Part 11

Now our present objection to this doctrine of eternal punishment is the practical one that it has no moral power. It does not come close enough to truth and justice to take a hold upon the conscience, and so instead of binding and constraining, it is inoperative and lax. The fact is, it is not practically believed. It is too monstrous to be realized. Where, we ask, are the fruits of this appalling doctrine, which is everywhere preached? One would suppose that its dreadfulness would keep the tempted spirit in constant alarm. I know that it occasions misery to the timid, to the sensitive, to the feeble of nerve, that is just to those who require the purer and gentler influences of religion to give them trust in God: but what sinner has it alarmed? what guilty heart has it made curdle with terror? what seared conscience has been scared from evil by the shriek of woe coming up from the depths of the everlasting torture? No; these are not the influences that convert sin. They are not believed or realized, and yet they displace from the thoughts those definite views of the future which would have power to move and save the soul. The righteous allotments with which God will award the joys and sorrows of the future; the character of the individual mind when it first appears for judgment; the value of every moment of present time in assigning us our first station in immortality; the exact righteousness in which every variety of character shall have its graduated place on the scale of recompense; the appalling thought of every separate spirit standing before God just as the last effort of convulsed nature dismissed it from the body;—the trifler in his levity, the drunkard with his idiot look, the murderer with the blood-stains on his soul—and the sainted spirit passing on the breath of prayer from the outer to the inner Court of God’s presence;—these, the solemn distinctions of that awful world, are all lost, because of that common Hell into whose abyss unawed Conscience hurls her fears, and then forgets the infinite gradations of punishment that still remain to pour dread recompense on evil at the award of a retributive God.

There are some objections urged against these views of the practical importance of Unitarianism to which I must now give brief and emphatic answer.

1. It is said that Unitarianism generates no love to Christ: and the reason assigned is, that as we reject the primal curse of original sin, we have not so much to be forgiven, and consequently not equal obligation to love; for to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. Now in our view forgiveness is of God, in whom Trinitarians find no forgiveness, and Christ is the image of our Father in Heaven, and we love _him_ who leads us into that pure and blissful presence, and in whose face we have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, full of grace and truth. We love Jesus for what he is to our souls, and not for the theological fiction, that he took off a disqualification which our God laid on. We love all holy and good beings for the same reasons, that they strengthen in our own nature the springs of goodness and unselfish love, and lift us into fellowship with themselves; and therefore we love God supremely, _and next to God_, _him_ who through self-devotion and perfect filial trust preserved the moral lineaments of Heaven, of a mind harmonized with providence, against the weaknesses and through the temptations of this humanity, whose tremblings we know so well, and whose fallings away in ourselves from the higher impulses of God have taught us the love of veneration for him who made it bear the likeness of Heaven, and, through its trials and its shrinkings, realized perfection. The moral estimate that would proportion our love to Christ, not to his own fitness to inspire love, to the heavenly benevolence that breathed through his own life and death, but to the selfish measure of the outward benefits received, can be equalled in the confusion and impurity of its moral ideas only by another moral judgment pronounced upon the same occasion—that the guilt of the Jews, when they crucified Jesus, must be estimated and measured in proportion as Jesus was man or God. This certainly is quite consistent with the Trinitarian scheme, that guilt can be contracted unknowingly; but who will set right this utter ignorance of the primitive ideas of morality? What spectres of the thirteenth century rise before us when we listen to these conceptions—of God dying under the hands of his creatures; and of their guilt, by some process, (not moral, but metaphysical,) becoming infinite because the sufferer was infinite, though they knew it not, and believed themselves to be crucifying the man Jesus! It is only further proof that the Atonement and its allied ideas tends to confuse in the minds that receive it the fundamental perceptions of Right and Wrong.[45]

2. It is said that Unitarianism leads to infidelity: and the proof assigned is that those whom Trinitarianism makes sceptics, find with us ideas of Christ and Christianity with which they have sympathies. We intercept the minds whom they have driven from Belief; we present our serene and perfect image of Duty and of God to minds wearied and perplexed with views of Religion which are felt to be too coarse for their own nature and therefore infinitely unworthy of the spirit of God; but because they leave the Church, that Christian Jerusalem, and come to sit at the feet of Jesus in our humble Bethany, where at least he is loved purely and for himself;—then this is Infidelity, and we who stay the wanderer, and retain him within the fold, are called producers of unbelief. The spirit of Jesus said, “he that is not against us is for us.” The spirit of Trinitarianism says, “he that is not for us is against us.” It was said that the spirit of infidelity is the spirit of this age. I only ask, if this is so, could there be a more practical condemnation of that system, and of that Church, which sways all the religious influences of the country; and whose representations of Christ and of Christianity, the universally prevailing ones, have produced the religious character of these times? If there is Infidelity in the land, it is mainly the recoil from Orthodoxy.[46]

