Chapter 4

A still more astonishing fact came to my knowledge last year. During that discussion over Ian McLaren's creed, in which so many people were interested last winter, Chancellor McCracken, of the University of New York, published a letter, in which he referred to the Apostles' Creed as written eighteen hundred years ago. It took my breath away when I read it. I wondered, Could the chancellor of a great University possibly be ignorant of the facts? Would he state that which he knew was not true? I could not explain it either way. I was compelled to think, if he was thoughtless and careless about it, that he had no business to be about a matter of such importance. But he said the Apostles' Creed was written eighteen hundred years ago.

Now what are the facts? The apostles had nothing whatever to do with the creed, as everybody knows to-day who chooses to look into the matter. It grew, and was four or five hundred years in growth, one phrase in one shape held in a certain part of the Church, another phrase in another shape held in another part of the Church, people holding nothing so sacred about it but that they were at perfect liberty to change it and add to it and take away from it, until, as we get it to- day, it appeared for the first time in history at about the year 500. And yet it stands in the Church to-day claiming to be the Apostles' Creed.

And this Apostles' Creed, if it were a part of the purpose I have in mind this morning, I could analyze, and find that it contains elements which nobody accepts to-day; and yet nobody dares to propose touching it, such is the reverence for that which is old. So much more reverence does the world have for that which is old than for that which is true.

If you approach a Churchman in regard to his belief in the resurrection of the body, he will say, Of course, we do not believe in the resurrection of the body: we believe in the resurrection of the soul. But he does not believe in the resurrection of the soul, either.

Let me make two statements in regard to this. In the first place, if he does not believe in the resurrection of the body, he has no right to say it, because the House of Bishops, representing the whole Church of the United states, in an authoritative pastoral letter issued within three years, declares that fixity of interpretation is of the essence of the creeds. No man, then, is at liberty to change the interpretation to suit himself.

And then, again, nobody, as I say, believes in the resurrection of the soul. Why? Because that statement, with the authority of the House of Bishops that nobody has any business to change or reinterpret, carries with it a world underneath the surface of the earth to which the dead go down; and resurrection means coming up again from that underground world. Nobody believes in any underground world to-day. You cannot be resurrected. That is, you cannot rise again unless you have first gone down. It is the ascent of the soul we believe in to-day, and not its resurrection, much less the resurrection of the body.

Now a word in regard to another of the great historic creeds.

The third one to be shaped was the Athanasian Creed. Curiously named most of these are. There was a tradition in the Church that Athanasius, who was one of the great antagonists of the Council of Nicaea, wrote this creed called after his name; but, as a matter of fact, the creed was not known in the Church in the shape in which we have it now until at least four or five hundred years after Athanasius was dead.

The Athanasian Creed dates from the eighth or ninth century; and in this for the first time there is a clear, explicit, definite formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. It never had been shaped in perfection until the time of the Athanasian Creed; and this creed contains among other things those famous damnatory clauses? which the Episcopal Church in this country, to their credit be it said, have left out of their Prayer Book. But this Athanasian Creed is obliged to be sung thirteen times every year in the Church of England; and you can imagine with what grace and joy they must sing the statement that, unless a man believes every single word and sentence of it, he shall no doubt perish everlastingly.

The Athanasian Creed, then, takes us only to the eighth or ninth century. You see, do you not, that, instead of there having been any clear, explicit, definite statement of church beliefs on the part of Jesus and his apostles, they are long and slow growths, and not built up on the basis of proof or evidence, simply opinions which people came to hold and fight for and preach, until at last they got a majority to believe in them, and they were accepted by some council.

I wish now to ask your attention for a few moments to one or two of the modern statements of beliefs. We are face to face here in this modern world with a very strange condition of affairs. I wish I could see the outcome of it. Here are churches printing, publishing, scattering all over America and Europe, statements of belief which perhaps hardly one man in ten among their pew-holders or vestrymen believes. They will tell you they do not believe them; they are almost angry with you if you make the statement that these are church beliefs; and at the same time we are in the curious position of finding that the man who proposes himself as a candidate for the ministry in any of these churches dares not question or doubt these horrible statements. And, if it is found that he does question them after he gets into the ministry, he is in danger of a trial for heresy.

