Chapter 19

THE religious opinions of the average person in any community do not count for much, if any one is studying them with the endeavor to find out their bearing on what is true or what is false. This is true not only of popular religious opinions, but of any other set of opinions whatever; and for the simple reason that most people do not hold their opinions as the result of any study, of any investigation, because they have seriously tried to find out what is true, and have become convinced that this, and not that, represents the reality of things.

Let us note for a moment and I do this rather to clear the way than because I consider it of any very great importance how it is that the great majority of people come by the religious opinions which they happen to hold. I suppose it is true in thousands of cases that a man or a woman is in this church rather than that merely as the result of inheritance and childhood training. People inherit their religious ideas. They are taught certain things in their childhood, they have accepted them perhaps without any sort of question; and so they are where they happen to be to-day. If you stop and think of it for just a moment, you will see that this may be all right as a starting-point, but is not quite an adequate reason why we should hold permanently, and throughout our lives, a particular set of ideas. If all of us were to accept opinions in this sort of fashion, and never put them behind us or make any change, where would the growth of the world be? How would it be possible for one generation to make a little advance on that which preceded it, so that we could speak of the progress of mankind? Then, when persons do make up their minds to change, to leave one church and go to another, it is not an uncommon thing for them simply to select a particular place of worship or a special organization for no better reason than that they happen to like it, to be attracted to it for some superficial cause. How many people who do leave one church for another do it as the result of any earnest study, or real endeavor to find the truth? And yet, if you will give the matter a moment's serious consideration, you will see that we have no sort of right to choose one theory rather than another, one set of ideas rather than another, because we happen to like one thing, and not something else. Liking or disliking, a superficial preference or aversion, is an impertinence when dealing with these great, high, and deep questions of God and the soul, of the true or the false.

Then I have known a great many people in my life who went to a particular church for no better reason than mere convenience. It was easily accessible, it was just around the corner, they did not have to make any long journey, and did not have to put themselves out any to get up a little earlier on Sunday morning, which they would otherwise need to do. A mere matter of convenience! And this is so many times allowed to settle some great question of right or wrong. Then you will find those who select a particular church or a particular church organization, become identified with it, merely because on a casual visit to the place they were taken with the minister, happened to like his appearance, his method of speaking, the way he presented his ideas. Or perhaps they were attracted by the music. There are persons who decide these great questions of God and truth and the soul for no more important a reason than the organization and the capacity of the church choir.

It is not an uncommon thing for people to attend some particular church because it promises to be socially advantageous to them. It is fashionable in a particular town. I have a friend, I still call him friend, a Boston lawyer, who told me in conversation about this subject one day that he deliberately went to the largest church he could find, and that, if in the particular city in which he was residing the Roman Catholic Church was in the majority, he should attend that. There are thousands of persons who wish to be in the swim, and who are diverted this way or that by what seems to them socially profitable. Think of it, claiming to be followers of the Nazarene, who was outcast, spit upon, treated with contempt, on whom the scribes and Pharisees of his day looked down with bitterness and scorn, and who led the world for the sake of his love for God out into a larger truth, who made himself of no reputation, claim to be followers of him, and let a matter of fashion decide whether they will go this way or walk in some other path I Think of the irony of a situation like that!

Then, again, there are those who attach themselves to some one church rather than to another because, after looking over the ground, they made up their minds that it would be to their business advantage. They will become associated with a set of people who can help them on in the world. It is all very well, if there be no higher consideration, for a person to be governed in his action by motives like these; but is it quite right to decide a question of truth or falsehood, of God or duty, of the consecration of the human soul, of the service of one's fellow- men, on the basis of supposed financial advantage? There is hardly a year goes by that persons do not come to me, considering the question as to whether they will attend my church. I can see in a few minutes' conversation with them that they have some purpose to gain. They wish to be helped on in the prosecution of some scheme for their own advancement. If they succeed, they are devout Unitarians and loyal followers of mine. If not, within a few weeks I hear of them as devoted attendants somewhere else, where they have been able to make their personal plans a success.