3. It is said that Unitarianism encourages the pride of human Reason. Now I shall answer this very briefly, because any lengthened exposure would necessarily take the form of sarcasm. Whose Reason is it that we oppose when we reject Trinitarianism? Trinitarians say that it is the Reason of God. But how do they know this? Because they are sure that _they_ know the Mind of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures; and they are sure that _we_ are in error. Infallibility again! So that to oppose _their_ interpretation of the Scriptures, is to set up our own Reason against the Reason of God. Now I ask, in all simplicity, Can they who say these things have taken the trouble to clear their own ideas? If there is any pride of Reason, on which side does it lie? They first identify their own sense of the Scriptures with God’s sense, and then they charge other men with the pride of Reason, for not bowing down their minds to God, having first taken it for granted that _their_ Reason and God’s Reason are one and the same. Look again to the uncertain doctrines which they deduce from the Scriptures by processes of inference, sometimes technical and sometimes mystical, and say, does the world afford a more marked exemplification of the pride of human Reason, than the absolute confidence with which these doubtful conclusions are received, and not only that, but pressed upon men, as the exact meaning of God, at the peril of their eternal Salvation? What do these divines rest upon when they deduce from the Scriptures their essentials of Christianity? Their own reasonings. And yet they will tell you, that to differ from _them_, is to oppose your own Reason to the mind of God. I ask, hereafter in this controversy, Should not this matter of the pride of human reason be a weapon of attack in our hands, an accusation against Trinitarians, instead of a charge which Unitarians are to answer? We have too long, in this and many other matters, stood upon the defensive.[47]

And now, in conclusion, let me say once more, that though we think Trinitarian views of man’s connections with God injurious to Christian perfection, inasmuch as they throw the minds which receive them out of harmony with the realities of God, and must therefore undergo future correction and re-adjustment, still our strongest objection to the Trinitarian scheme is the fundamental one that it is based upon principles of exclusiveness, upon the indispensable conditions of a narrow and technical creed, and that thus it is the parent and fomenter of all those dissensions and practical evils in religion which these times witness and deplore. How many has orthodoxy persecuted into a hatred for the very name of religion? In how many minds has it darkened, or mixed up with the most incongruous associations, the beautiful image of Christ, destroying its healing and persuasive power? O! why should it be, except for this Trinitarian scheme of an Exclusive Salvation, that Religion should be directing her whole energies to the support of creeds, instead of going about doing good, and with her heavenly spirit entering into conflict with the moral evils that afflict society, and degrade man, and rebel against God? Why is it, that instead of this, we have a distinct class of sufferings, that go under the name of religious evils? Why is it that we are here holding controversy with our fellow-Christians, instead of uniting our spirit and our strength to work the works of Christ? We wage not this controversy for the purpose of aiding a sect; but we wage it, to do what we can to expose and put down universally the sectarian spirit. The great evils of society, the crying wrongs of Man, are mainly owing to this diversion of Religion from spiritual and practical objects to the strife of tongues and Salvation by creeds. What is the Religion of this country doing? Contending for creeds. What ought it to be doing? Spreading the spirit of the life of Christ through the hearts of men and the institutions of society. How long are these things to be? How long are the spiritual influences of this country to be all consumed in striving with heresies instead of striving with sins; leaving untouched the bad heart of society, whilst wrangling for a metaphysical faith? Look to the religious apparatus of this country. Look to the number of pulpits that should send forth the spiritual influences of righteousness and peace; and the number of men that should move through society apostles of the beneficence of Christ.