We have had a perfect storm here in New York in one of our greatest churches over Dr. Briggs. And what was Dr. Briggs tried for? Simply for raising the question as to whether every part of the Old Testament was infallible. That was all. Another professor in a theological seminary in the West was turned out of his professorship for a similar offence. An Episcopal minister, a friend of mine in Ohio, was turned out of his church for daring to entertain some of the modern ideas which are in the air, and which intelligent people believe everywhere. One of the best known Episcopal ministers in this city to-day has an indictment over his head. It has been there for eight years; and it is only by the good will of his bishop that he is tolerated. His crime is daring to think, and to believe what all the respectable text-books of the modern world teach.

And people in the pews are indignant if you say that their Church holds these ideas! It is a curious state of affairs. How long is it going to last? What is to be its outcome? I do not know.

But let us look for a moment at another. Let us note one or two points in the Presbyterian Confession of Faith.

It teaches still, with what it claims to be absolute authority, that God, before the foundation of the world, selected just the precise number of people that he was going to save; that he did this, not in view of the fact that they were going to be good people at all, but arbitrarily of his own will, not to be touched or changed by anything in their character or conduct. All the rest he is to "pass by "; and they are to go to everlasting woe. The elect are very few: those who are passed by are the many. And why does he do this? Just think for a moment. There is no such colossal egotism, such extreme of selfishness, in all the world as that attributed to God in this Confession of Faith. The one thing he lives for, cares for, thinks of, labors after, is what? His own glory. He saves a few people to illustrate the glory of his grace and mercy. He damns all the rest purely to illustrate the glory of some monstrous thing called his justice.

This kind of doctrine we are expected to believe to-day.

And worse yet, if anything can be worse. I wonder how many loving, tender mothers in all these churches know it, how many know that the little babe which they clasp to their bosoms with such infinite tenderness and love, which they think of as a gift from the good God, right out of heaven, is an enemy of God, is under the curse and wrath of God? How many of you know that your creed teaches that God hates this blessed little babe, and that, if he does not happen to be one of the elect, he must suffer torment in darkness forever and ever?

That is taught in your confession of faith, which I have right here at my hand. The only mitigation of it that I have ever heard of on the part of consistent believers is the saying of Michael Wigglesworth, a famous alleged poet of the Puritan time in New England, when he states explicitly that none of these non-elect children can be saved, but since they are infants, and not such bad sinners as the grown up ones, their punishment shall be mitigated by their having the easiest room in hell.

Friends, you smile at this. This poem of Michael Wigglesworth's was a household treasure in New England for a hundred years. No end of editions was sold. It was earnestly, verily believed; and the doctrine is still taught every time that a new edition of the Presbyterian Confession of Faith? is issued in this country or in Europe.

Shall we escape these things by going into other churches? Some of them, yes; but the essentials are there in all of them.

Take for one moment the Episcopal Prayer Book. I have had friends in the old churches who have become Episcopalians for no reason that I could imagine, except that it seemed to them they were escaping some of the sharpest corners of the old beliefs; and yet, if you will read carefully the form of service for the baptism of infants in the Episcopal Prayer Book as held to-day and in constant use in every Episcopal Church in this country and England and throughout Europe, you will find that it is taught there in the plainest and most forcible way that the unbaptized infant is a child of wrath, is under the dominion of the devil, is destined to everlasting death, and is regenerated only by having a little water placed on its forehead and by a priest saying over him certain wonderful words.

Can you believe, friends, for one moment that a little child this minute belongs to the devil, is under his dominion, hated of God, doomed to eternal death, then the priest puts his fingers in some water, touches its forehead, and says, "I baptize thee," etc., and the child, after this is said, five minutes later, God loves, has taken to his arms as one of his own little children, and is going to receive him to eternal felicity forever?

Can we believe such things to-day? Do people believe them? If they do not, are they sincere in saying they do, in supporting the institutions that proclaim to the world every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year that they do believe them?

I have now said all I am going to about these creeds in any special way. I wish now to discuss the general situation for a little.

I have heretofore said, I wish to say it again, to make it perfectly plain and emphasize it, that all these old Creeds are based on the supposed ruin of the race. They have come into existence for the express purpose of saving as many souls as possible from this ruin. They never would have been heard of but for the belief in this ruin. And yet to-day there is not a intelligent man in Christendom that does not know that the doctrine of man's fall and ruin is not only doubtful, but demonstrably untrue. It is not a matter of question: it is settled; and yet these churches go on just as though nothing had happened.

Is it sincere? Is it quite honest? Is this the way you use language in Wall Street, in your banks and your stores? Is this the way you maintain your credit as business men?

