THECATHOLIC WORLD.VOL. XXIV.,No.141.—DECEMBER, 1876.Copyright:Rev.I. T. Hecker. 1877.THE UNITARIAN CONFERENCE AT SARATOGA.[89]TheUnitarians in September last held at Saratoga their biennial conference, and we have looked over the issues of theLiberal Christian, a weekly publication of this city, for a full report of its proceedings, and looked to no purpose. It has, however, printed in its columns some of the speeches delivered in the conference, and givenin extensothe opening sermon of theRev.Edward E. Hale. Before the conference took place theLiberal Christianspoke ofRev.Edward E. Hale “as one of the few thoroughly-furnished and widely-experienced men in their ranks.” This notice prepared us to give special attention to the opening sermon, and to expect from it a statement of Unitarian principles or beliefs which would at least command the assent of a considerable portion of the Unitarian denomination. More than this it would have been unreasonable to anticipate; for so radical and extreme are their divergencies of belief that it may be said Unitarians agree on no one common objective truth; certainly not, if Mr. Frothingham and the section which the latter gentleman represents are to be ranked within the pale of Unitarianism.TheRev.Edward E. Hale has not altogether disappointed our anticipations, for he has given expression to some of the ideas most prevalent among Unitarians; but before entering upon the consideration of these there are certain preliminary statements which he makes deserving some attention.In the closing sentence of the first paragraph of his sermon Mr. Hale gives us a noticeable piece of information. He says:“We were taught long since by Macaulay, in fervent rhetoric, that the republic of Venice is new in comparison with the papacy, and that the Roman Church was in its vigor when Augustine landed in Kent in the sixth century. So it was. But earlier than all this, before there was a bishop in Rome, there were independent Christian churches, liberal in their habit and Unitarian in their creed, in Greece, in Asia, and in Cyprus.Nay, before those churches existed there had gathered a group of peasants around the Saviour of men, and he had said to them: ‘Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ The Congregational Church order, with the Unitarian theology, is theoldestChristian system known to history.”What authentic history goes back of the account given in the New Testament of the founding of the Catholic Church and her hierarchy by Christ theRev.Mr. Hale does not deign to inform us. When he does, it will be time enough to pay attention to the assertion, “The Congregational Church order is the oldest Christian system known to history.” The church is in possession; the plaintiffs must make out their case. Until then, “quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur”; for an assertion without proof counts for nothing.But he does attempt to prove his assertion about “Unitarian theology” by what follows:“I make no peculiar partisan claim or boast in this statement. As to the statement of theology, I do but condense in a few words the statement made by the Roman Catholic writer in highest esteem among Englishmen to-day. He says what I say, that he may argue from it that you require the development of doctrine which only the perpetual inspiration of a line of pontiffs gives you, unless you choose to hold by the simple Unitarian creeds of the fathers before Constantine.”From which of the many volumes of the writings of Dr. Newman Mr. Hale has ventured to condense his language we are not told; but we are led to suppose that it was written by Dr. Newman since he became a Catholic, for he speaks of him as “the Roman Catholic writer in the highest esteem among Englishmen to-day.” As a Catholic, Dr. Newman never used languagewhich could be condensed by a “thoroughly-informed” man to whatRev.Mr. Hale has made him say; and we have our doubts whether before he was a Catholic he used it. It would not be amiss if Mr. Hale had something of Dr. Newman’s clearness of thought and accuracy of expression. If he had, of this we are sure: he would never venture to utter in a public speech or put in print that any Catholic writer who has any claim of being a theologian believed or maintained “the perpetualinspirationof a line of pontiffs.”In the next paragraphRev.Mr. Hale literally quotes a passage from Dr. Newman’s writings to sustain his thesis, but he fails. Here is the quotation:“The creeds of that early day,” says Dr. Newman, “make no mention in their letter of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity at all. They make mention, indeed, of a three, but that there is any mystery in the doctrine, that the three are one, that they are co-equal, co-eternal, all increate, all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated, and never could be gathered from them.”He fails, because he proceeds on the supposition that the Catholic Church teaches that her creeds contain the whole body of truth of the Christian faith. The Catholic Church at no time or nowhere taught this. Her creeds never did contain explicitly the whole body of