These are some of the reasons there are worthier ones than these which influence the crowd. There are, I say, worthier ones. Let me hint one or two. I do not think it is any sacrilege, or betrayal of confidence, for me to speak a name. The late Frances E. Willard, one of the ablest, truest, most devoted women I have ever known, frankly confessed to me in personal conversation that she was more in sympathy with my religious ideas than of those of the Church with which she was connected, but her love, her tender love and reverence for her mother and the memory of her mother's religion were such that she could not find it in her heart to break away. She loved the services her mother loved, she loved the hymns her mother sung, she loved the associations connected with her mother's life. All sweet, beautiful, noble; but, if nobody from the beginning of the world had ever advanced beyond mothers' ideas where should we be to-day? Is it not, after all, the truest reverence for mother, in the spirit of consecration she showed to follow the truth as you see it to-day, as she followed it as she saw it yesterday?

So much to justify the statement I made, that the average popular belief on any subject is not a reliable guide to a person who is earnestly desiring to find the simple truth.

Now let us come to the answer of the specific question which I have propounded. Why are not all educated people Unitarians? I ask this question, not because I originated it, but because it has been put to me, I suppose, a hundred times. People say, You claim to have studied these matters very carefully, you have tried to find the truth, you think you have found it. You have followed what you regard as the true method of search. If you have found the truth, and if other people, using this same method and being as unbiased as you, could also find it, how does it happen that Unitarians are in the minority? Why do not all persons who study and who are educated accept the Unitarian faith? This question, I say, has been asked me a great many times; and it is a question that deserves a fair, an earnest and sympathetic answer. Such an answer I am now to try to give.

In the first place, let me make a few assertions. I have not time to prove them this morning; but they are capable of proof. The advantage of a scientific statement is that, though you do not stop to prove it, you know it can be proved any time, whenever a person chooses to take the time or trouble. For example, if I state the truth of the Copernican system, or that the earth revolves around the sun, and you challenge me to prove it in two minutes, I may not be able to; it may take longer than that; but I know it can be demonstrated to-morrow or next week or any time, because it has been demonstrated over and over again.

I wish now to assert the truth of certain fundamental principles; and these principles, you note, are those which constitute the peculiarity of the Unitarian people as a body of theological believers. For example, that this which is all around us and of which we are a part is a universe is demonstrated beyond question. It is one, the unity of the universe. The unity of force, the unity of substance or matter, the unity of law, the unity of life, the unity of humanity, the unity of the fundamental principles of ethics, the unity of the religious life and aspiration of the world, these, I say, are demonstrated. And do you not see that demonstrating these carries along with it the unquestioned, the absolute demonstration of the unity of the power that is in the universe and manifests itself through it? The unity of God? The Lord our God is one! And this is no question of speculation, it is demonstrated truth. Now, as to any speculative or metaphysical division of God's nature into three parts or personalities, there is not, and there cannot be, in the nature of things, one slightest particle of proof. The unity is demonstrated: anything else is incapable of demonstration.

Next, the Unitarian contention I say Unitarian, not because we originated it by any means, but simply because we first and chiefly among religious bodies have accepted it as to the origin and nature of man as science has unfolded it to us, thus precluding the possibility of the truth of any doctrine of any fall. This is not speculation, it is not whim. It is not something picked up by the way, that a man chooses because he likes it, and because he does not like something else. This is demonstrated truth, as clearly and fully demonstrated as is the law of gravity or the fact that water will freeze at a certain temperature. Then the question of the Bible. The Unitarian position in regard to the origin, the method of composition, the authenticity and the authority of Biblical books, is a commonplace of scholarship. There is no rational question in regard to it any more. Next, the question of the origin and nature of Jesus the Christ. The naturalness of his birth, the naturalness of his death, his pure humanity, are made clearer and surer by every new step which investigation takes; and there is nothing in the nature of proof that is conceivable in regard to any other theory. If any one chooses to accept it, well; but nobody claims, or can claim, to prove it, to settle it, to demonstrate it as true. It becomes an article of faith, a question of voluntary belief; but there is no possibility of holding it in any other way. So as to the nature of salvation. It is a matter of character; a man is saved when he is right. And that he cannot be saved in any other way is demonstrable and demonstrated truth.

Now, these are the main principles which constitute the beliefs of Unitarians; and in any court of reason they are able to make good their claim against any corner. And, if there be no other motive at work except the one clear-eyed, simple desire to find the truth, there can be no two opinions concerning any of them.