Oh, let us purge these statements of outgrown crudities, cruelties, falsities, blasphemies, infamies! Let us dare to believe that the light of God to-day is holier than the mistakes about Him made by those who walked in darkness.

Now let me suggest to you. Every one of these creeds sprang out of a theory of the universe that nobody any longer holds. They are Ptolemaic in their origin, not Copernican. They sprang out of a time when it was believed that this was a little tiny world, and God was outside of it, governing it by the arbitrary imposition of his law. Every one of these creeds is fitted to that theory of things; and that theory of things has passed away absolutely and forever.

Consider for just a moment. Why should we pay such extravagant deference to the opinions of men who lived in the dark ages, of the old Church Fathers, of Athanasius, of Arius, of Justin Martyr, of Origen, of Tertullian? Why, friends, just think for a moment. There was hardly a single point connected with this world that they knew anything about. How did it happen that the whole modern world should get on its knees in their presence, as though they knew everything about the Infinite, when they knew next to nothing about the finite? Is there any proof that they knew anything about it? Not one single particle.

Think for a minute. We know to-day unspeakably more about the origin of the Bible, how it grew, how it came into its present shape, than any man from the first century until a hundred years ago could by any possibility know. We know a good deal more than Paul, though he was one of the writers, unspeakably more. He had no means of knowing. We have sifted every particle of evidence, every source of knowledge that the world has to show. We know unspeakably more about this universe than any man of the olden time had any way of knowing. He had no way of knowing anything.

I said something recently about the origin and nature of man. Very little was known about this until within the present century. We know something about how religions grow. We have traced them, studied them, not only Christianity and Judaism, but all the religions of the world back to their origin, and seen them coming into shape. We can judge something about them to-day. You want the antiquity of the world? People are bowing in the presence of what they suppose to be the antiquity, that is, the hoary-headed wisdom, of the world. Why, friends, as you go back, you are not going back to the old age of the world: you are going back to its childhood. The world was never so old as it is this morning. Humanity was never so old, never had such accumulated experience, such accumulated knowledge, as it has this morning.

If you want the results of the world's hoary-headed antiquity, its wisdom, its accumulated experience, its knowledge, then get the very latest results of the very finest modern investigations; for that is where you will find them.

Then let us note in just a word some other reasons why we cannot hold these old creeds. The statements that are made about God are horrible. The statements that are made in regard to the method by which God is going to deal with his creatures are horrible; and then what they tell us in regard to the outcome of human history is pessimistic and hopeless in the extreme.

Where do they claim to get the authority for these old beliefs? They tell us they find them on the one hand in the Bible. What do you find in the Bible? You find almost anything you look for. Is it not perfectly natural you should? The Bible was written by ever so many different writers during a period covering nearly a thousand years. Would you expect to find the same ideas throughout it? The book of Ecclesiastes teaches that man dies like a dog. The Bible upholds polygamy, slavery, cruelty of almost every kind. You might prove almost any kind of immorality from the Bible if you wished to.

But take the highest and noblest conception of the Bible you can have. I was talking with an eminent and widely known clergyman of the Presbyterian Church during the present year; and we were speaking about the Bible. I tell you this to show how modern ideas are permeating the thoughts of men. He said: I confess that, if God had ever given the world an infallible book, I should be utterly appalled and disheartened; because it is perfectly clear that we have no such book now. And, if God ever gave us such a book, then he has lost control of his universe, and was not able to keep us in possession of it.

Here are Quakers and Methodists proving their beliefs, the Baptists proving theirs, the Episcopalians proving theirs, the Presbyterians theirs, all of them different in some particular, and each of them getting their proof from the Bible.

Let us remember that the Bible is simply a great body of national literature, and that you can prove anything out of it. Then remember that it has been proved over and over again by the facts of the handwriting of God himself to be mistaken and wrong in any number of directions.

God is writing his own book in the heavens, in the earth, in the human heart; and we are reading the story there. No creed, then, particularly if it be infamous and unjust and horrible, can prove itself to us so that we are bound to accept it to-day on the basis of an appeal to any book. But the Catholic Church claims not only that the book is infallible, but that their church tradition is infallible too. Is it? How can a church prove that its declarations are infallible? Is there any way of proving it? Think for a moment. It can make the claim: the only conceivable way of proving it is by never making a mistake. Try the Catholic Church by that test. It has committed itself over and over and over again to things which have been demonstrated beyond question to be mistakes. It has made grave mistakes, not only as to fact, but as to morals as well.