the Christian faith, they do not even now; for such was not her intention or purpose. Had it not been for the errors of Arius and his followers, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity might not have been contained in the creeds of the church explicitly, even down to our own day. The supposition, however, that the mystery of the Trinity was not believed in the church “beforeConstantine” is as absurd as to suppose that the necessity of good works for salvation, or there being a purgatory, was not believed and maintained in the Catholic Church before the time of CharlesV., or that Papal Infallibility was not believed and held in the church before the time of William of Prussia, the Germankaiser! The discussions and definitions of the councils render Christian truths more explicit and intelligible than they were before; this is a matter of course, but who is so ignorant as to suppose that the councils originated these truths?That the creeds “before Constantine” implied the Trinity and intended it Dr. Newman would have taught theRev.Edward E. Hale, if he had ingenuously quoted the two sentences which follow his extract. Dr. Newman continues thus: “Of course we believe that they [the early creeds] imply it [the Trinity]. God forbid we should do otherwise!”[90]Rev.Edward E. Hale ought to know that the Catholic Church repudiates with instinctive horror the idea of adding to, or taking away from, or altering in the least, the body of the Christian truth delivered once and for all to her keeping by her divine Founder when upon earth. The mistakes he makes on these points arise from his viewing the church solely as an assembly, overlooking that she is also a corporated body, informed by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the constitution given to her by Christ includes the commission to “teach all things whatsoever he commanded.”Following what has gone before, theRev.Mr. Hale makes another surprising statement. He says:“It was not to be expected—nor, in fact, did anybody expect—that a religion so simple and so radical should sweep the world without contaminating its own simplicity and blunting the edge of its own radicalism in the first and second contact, nay, in the contact of centuries. Least of all did Jesus Christ himself expect this. Nobody so definite as he in the statement of the obscurities and defilements which would surround his simple doctrine of ‘Love God and love men.’”In all deference to Mr. Hale, this is precisely what everybody did expect from the church of Christ—to teach the truth with purity and unswerving fidelity, “without contamination in the contact,” for all “centuries.” For this is what the promises of Christ led them precisely to expect when he founded his church. He promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”[91]He promised also that he would be with his church through all ages: “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”[92]Does Mr. Hale read the Holy Scriptures and believe what he reads? Listen, again, toSt.Paul’s description of the church. After saying that “Christ is the head of the church,” and “the church is subject to Christ,” he adds: “Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, nor any such thing.”[93]Now, although theRev.E. E. Hale has thrown overboard the belief in the divinity of Christ and the supernatural inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, nevertheless the words of Christ and his apostle, measuredonly by the standard of personal holiness and learning, ought to be esteemed, when speaking of God’s church, of equal authority, at least, to his statement, even though he ranks “as one of the few thoroughly-furnished and widely-experienced men” among Unitarians.But how did the church of Christ become “contaminated”? This is an important point, and here is theRev.E. E. Hale’s reply to it:“And, in truth, so soon as the church met with the world, it borrowed while it lent, it took while it gave. So, in the face of learned Egypt, it Egyptianized its simple Trinity; in the face of powerful Rome it heathenized its nascent ritual; in the face of wordy Greece it Hellenized its dogmatics and theology; and by way of holding well with Israel it took up a rabbin’s reverence even for the jots and tittles of its Bible. What history calls ‘Christianity,’ therefore, is a man-adorned system, of which the methods can be traced to convenience, or even to heathen wisdom, if we except that one majestic method by which every true disciple is himself ordained a king and a priest, and receives the charge that in his daily life he shall proclaim glad tidings to every creature.”The common error of the class of men to whom theRev.E. E. Hale belongs, who see the church, if at all, only on the outside, is to “put the cart before the horse.” It is not the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, who teach the church of Christ, but the church of Christ which teaches the truth to the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Christ came to teach all nations, not to be taught by them. Hence, in communicating his mission to his church, he said: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations.”