278] Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and Popular Theology, pp. 51-55.

[279] Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, vol. i., p. 402.

[280] Stories of the Patriarchs, by Rev. O. B. Frothingham. Boston, 1864.

[281] Sermon on the New Religion of Nature, before the Alumni of the Cambridge Divinity School. Published in the Friend of Progress, November, 1864.



CHAPTER XXV.

INDIRECT SERVICE OF SKEPTICISM—PRESENT OUTLOOK.

The most important successes of man are born of his severest trials and most persistent struggles. Sometimes principles have required the combats of centuries before they become the possession of a heroic people. The value of the prize may in most cases be accurately estimated by the length of time and the outlay of effort expended for its attainment. "Men of easy faith," says a wise observer of human deeds, "and sanguine hope, have sometimes, after one great commotion and change, joyously assured themselves that this would suffice. The grand evil is removed; we shall now happily and fast advance with a clear scene before us. But after a while, to their surprise and dismay, another commotion and dismay has perhaps carried the whole affair back, apparently, to the same state as before. Recollect the history of the Reformation in this land; begun by Henry VIII., established, it was gladly assumed, by his son. But that youth dies, and then we have the instant return of Popery, in all its triumph, fury, and revenge. After a while Queen Mary departs, and all pious souls exult in liberation and Protestantism. But then again, in Elizabeth's time, there comes a half-papist, severe spiritual tyranny. Later down, after the overthrow of the tyrant Charles, there arose for the first time, a prospect of real religious liberty. But his son resumes the throne, and all such liberty was abolished, and so continued long; and another revolution was required that religious faith and worship might be free."[282]

But when the English Reformation did come it was worth all its cost. The Church would not barter it to-day for the commercial value of continents,—no, not if she were told that the refusal would cost her whole centuries of poverty and sorrow, many more martyrdoms, and a second home in the catacombs.