Suppose all this strength directed to practical and spiritual objects, and could the things that are, remain as they are, if the religious forces of the country, instead of being exclusive, doctrinal, controversial, were full of the love of Jesus, and sought simply to establish the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth! Could Religion excite the angry passions that she does, if her aims were spiritual and not doctrinal? Could Religion be divorced as she is from practical life, and confined to a class kept under powerful stimulants, and called the “religious public,” if her aims were spiritual and not doctrinal? Could Religion leave the people neglected and without education, practical Heathens, while she is settling her creeds, if her aims were spiritual and not doctrinal? Could Religion have left unpurified the streams and sources of public morality, if her aims were spiritual and not doctrinal? Could she have suffered War still to disgrace the world, and not long since have extinguished the Earthborn passion by the Heavenly spirit and the moral instrument, if the direction of her energies had been spiritual and not controversial? Could she have shown so little interest in the great mass of the people? Could she have abandoned them to ignorance and grinding oppressions and not raised her omnipotent voice on their behalf? Could she have so separated herself from the real business of life and left the moralities of intercourse unsanctified whilst she remained unsympathizing and cloistered? Every friend to practical religion has an interest in destroying this exclusive Theology, which turns away from the works of love to the war of creeds.

If then we preach Unitarianism, it is that we may win men’s hearts to the one Spirit who pervades all things, and harmonizes all things, and sends all blessings, and sanctifies all thoughts, all duties, and all times. If we preach the man Christ Jesus, the word made flesh, it is that we too may sanctify our nature, and make it a temple for the living God, and grow up into him in all things who is our head, even Christ. If we preach Salvation, not by creeds, but by the spirit of Christ in us, the hope of glory, it is that our fitness for Heaven may commence on Earth; that we may live now as those who when they have slept the brief sleep of death shall awake in the presence of Christ and God, and find themselves in that Heaven wherein dwelleth righteousness. And if we preach not indiscriminate happiness and indiscriminate tortures in futurity, but the just retributions of God, it is that we may redeem the time, remembering that each moment lost throws us back on the heavenly way, that there is an infinite perfection before us, providing work for our infinite capacities through an immortal life; that God is faithful and inflexible in his retributions; that no virtue shall be without its reward, no sin without its woe; that we shall be judged according to our works, and reap what we have sown.

To sum up, the two great principles of Unitarianism are these:—

I. Spiritual allegiance to Christ as the image of God. “Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.”

II. Spiritual liberty from ought besides; Creeds, Traditions, Rituals, or Priests. “False brethren, unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.”

APPENDIX.

NOTE 1, page 14.

“The free and unprejudiced mind dwells with delight on the image of the universal church or convocation of Christ, as it would naturally have grown ‘into the fulness of the body’ of its glorious founder * * * *

“And what (let me earnestly and solemnly ask) has hitherto turned this view into a mocking dream,—a dream that deludes by images which are the very reverse of the sad realities which surround us? ORTHODOXY;—the notion that the eternal happiness or misery of individuals is intimately connected with the acceptance or rejection of a most obscure system of metaphysics; a system perplexing in the extreme to those who are best acquainted with its former technical, now obsolete language, and perfectly unintelligible to the rest of the Christian world: a system which, to say the least, _seems_ to contradict the simplest and most primitive notions of the human mind concerning the unity, the justice, and the goodness of the Supreme Being; a system which, if it be contained in the Scriptures, has been laid under so thick and impenetrable a veil, that thousands who have sought to discover it, with the most eager desire of finding it, whose happiness in this world would have been greatly increased by that discovery, and who, at all events, would have escaped much misery had they been able to attest it, even on the grounds of probability sufficient to acquit themselves before their own conscience, have been compelled, by truth, to confess their want of success. Yet Orthodoxy declares this very system identical with Christianity—with that Gospel which was ‘preached to the poor,’ and ‘revealed unto babes;’ such a system, we are told, is that faith which, ‘_except every one keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly_.’”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy, by Rev. J. Blanco White._

NOTE 2, page 18.

“What do divines understand by _Christian Truth_? The answer, at first, appears obvious. ‘Christian truth (it will be said) is what Christ and his apostles knew and taught concerning Salvation under the Gospel.’ Thus far we find no difficulty; but (let me ask, again) where does this exist as an object _external_ to our minds? The answer appears no less obvious than the former: ‘In the Bible.’ Still I must ask, Is the MATERIAL Bible the Christian truth about which Christians dispute? No: it will be readily said not the MATERIAL Bible, but the SENSE of the Bible. Now (I beg to know) is the SENSE of the Bible an object _external_ to our minds? Does any _Sense_ of the Bible, accessible to man, exist anywhere but in the mind of each man who receives it from the words he reads? The Divine mind certainly knows in what sense those words were used; but as we cannot compare our mental impressions with that model and original of all truth, it is clear that by the SENSE of the Bible we must mean our own sense of its meaning. When therefore any man declares his intention to defend _Christian truth_, he only expresses his determination to defend his _own notions_, as produced by the words of the Bible. No other _Christian truth_ exists for us in our present state.”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy._

NOTE 3, page 22.