[94]The church, in fulfilling this divine commissionof teaching all nations, utilizes their gifts in bringing out the great truths committed to her care by her divine Founder. It is in this cooperation with the work of the church that the different nations and races of men find the inspiration of their genius, the noblest employment of their highest faculties, and the realization of their providential mission upon earth. For the scattered rays of religious truth which were held by the different nations and races of men under paganism were derived from primitive revelation, and it is only when these are brought within the focus of the light of universal truth that their complete significance is appreciated, and they are seen in all their original splendor. The Catholic Church, in this aspect, is the reintegration of natural religion with the truths contained in primitive revelation and their perfect fulfilment. Moreover, there is no truth contained in any of the ancient religions before the coming of Christ, or affirmed by any of the heresies since that event, or that may be hereafter affirmed, which is not contained, in all its integrity, in Catholicity. This is only saying, in other words, The Catholic Church is catholic.But these men do not see the church, and they appear to regard Christianity as still an unorganized mass, and they are possessed with the idea that the task is imposed upon them to organize the Christian Church; and this work occupied and perplexed them not a little in their Unitarian biennial conference held in the town of Saratoga, in the United States of North America, in the month of September, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy-six!“Poor wanderers! ye are sore distrestTo find the path which Christ has blest,Tracked by his saintly throng;Each claims to trust his own weak will—Blind idol!—so ye languish still,All wranglers, and all wrong.”[95]Were the veil taken from their spiritual eyes, and did they behold the church as she is, they would easily comprehend that her unbroken existence for nineteen centuries alone, saying nothing of what glory is in store for her in the future, is a more evident and conclusive proof to us of the divinity of her Founder than the miracle of his raising Lazarus from the dead was to those who were actual witnesses to it. For, in raising Lazarus from the dead, he had but to deal with passive matter, and that for only an instant; whereas in founding his church he had to exert his power and counteract all the attacks of the gates of hell, combined with the persecutions of the world and the perversities of men, during successive centuries until the end of all time. None but the living God could be the author of so potent, comprehensive, and indestructible a body as the Catholic Church. Of all the unanswerable testimonies of the divinity of Christ, there is none so forcible as that of the perpetual existence of the one, holy, Roman Catholic Church. She is the standing miracle of Christ.The reverse sense of the statement of theRev.Edward E. Hale on this point contains the truth. The Catholic Church welcomes all nations and races to her fold, and reintegrates the scattered truths contained in every religious system, not by way of reunion or composition, but by simplicity and unity in a divine synthesis; and as the ancient Egyptians, and the Greeks,and the Romans, so also the modern Franks and Celts, have served by their characteristic gifts to the development and progress of Christian truth. In like manner the Saxons, with their peculiar genius and instincts, will serve, to their own greater glory, in due season, in the same great cause, perhaps, by giving a greater development and a more scientific expression to the mystic life of the church, and by completing, viewed from intrinsic grounds, the demonstration of the truth of her divine mission.Leaving aside other misstatements and errors contained in the first part of this sermon from want of space, we pass on to what may be termed its pith. Mr. Hale starts with the hazardous question, “What is the Unitarian Church for?” As far as we can make out from repeated reading of the main portion of the sermon—for there reigns a great confusion and incoherence in his ideas—the Unitarian Church has for its mission to certify anew and proclaim the truth that “God is in man.” “God in man,” he says, “is in itself the basis of the whole Gospel.” Undoubtedly “God is in man,” and God is in the brute, and God is in every grain of sand, and God is in all things. God is in all things by his immensity—that is, by his essence, and power, and presence. But this is a truth known by the light of human reason, and taught by all sound philosophers, heathen and Christian. There was no need of the Gospel, nor of that “fearlessness” which, he tells us, “was in the Puritan blood,” nor of the Unitarian Church, to teach this evident and common truth to mankind.The Gospel message means more than that, and theRev.Mr. Hale has some idea that it does meanmore. He adds: “Every man is God’s child, and God’s Spirit is in every life.” Again: “Men are the children of God really and not figuratively”; “The life of God is their life by real inheritance.” After having made these statements, he attempts to give the basis and genesis of this relation of God as father to man as child, as follows:“That the force which moves all nature is one force, and not many, appears to all men, as they study it, more and more. That this force is conscious of its own existence, that it is conscious of its own work, that it is therefore what men call spirit, that this spirit has inspired and still inspires us, that we are therefore not creatures of dumb power, but children of a Father’s love—this is the certainty which unfolds itself or reveals itself, or is unfolded or is revealed, as higher and higher man ascends in his knowledge of what IS.”That man, by the light of his reason, can, by the study of nature, attain to this idea of God and his principal attributes, as Spirit, as Creator, upholder of the universe, and as Providence, is no doubt true; but that, by the study of “the force which moves all nature,” our own consciousness included, we can learn that we are the “children of a Father’s love,” does not follow, and is quite another thing. It is precisely here that Unitarianism as a consistent, intelligible religious system crumbles into pieces. Nor can Unitarians afford to follow theRev.Edward E. Hale in his attempt to escape this difficulty by concealing his head, ostrich-like, under the sand of a spurious mysticism, and virtually repudiating the rational element in religion by saying: “The mystic knows that God is here now. He has no chain of posts between child and Father. He relies on no long, logical system of communication,” etc. The genuine mystic, indeed,“knows God is here,” but he knows also that God is not the author of confusion, and to approach God he does not require of man to put out the light of his reason. He will tell us that the relation of God to all things as created being, and the relation of God to man as rational being, and the relation of God to man as father to child, are not one and the same thing, and ought not, therefore, to be confounded. The true mystic will further inform us that the first relation, by way of immanence, is common to all created things, man included; the second, by way of rationality, is common to the human race; the third, by way of filiation, is common to those who are united to God through the grace of Christ. The first and second are communicated to man by the creative act of God, and are therefore ours by right of natural inheritance through Adam. The third relation is communicated to us by way of adoption through the grace of the new Adam, Christ, who is “the only-begotten Son of God.” This relation is not, therefore, ours by inheritance. We “have received from Christ,” saysSt.Paul to the Romans, “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry: Abba, Father.”[96]“By whom also we have access through faith into this grace, wherein we stand, and glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God.”[97]It is proper to remark here that it is an error very common among radicals, rationalists, and a certain class of Unitarians to suppose that the relation of the soul to God by way of filiation, due to Christ, is intended as a substitute for our natural relations to God by way of immanence and rationality; whereasChristianity presupposes these, reaffirms, continues, completes, and perfects them, by this very gift of filiation with God. For it is a maxim common to all Catholic theologians thatgratia supponit et perficit naturam.Our intelligent mystic would not stop here. Proceeding further, he would say that to be really and truly children of God by inheritance implies our being born with the same identical nature as God. For the nature of a child is not a resemblance to, or an image of, that of his father, but consists in his possessing the same identical essence and nature as his father. If the son is equal to his father by nature, then he is also equal to his father in his capacities as such. Now, if every man, by nature, has the right to call God father, as theRev.Mr. Hale and his co-religionists pretend, then all men by nature are equal to God, both in essence and attributes! Is this what Unitarians mean by “the divinity of human nature”? TheRev.E. E. Hale appears to say so when he tells us: “What we are struggling for, and what, if words did not fail us, we would fain express, is what Dr. James Walker called ‘the identity of essence of all spiritual being and all spiritual life.’” All, then, that the believers in the divinity of Christ claim exclusively for him is claimed by Unitarians equally for every individual of the human race. But the belief in the divinity of Christ is “the latest and least objectionable form of idolatry”—so theRev.H. W. Bellows informs us in his volume entitledPhases of Faith. The Unitarian cure, then, for the evil of idolatry is by substituting an indefinite multitude of idols for one single object of idolatrous worship.There is one class of Unitarians, to whom the author of this sermon seems to belong, who accept boldly the