On what, then, shall we base any one of these "infallible" creeds? There is no basis for any such claim; and thank God there is not. For now we are free to study, here, there, everywhere; to read God's word in the stars; to read it in the rocks; to read it in the remains of old-time civilizations; to read it in the development of education, the arts, science; to read it in the light of the love we have for each other, the love for our children, and the growing philanthropy and widening benevolence of mankind.

We have thus perfect freedom to listen when God speaks, to see when he holds a leaf of his ever-growing book for our inspection, and to believe concerning him the grandest and noblest and finest things that the mind can dream or the heart can love.

WHY HAVE UNITARIANS NO CREED?

FOR a Scripture suggestion touching the principle involved in my subject, I refer you to the words found in the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, the forty-third and the forty-fourth verses, "Ye have heard that it hath been said; but I say unto you." I take these phrases simply as containing the principle to which I wish to call your earnest attention at the outset.

Jesus here recognizes the fact that the religious beliefs of one age are not necessarily adequate to a succeeding age. So he says over and over in this chapter, Ye have heard that it hath been said by the fathers, by the teachers, the religious leaders in old times, so and so: but I say unto you something else, something in advance, something beyond.

If any one chooses to say that Jesus was infallible, inspired, and therefore had a right to modify the teachings of the fathers, still this does not change the principle at all. In any case he recognized the fact that the beliefs of the old time might not be sufficient to the new time.

And, even if any one should take the position that Jesus was the second person in the Trinity, that he was the one who revealed the old-time truth, and also revealed the new, still the principle is not changed: it is conceded, whatever way we look at it. For, even if he were God, he is represented as giving the people in the time of Moses, the time of David, certain precepts, certain things to believe, certain things to do, and then, recognizing at a later time that they were not adequate, changing those precepts, and giving them something larger, broader, deeper, to accept and to practise.

Because this principle is here involved, I have taken these words as my Scripture point of departure.

Now to come to the question as to why Unitarians have no creed. Of course, the answer, though it sounds like an Hibernicism, is to say that they do have a creed. Not a creed in the sense in which some of the older churches use the word. If by creed you mean a written or published statement of belief, one that is supposed to be fixed and final, one that is a test of religious fellowship, which is placed at the door of the church so that no one not accepting it is able to enter, why, then, we have no creed. But, in the broader sense of the word, it means belief; and Unitarians believe quite as much, and, in my judgment, things far nobler and grander, than those which have been believed in the past.

We are ready, if any one wishes it, to write out our creed. We are perfectly willing that it should be printed. We can put it into twelve clauses, like the Apostles' Creed; we can make thirty-nine clauses or articles, like the Creed of the Anglican Church; we can arrange it any way that is satisfactory to the questioner. Only we will not promise to believe all of it to-morrow; we will not say that we will never learn anything new; we will not make it a test of fellowship; we will admit not only to our meeting-house, but to our church organization, if they wish to come, people who do not believe all the articles of the creed that we shall write. Perhaps we will admit people who do not believe any of it; for our conception of a church is not the old conception.

What was that? That it was a sort of ark in which the saved were taken, to be carried over the stormy sea of this life and into the haven of eternal felicity beyond. As opposed to that, our conception of the church is that it is a school, it is a place where souls are to be trained, to be educated; and so we would as soon refuse to admit an ignorant pupil to a school as to refuse to admit a person on account of his belief to our church. We welcome all who wish to come and learn; and if, after they have studied with us for a year, they do not then accept all the points which some of us believe, and hold to be very important, we do not turn them out even on that account.

Unitarians, then, do have a creed, only it is not fixed, it is not final, and it is not the condition of religious fellowship.

Now I wish to give you some of the reasons, as they lie in my mind, for the attitude which we hold in regard to this matter.

I do not believe in having a fixed and final statement of belief which we are not at liberty to criticise or question or change. Why? Because I love the truth, because I am anxious to find the truth, because I wish to be perfectly free to seek for the truth.

Our first reason, then, is for the sake of the truth.

Now let me present this to you under three or four minor heads. The universe is infinite, God is infinite, truth is infinite. If, then, on the background of the infinite you draw a circle, no matter how large it may be, no matter how wide its diameter, do you not see that you necessarily shut out more than you shut in? Do you not see that you limit the range of thought, set bounds to investigation, and that you pledge yourselves beforehand that the larger part of truth, of God, of the universe, you will never study, you will never investigate?