Why, then, are not all thoughtful, educated people Unitarians? Well may the listener ask, in wonder, if the statements I have just been making are true. Now I propose to offer some suggestions, showing what are some of the influences at work which determine belief, and which have very little to do with the question as to whether the beliefs are capable of establishing themselves as true or not.

In the first place, let us raise the question as to what is generally meant by education. We assume that all educated people ought to agree on all great questions; and they ought, note now what I am saying, they ought, if they are really and truly educated, and if with a clear and single eye they are seeking simply the truth. But, in order to understand the situation, we need to note a good many other things that enter into this matter of determining the religious path in which people will walk. Now what do we mean by education? Popularly, if a man has been to school, particularly if he is a college graduate, if he can read a little Latin and speak French, and knows something of music, if he has graduated anywhere, he is spoken of as educated. But is that a correct use of language? Are we sure that a man is educated merely because he knows a lot of things or has been through a particular course of study? What does a human education mean? Does it not mean the unfolding, the development of our faculties in such a way that in the intellectual sphere we can come into contact with and possession of the reality of things, the truth? Intellectually, is there any other object of education than to fit a man to find the truth? And yet let me give you a case. Here is a man, I take it as an illustration simply, not because I have anything particular against the Catholic Church any more than against any other body of believers, who has been through a Catholic college, has made himself master of Catholic doctrine, become familiar with theological and ecclesiastical literature; suppose he knows all the languages, or a dozen of them, having them at his fingers' ends. Do you not see that as a truth-seeker in a free world he may not be educated at all? He may be educated, as we say, or trained is the better word, into acceptance of a certain system of traditional thought, that can give no good reason for itself; for his prejudices, his loves and hates may be called into play. He may be trained into the earnest conviction that it is his highest duty to be loyal to a particular set of ideas.

Take the way I was educated. I grew up reading the denominational reviews, and the denominational newspapers. I was taught that it was dangerous and wicked to doubt. I must not think freely: that was the one thing I was not permitted to do. I went to a theological school, and had drilled into me year after year that such beliefs, about God and man and Jesus and the Bible and the future world, were unquestionably true, and that I must not look at anything that would throw a doubt upon them. And I was sent out into the world graduated, not as a truth-seeker, but to fight for my system, as a West Point graduate is taught that he must fight for his country without asking any questions.

Do you not see that this, which goes under the name of education, instead of fitting a man to find the truth, may distinctly and definitely unfit him, make it harder for him to find any truth except that which is contained in the system which has been drilled into him from his childhood up and year after year? Education, in order to fit a man to be a truth-seeker, must be something different from this merely teaching a man a certain system, a certain set of ideas, and drilling him into the belief that he must defend these ideas against all corners.

A good many people, then, who are called educated, are not educated at all. I have had this question asked me repeatedly: If your position is true, here is a college graduate, and here is another; and here is a minister of such a denomination, or a priest of the Catholic Church; why do they not accept your ideas? Do you not see, however, that this so-called education may stand squarely in the way?

Now, in the second place, I want to dwell a little on the difficulty of people's getting rid of a theory which possesses their minds, and substituting for it another theory. And I wish you to note that it is not a religious difficulty nor a theological difficulty nor a Baptist difficulty nor a Presbyterian difficulty: it is a human difficulty. There is no body of people on the face of the earth that is large enough to contain all the world's bigotry. It overflows all fences and gets into all enclosures. Discussing the subject a little while ago, by correspondence with a prominent scientific man in New England, I got from him the illustrations which I hold in my hand, tending to set forth how difficult it is for scientific men themselves to get rid of a theory which they have been working for and trying to prove, and substitute for it another theory. I imagine that there may be a physiological basis for the difficulty. I suggest it, at any rate. We say that the mind tends to run in grooves of thought. That means, I suppose, that there is something in the molecular movements of the brain that comes to correspond to a well-trodden pathway. It is easy to walk that path, and it is not easy to get out of it. Let it rain on the top of a hill; and, if you watch the water, you will see that it seeks little grooves that have been worn there by the falling of past rains, and that the little streams obey the scientific law and follow the lines of least resistance. There comes a big shower, a heavy downfall; and perhaps it will wash away the surface and change the beds of these old watercourses, create new ones. So, then, when there comes a deluge of new truth, it washes away the ruts along which people have been accustomed to think; and they are able to reconstruct their theories. Now let me give you some of these scientific illustrations. First, that heat is a mode of motion was proved by Sir Humphry Davy and Count Rumford before 1820. In 1842 Joule, of Manchester, England, proved the quantitative relation between mechanical energy and heat. In 1863 note the dates Tyndall gave a course of lectures on heat as a mode of motion, and was even then sneered at by some scientific men for his temerity. Tait, of Glasgow, was particularly obstreperous. To-day nobody questions it; and we go back to Sir Humphry Davy and Count Rumford for our proofs, too. It was proved scientifically proved then; but it took the world all these years, even the scientific world, to get rid of its prejudices in favor of some other theory, and see the force of the proof.