consequences of their premise, and maintain without disguise that all men are by nature the equals of Christ, and that there is no reason why they should not, by greater fidelity, surpass Christ. Up to this period of time, however, they have not afforded to the world any very notable specimen of the truth of their assertion. Another class attempt to get over the difficulty by a critical exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, denying the authenticity or the meaning of those parts which relate to the miraculous conception of Christ, his miracles, and his divinity. A representative of the extreme wing on the right of Unitarianism replied, when this point was presented to him: “Oh! we Unitarians reject the idea of the Trinity as represented by Calvinists and other Protestants, for they make it a tritheism; but we accept the doctrine as holy mother Church teaches it”; while a leader of the extreme left admitted the difficulty, and in speaking of Dr. Channing, who championed the idea of the filiation of man to God, he said: “No intelligent Unitarian of to-day would attempt to defend the Unitarianism of Dr. Channing.” He was right; for no Unitarian, on the basis of his belief, can say consistently the Lord’s Prayer; for the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation is a rigorous necessity to any one who admits the infinite and the finite, and the necessity of a union of love between them which authorizes the finite to call the Infinite Father! One may bestow sympathy upon the pious feelings of that class of Unitarians of which Dr. Channing is the representative, but the lesssaid about their theological science the better.Our genuine mystic would not stop here. He would continue and show that the denial of the Incarnation involves the denial of the Trinity, and the denial of the Trinity reduces the idea of God to a mere abstraction. For all conception of real life is complex. Intellectual life in its simplest elements, in its last analysis, will be found to consist of three factors: Man as the thinker, one factor; the thing thought, the second factor; and their relation, the third factor—or the lover, the beloved, and their relation; again, the actor, the thing acted upon, and their relation. Man cannot think, love, or act where there is nothing to think, to love, or to act upon. Place man in an absolute vacuum, where there is nothing except himself, and you have manin posse, but not man as being, as existing, as a living man. You have a unit, an abstraction, nothing more. But pure abstractions have no real existence. Our conception of life in accordance with the law which governs our intelligence is comprised in three terms—subject, object, and their relation.[98]There is no possible way of bringing out of a mere unit, as our absolute starting point of thought, an intellectual conception of life. But the Unitarian idea of God is God reduced to a simple, absolute unit. Hence the Unitarian idea of God is not the conception of the real, living God,but an abstraction, a non-existing God.Our genuine mystic would proceed still further; for infused light and love from above do not suspend or stultify the natural action of our faculties, but quicken, elevate, and transform their operations. He would apply, by way of analogy, the same process of thought in confirmation of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. If there had been a time, he would say, when there was no object before God, then there would have been a period when God was not the real, living God, but only Godin posse, non-existing. But this is repugnant to the real conception of God; therefore the true idea of God involves a co-eternal object. If, however, this co-eternal object was not equal to God in substance as well as in attributes, then there would have been a period when God did not exist in all his fulness. Now, this object, co-eternal and equal to God the Father, is what the Catholic doctrine teaches concerning Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father, “begotten before all ages, consubstantial with the Father.” But the Father and the Son being co-eternal and co-adequate, their relations to each other must have been eternal and equal, outflowing toward each other in love, commensurate with their whole nature. This procession of mutual love between Father and Son is what the Catholic doctrine teaches concerning the Holy Spirit. Thus we see, however imperfectly, that the Catholic doctrine concerning the Trinity presents to our minds nothing that is contrary to our reason, though it contains an infinite abyss beyond the present scope of our reason, but which we shall know when our reason is increased, as it will be, bythe gift of the light of glory. But every mystery of Christianity has an intelligible side to our natural reason, and by the light of faith it is the privilege and joy of a Christian while here upon earth to penetrate more deeply into their hidden, divine truth.Again, the Unitarian is mistaken when he supposes that Catholics, in maintaining the Trinity, exclude the divine Unity. They include both in one. Herein again is found in