Our Unitarian Gospel. Minot J. Savage
of it. Was he justified in telling the truth about Calvinism because he has not a ready-made scheme to substitute for it?
I wish you to note that I do not concede for an instant that I must not tell the truth about anything that I perceive because I have not a ready-made theory of some kind to put in the place of that which is taken away. It is my business to tell what seems to me true in all reverence, seriousness, earnestness and love, and trust the consequences to God.
In the next place, another consideration. I have been talking as though I conceded that Unitarians, or that I myself, sometimes take away things, beliefs. Now I wish to ask you who it is that takes away beliefs. Has Unitarianism ever taken away any faith or hope or trust from the world? Has anybody ever done it?
If we pit ourselves against one of God's eternal truths, is that truth going to suffer? Rather shall we not beat ourselves to pieces against God's adamant? If a thing is true, nobody is going to take it away from the world; for nobody has the power to uproot or destroy a divine truth.
Who is it, then, that takes these beliefs away? Is it not just this? Does it not mean that men have discovered that what they supposed to be true is not true, and it is the old belief that passes away in the presence of a larger and clearer light? Is not that the process?
When Magellan, for instance, demonstrated that this planet of ours was round by circumnavigating it, the ship returning to the port from which it started, did he take away the old flat earth, fixed and anchored, immovable, around which the sun moved? Why, there was no old, flat and anchored, stationary earth to take away. There never had been. All Magellan did was to demonstrate a new, higher, grander truth. He took away a misconception from the minds of ignorant and uneducated people, and helped put one of God's grand, luminous truths in the place of it. That is all he did.
It is modern intelligence, increasing knowledge, larger, clearer light that takes away old beliefs. But, if these old beliefs are not true, it simply means that we are discovering what is true; that is, having a clearer view and vision of God's ways and methods of governing the world.
I wish you to note, then, in this second place, that Unitarianism does not take away anything.
One third consideration: Suppose we did. Suppose we took away belief in the existence of God. Suppose we took away belief in man as a soul, leaving him simply an animal. Suppose we took away faith in continued existence after death. Suppose we had the power to sweep all of these grand beliefs out of the human mind. Then what?
If I had my choice, I would do it gladly, with tearful gratitude, rather than keep the old beliefs of the last two thousand years.
The late Henry Ward Beecher, in a review article published not long before his death, said frankly this which I am saying now, and which I had said a good many times before Mr. Beecher's article was written, that no belief at all is infinitely, unspeakably better than those horrible beliefs which have dominated and darkened the world.
I would rather believe in no God than in a bad God, such as he has been painted. And, if I had my choice of the future, what would it be? I have, I trust, just over there, father, mother, two brothers, numberless dear ones; and I hope to see them with a hope dearer than any other which I cherish. But, if I were standing on the threshold of heaven itself, and these loved ones were beckoning me to come in, and I had the choice between an eternity of felicity in their presence and eternal sleep, I would take the sleep rather than take this endless joy at the cost of the unceasing and unrelieved torment of the meanest soul that ever lived. And I would have no great respect for any man who would not. I would not care to purchase my joy at the price of endless pangs, the ascending smoke of torment, the wail going up to the sweet heavens forever and ever and ever.
So, even if it were a choice between no belief at all and the old beliefs, the darkness would be light to me; and I would embrace it with joy rather than take the selfish felicity of those men who estimate it as a part of their future occupation to be leaning over the battlements of heaven and witnessing the torture of the damned. This, though sounding so terrible to us now, is good old Christian doctrine, which has often been avowed. Thank God we are outgrowing it.
These, then, for preliminary considerations.
Now let me raise the question as to what has been taken away. You remember I said that I have taken nothing away, Unitarianism has taken nothing away. But the advance of modern knowledge, the larger, clearer revelation of God, has taken away no end of things. What are they?
Let me make two very brief statements right here. I am in the position, this morning, of appearing to repeat myself; that is, I must go over a good many points that I have made from this platform before. But please understand that it is not on account of lapse of memory on my part. I am doing it with a distinct end in view, which can only be attained by these steps.
In the next place, my treatment has so much ground to cover that what I say will appear somewhat in the nature of a catalogue; but I see no other way in which to make the definite statement I wish to lay before you. I am going to catalogue, first, a lot of the things that modern knowledge has taken away. Then I am going to tell you some of the things that modern knowledge is putting in place of what it has removed.
In the first place, the old universe is taken away; that is, that little tiny play-house affair, not so large as our solar system, which in the first chapters of Genesis God is reported to have made as a carpenter working from outside makes a house, inside of six days. That little universe, that is, the story of creation as told in the early chapters of Genesis, is absolutely gone. I shall tell you pretty soon what has taken the place of it.
Secondly, the God of the Old Testament, the God of most of the creeds has been taken away, that God who was jealous, who was partial, who was angry; who built a little world, and called it good, and then inside of a few days saw it slip out of his control into the hands of the devil, either because he could not help it or did not wish to; who watched this world develop for a little while, and then, because it did not go as he wanted it to, had to drown it, and start over again; the God who in the Old Testament told the people that slavery was right, provided they did not enslave the members of their own nation, but only those outside of it; the God who indorsed polygamy, telling a man that he was at liberty to have just as many wives as he wanted and could obtain, and that he was free to dispose of them by simply giving them a little notice and telling them to quit; the God who indorsed hypocrisy and lying on the part of his people; the God who sent a little light on one little people along one edge of the Mediterranean, and left all the rest of the world in darkness; the God who is to damn all of these people who were left in darkness because they did not know that of which they never had any chance to hear; the God who is to cast all his enemies into the pit, trampling them down, as Edwards pictures so horribly to us, in his hate for ever and ever. This God has been taken away.
In the third place, the story of Eden, the creation of man and then immediately the fall of man and the resulting doctrine of total depravity, this has been taken away. That man was made in the image of God, and then, inside of a few days, fell into the hands of the Power of Evil, and that since that day he has been the legitimate subject here on this earth of the prince of this world, that is, the devil, and that is taught both in the Old Testament and in the New, that man is this kind of a being, this is forever gone. There is no rational, intelligent, free belief in it left.
Then the old theory of the Bible has been taken away, that theory which makes it a book without error or flaw, and makes us under the highest obligation to receive all its teachings as the veritable word of God, whether they seem to us hideous, blasphemous, immoral, degrading, or not. This is gone.
Professor Goldwin Smith, in an article published within a year, treats the belief, the continued holding to this old theory about the Bible, under the head of Christianity's "Millstone." He writes from the point of view of the old belief; but he says, if Christianity is going to be saved, this millstone must be taken off from about its neck, and allowed to sink into the sea.
If we hold that theory, what? Why, then, we must still believe that, in order to help on the slaughter of his enemies on the part of a barbarian general, God stopped the whole machinery of the universe for hours until he got through with his killing.