Now, in the second place, it was held originally that light was a series of corpuscles that flew off from a heated surface; but Thomas Young, about the year 1804, demonstrated the present accepted theory of light. But it was fought for years. Only after a long time did the scientific world give up its prejudice in favor of the theory that was propounded by Newton. But to-day we go back to Young, and see that he demonstrated it beyond question.

In the third place, take another fact. Between 1830 and 1845 Faraday worked out a theory of electrical and magnetic phenomena. It was proved to be correct. Maxwell, a famous chemist in London, looked over the matter, and persuaded himself that Faraday was right; but nobody paid much attention to either of them; until after a while the scientific world, through the work of its younger men, those least wedded to the old-time beliefs, conceded that it must be true.

The Nebular Theory was proved and worked out by Kant more than a hundred and thirty years ago. In 1799 Laplace worked it out again; but it was a long time before it was accepted. And now we go back to Kant and Laplace for our demonstration.

Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859. But it was attacked by scientists as well as theologians on every hand. Huxley even looked at it with a good deal of hesitancy before he accepted it. To-day, however, everybody goes back to the "Origin of Species," and finds the whole thing there, demonstration and all.

Lyell published a book on the antiquity of man in 1863. It was twenty- five years before all the scientific men of the world were ready to give up the idea that man had been on the earth more than six or eight thousand years.

So we find that it is not theologians only; it is scientists, too, that find it difficult to accept new ideas. I know scientific men among my personal friends who are simply incapable of being hospitable to an idea that would compel them to reconstruct a theory that they have already accepted. Why are not all educated men Unitarians? Why do not scientific men accept demonstrated truth when it is first demonstrated as truth? It puts them to too much trouble. It touches their pride. They do not like to feel that they have thrown away half their lives following an hypothesis that is not capable of being substantiated.

Then, in the third place, there are men, and educated men as the world goes, who deliberately decline to study new truth; and they are men in the scientific field and in the religious field. They purposely refuse to look at anything which would tend to disturb their present accepted belief. In my boyhood I used to hear Dr. John O. Fiske, a famous preacher in Maine. He told a friend of mine, in his old age, that he simply refused to read any book that would tend to disturb his beliefs. Professor William G. T. Shedd, one of the most distinguished theologians of this country, a leading Presbyterian divine, published so I am not slandering him by saying it a statement that he did not consider any book written since the seventeenth century worth his reading. And yet we have a new world since the seventeenth century, a new revelation of God and of man. To follow the teaching of the seventeenth century would be to go wrong in almost every conceivable direction. What is the use of paying any attention to the theological or religious opinions of a man who avows an attitude like that?

Faraday, to come now to a scientific illustration, so that you will not think I am too hard on theologians, Faraday belonged to one of the most orthodox sects in England; and he used to say deliberately that he kept his religion and his science apart. He says, "When I go into my closet, I lock the door of my laboratory; and, when I go into my laboratory, I lock the door of my closet." He did very wisely to keep them apart; for, if they had got together, there would certainly have been an explosion.

Another scientific illustration is Agassiz. Agassiz unconsciously wrought out and developed some of the most wondrous and beautiful proofs of evolution that the world has ever known; and yet he fought evolution to the last day of his life, simply because he had accepted the other theory. And he got it into his head that there was something about evolution that tended to injure religion and degrade man, not a rational objection, not a scientific objection, but a feeling, a prejudice.