man an analogy. Man is one in triplicity. Man is thought, love, and activity, and at the same time man is one. He thinks, he loves, he acts; there are not three distinct men, one who thinks, another who loves, and still another who acts. There is, therefore, a sense in which man is one in three and three in one. So there is in the Trinity. The Unitarians are right in affirming the divine Unity; their error consists in excluding the divine Trinity. All heresies are right in what they affirm, and wrong in what they exclude or deny; which denial is the result of their breaking away from that divine Unity in whose light alone every truth is seen in its co-relation with all other truths.Our true mystic would not be content to rest here, but, soaring up upon the wings of divine light and love, and taking a more extended view, he would strive to show that where the doctrine of the Trinity is not held either explicitly or implicitly, there not only the theory of our mental operations and the intellectual foundation of religion dissolve into a baseless fabric of a vision; but that also the solid basis of society, the true idea of the family, the right conception of the state and its foundations, and the law of all genuine progress, are wanting, andall human things tend towards dissolution and backward to the reign of old chaos.We give another characteristic statement of theRev.Edward E. Hale’s opening sermon which must have grated harshly on the ears of the more staid and conservative portion of his audience; it is under the head of “The immanent presence of God.” He says:“The Roman Church will acknowledge it, andSt.Francis andSt.Vincent and Fénelon will illustrate it. But, at the same time, the Roman Church has much else on her hands. She has to be contending for those seven sacraments, for this temporal power, all this machinery of cardinals and bishops, and bulls and interdicts, canon law and decretals, so that in all this upholstery there is great risk that none of us see the shrine. So of the poor little parodies of the Roman Church, the Anglican Church, the Lutheran Church, and the rest of them.”Again:“All our brethren in the other confessions plunge into their infinite ocean with this hamper of corks and floats, water-proof dresses lest they be wet, oil-cloth caps for their hair, flannels for decency, a bathing-cart here, a well-screened awning there—so much machinery before the bath that one hardly wonders if some men refuse to swim! For them there is this great apology, if they do not proclaim as we must proclaim, God here and God now; nay, if they do not live as we must live, in the sense of God here and God now. For us, we have no excuse. We have stripped off every rag. We have destroyed all the machinery.”TheRev.Mr. Hale regards the seven sacraments, the hierarchy, the canon law—briefly, the entire visible and practical side of the church—as a “hamper,” “machinery,” “rags,” and thinks there “is great risk that none of us see the shrine.” The difficulty here is not where Mr. Hale places it.“Night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.”The visible is not the prison of the invisible, as Plato dreamed, but its vehicle, asSt.Paul teaches. “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity.”[99]The author of this sermon is at least consistent in his error; as he believes in an abstract God, so he would reduce “the church of the living God,” “the body of Christ,” to an abstract non-existence. Suppose, for example, that theRev.Edward E. Hale had reduced “all the machinery” of his curiously-devised body to an abstraction before the Unitarian biennial conference was held at Saratoga; the world would have been deprived of the knowledge of that “simplicity which it is the special duty of the Unitarian Church to proclaim.” Think of the loss! For it was by means of the complex “machinery” of his concrete body that theRev.E. E. Hale came in contact with the “machinery” of the Unitarian biennial organization at Saratoga, and, thus “upholstered,” he publicly rants against all “machinery.”There may be too complex an organization, and too many applications of it, and too much made of these, owing to the necessities of our times, in the Catholic Church, to suit the personal tastes and the stage of growth of theRev.Edward E. Hale. But the Catholic Church does not exist solely for the benefit of Mr. Hale, or for any peculiar class of men, or any one race alone. He has and should have, and they all have, their own place and appropriate niche in herall-temple; forthe Catholic Church takes up in her scope every individual, and the human race entire. But there are others, with no less integrity of spiritual life and intelligence than he, who esteem those things of which he speaks so unappreciatingly as heavenly gifts and straight pathways to see more clearly the inner shrine and approach more nearly to the divine Presence. Are the idiosyncrasies of one man, though “thoroughly furnished and widely experienced,” to be the norm of all other men, and of every race? Men and races differ greatly in these things, and the church of God is not a sect or conventicle; she is