“If different men in carefully and conscientiously examining the Scriptures, should arrive at different conclusions, even on points of the last importance, we trust that God, who alone knows what every man is capable of, will be merciful to him that is in error. We trust that He will pardon the Unitarian, if he be in error, because he has fallen into it from the dread of becoming an idolater—of giving that glory to another which he conceives to be due to God alone. If the worshipper of Jesus Christ be in error, we trust that God will pardon his mistake, because he has fallen into it from the dread of disobeying what he conceives to be revealed concerning the nature of the Son, or commanded concerning the honor to be given him. Both are actuated by the same principle—the fear of God; and though that principle impels them into different roads, it is our hope and belief, that if they add to their faith _charity_, they will meet in Heaven.”—_Watson._

“We should learn to be cautious, lest we _charge God foolishly_, by ascribing that to him, or the Nature he has given us, which is owing wholly to our own abuse of it. Men may speak of the degeneracy and corruption of the world, according to the experience they have had of it; but human nature, considered as the divine workmanship, should, methinks, be treated as sacred: for _in the image of God made he man_.”—_Bishop Butler._

NOTE 4, page 24.

“But, if ORTHODOXY cannot be the principle of union among _Christians_, upon what are men to agree in order to belong to the CONVOCATION, or people of Christ? I believe that the Apostle Paul has said enough to answer this question. When by using the word _anathema_, he rejects from his spiritual society even an angel from Heaven, were it possible that such a being should “preach another gospel,” he lays down the only principle, without which there can be no communion among Christians. Unhappily the word GOSPEL, like the word FAITH, is constantly understood as expressing a certain number of dogmatical articles. Owing to this perversion of the original meaning, these very passages of Paul are conceived to support the long-established notion that Orthodoxy is the only condition of Christian communion; and want of it, a sufficient cause for _anathema_. I have, however, already proved, that Orthodoxy, without a supreme judge of religious opinions, is a phantom; and since it is demonstrable that no such judge has been appointed, it clearly follows that the Apostle Paul, by the name of _Gospel_, could not mean a string of dogmatic assertions. It is necessary, therefore, to ascend to the original signification of the word Gospel, if we are not to misunderstand the reason of the anathema pronounced by Paul. Let such as wish to rise above the clouds of theological prejudice, remember that the whole mystery of godliness is described by the expression ‘glad tidings.’ _Sad_, not glad tidings, indeed, would have been the Apostles’ preaching, if they had announced a salvation depending on _Orthodoxy_, for (as I have said before) it would have been a salvation depending on chance. But salvation promised on condition of a change of mind from the love of sin to the love of God (which is _repentance_); on a surrender of the individual will to the will of God, according to the view of that divine will which is obtained by trust in Christ’s example and teaching, which is _faith_; a pardon of sins independent of harassing religious practices, sacrifices, and ascetic privations—these were ‘glad tidings of great joy,’ indeed, to all who, caring for their souls, felt bewildered between atheism and superstition.”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy._

NOTE 5, page 27.

“Men want an object of worship like themselves, and the great secret of idolatry lies in this propensity. A God, clothed in our form, and feeling our wants and sorrows, speaks to our weak nature more strongly, than a Father in Heaven, a pure spirit, invisible and unapproachable, save by the reflecting and purified mind. We think, too, that the peculiar offices ascribed to Jesus by the popular theology, make him the most attractive person in the Godhead. The Father is the depositary of the justice, the vindicator of the rights, the avenger of the laws of the Divinity. On the other hand, the Son, the brightness of the divine mercy, stands between the incensed Deity and guilty humanity, exposes his meek head to the storms, and his compassionate breast to the sword of the divine justice, bears our whole load of punishment, and purchases with his blood every blessing which descends from Heaven. Need we state the effect of these representations, especially on common minds, for whom Christianity was chiefly designed, and whom it seeks to bring to the Father as the loveliest being? We do believe, that the worship of a bleeding, suffering God, tends strongly to absorb the mind, and to draw it from other objects, just as the human tenderness of the Virgin Mary has given her so conspicuous a place in the devotions of the Church of Rome. We believe, too, that this worship, though attractive, is not most fitted to spiritualize the mind, that it awakens human transports, rather than that deep veneration of the moral perfections of God, which is the essence of piety.