Catholic, universal, and in her bosom, and in her bosom alone, every soul finds its own place and most suitable way, with personal liberty and in accord with all other souls and the whole universe, to perfect union with God.The matter with theRev.E. E. Hale is, he has missed his vocation. His place evidently was not in the assembled conference at Saratoga; for his calling is unmistakably to a hermit life. Let him hie to the desert, and there, in a forlorn and naked hermitage, amid “frosts and fasts, hard lodgings and thin weeds,” in an austere and unsociable life, “unswathed and unclothed,”in puris naturalibis, “triumphantly cease to be.” TheRev.E. E. Hale is one-sided, and seems to have no idea that the Catholic Church is the organization of that perfect communion of men with God and each other which Christ came to communicate and to establish in its fulness upon earth, and is its practical realization. God grant him, and others like him, this light and knowledge!But we would not have our readers think that all Unitarians agreewith theRev.E. E. Hale in his estimate of the visible or practical side of the church. We quote from a leading article in theLiberal Christianof August last, under the head of “Spirit and Form in Religion,” the following passage:“It seems painfully indicative of the still undeveloped condition of our race that no truce or medium can be approximated in which the two great factors of human nature and society, the authority and supremacy ofspiritand the necessity and usefulness ofform, are reconciled and made to serve each other or a common end. Must inward spirituality, and outward expression of it in forms and worship, be for ever in a state of unstable equilibrium? Must they ever be hostile and at cross-purposes? Must all progress be by a displacement in turn of each other—now an era of honored forms, and then of only disembodied spirituality? There is probably no entire escape from this necessity. But, surely, he is the wisest man who can hold this balance in the evenest hand; and that sect or school, whether political, social, or religious, that pays the finest justice and the most impartial respect to the two factors in our nature, spirit and form, will hold the steadiest place and do the most good for the longest time. This is the real reason why Quakerism, with all its exalted claims to respect, has such a feeble and diminishing importance. It has oil in the lamp of the purest kind, but almost nowick, and what wick it has is made up of itsthee-ing andthou-ing, and its straight coat and stiff bonnet. These are steadily losing authority; and when they are abandoned, visible Quakerism will disappear. On the other hand, Roman Catholicismmaintains its place against the spirit of the age, and in spite of a load of discredited doctrines, very largely because of its intense persistency in forms, its highly-illumined visibility, its large-handed legibleness; but not without the unfailing aid and support of a spirit of faith and worship which produces a devoted priesthood and hosts of genuine saints. No form of Christianity can boast of lovelier or more spiritual disciples, or reaches higher up or lower down, including the wisest and the most ignorant, the most delicate and the coarsest adherents. It has the subtlest and the bluntest weapons in its arsenal, and can pierce with a needle, or mow with a scythe, or maul with a mattock.”The same organ, in a later number, in speaking of the Saratoga conference, says:“The main characteristic of the meeting was a conscientious and reverent endeavor to attain to something like a scientific basis for our faith in absolute religion, and in Christianity as a consistent and concrete expression of it,”and adds that the opening sermon of theRev.Mr. Hale “had the merit of starting us calmly and unexcitedly on our course.” Our readers will form their own judgment about what direction the course leads on which theRev.Edward E. Hale started the Unitarians assembled at Saratoga in their seeking after a “scientific basis” for “absolute religion, and Christianity as a concrete expression of it”![89]“A Free-born Church.” The sermon preached before the National Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches at Saratoga, Tuesday evening, Sept. 12. TheLiberal Christian, New York, Sept. 16, 1876.[90]An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,p.14. Appleton, N. Y.[91]Matt. xvi.18.[92]Matt. xxviii.18.[93]Eph. v.25, 26, 27.[94]St. Matt. xxviii.18, 19.[95]Dr. Newman.[96]Rom. viii.15.[97]Ibid.v. 2.[98]“Liquido tenendum est, quod omnia res, quamcumque cognoscimus, congenerat in nobis notitiam sui. Ab utroque enim notitia paritur, a cognoscente et cognito.”—St.Augustine,De Trinitate, s.ix.c.xii.—Wherefore it must be clearly held that everything whatsoever that we know begets at the same time in us the knowledge of itself; for knowledge is brought forth from both, from the knower and from the thing known. Again, “Behold, then, there are three things: he that loves, and that which is loved, and love.”—s.viii.c.x.,ibid.[99]Romansi.20.
THE
VOL. XXIV.,No.141.—DECEMBER, 1876.
Copyright:Rev.I. T. Hecker. 1877.
TheUnitarians in September last held at Saratoga their biennial conference, and we have looked over the issues of theLiberal Christian, a weekly publication of this city, for a full report of its proceedings, and looked to no purpose. It has, however, printed in its columns some of the speeches delivered in the conference, and givenin extensothe opening sermon of theRev.Edward E. Hale. Before the conference took place theLiberal Christianspoke ofRev.Edward E. Hale “as one of the few thoroughly-furnished and widely-experienced men in their ranks.” This notice prepared us to give special attention to the opening sermon, and to expect from it a statement of Unitarian principles or beliefs which would at least command the assent of a considerable portion of the Unitarian denomination. More than this it would have been unreasonable to anticipate; for so radical and extreme are their divergencies of belief that it may be said Unitarians agree on no one common objective truth; certainly not, if Mr. Frothingham and the section which the latter gentleman represents are to be ranked within the pale of Unitarianism.
TheRev.Edward E. Hale has not altogether disappointed our anticipations, for he has given expression to some of the ideas most prevalent among Unitarians; but before entering upon the consideration of these there are certain preliminary statements which he makes deserving some attention.
In the closing sentence of the first paragraph of his sermon Mr. Hale gives us a noticeable piece of information. He says:
“We were taught long since by Macaulay, in fervent rhetoric, that the republic of Venice is new in comparison with the papacy, and that the Roman Church was in its vigor when Augustine landed in Kent in the sixth century. So it was. But earlier than all this, before there was a bishop in Rome, there were independent Christian churches, liberal in their habit and Unitarian in their creed, in Greece, in Asia, and in Cyprus.Nay, before those churches existed there had gathered a group of peasants around the Saviour of men, and he had said to them: ‘Fear not, little flock; it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ The Congregational Church order, with the Unitarian theology, is theoldestChristian system known to history.”
What authentic history goes back of the account given in the New Testament of the founding of the Catholic Church and her hierarchy by Christ theRev.Mr. Hale does not deign to inform us. When he does, it will be time enough to pay attention to the assertion, “The Congregational Church order is the oldest Christian system known to history.” The church is in possession; the plaintiffs must make out their case. Until then, “quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur”; for an assertion without proof counts for nothing.
But he does attempt to prove his assertion about “Unitarian theology” by what follows:
“I make no peculiar partisan claim or boast in this statement. As to the statement of theology, I do but condense in a few words the statement made by the Roman Catholic writer in highest esteem among Englishmen to-day. He says what I say, that he may argue from it that you require the development of doctrine which only the perpetual inspiration of a line of pontiffs gives you, unless you choose to hold by the simple Unitarian creeds of the fathers before Constantine.”
From which of the many volumes of the writings of Dr. Newman Mr. Hale has ventured to condense his language we are not told; but we are led to suppose that it was written by Dr. Newman since he became a Catholic, for he speaks of him as “the Roman Catholic writer in the highest esteem among Englishmen to-day.” As a Catholic, Dr. Newman never used languagewhich could be condensed by a “thoroughly-informed” man to whatRev.Mr. Hale has made him say; and we have our doubts whether before he was a Catholic he used it. It would not be amiss if Mr. Hale had something of Dr. Newman’s clearness of thought and accuracy of expression. If he had, of this we are sure: he would never venture to utter in a public speech or put in print that any Catholic writer who has any claim of being a theologian believed or maintained “the perpetualinspirationof a line of pontiffs.”
In the next paragraphRev.Mr. Hale literally quotes a passage from Dr. Newman’s writings to sustain his thesis, but he fails. Here is the quotation:
“The creeds of that early day,” says Dr. Newman, “make no mention in their letter of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity at all. They make mention, indeed, of a three, but that there is any mystery in the doctrine, that the three are one, that they are co-equal, co-eternal, all increate, all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated, and never could be gathered from them.”
He fails, because he proceeds on the supposition that the Catholic Church teaches that her creeds contain the whole body of truth of the Christian faith. The Catholic Church at no time or nowhere taught this. Her creeds never did contain explicitly the whole body of the Christian faith, they do not even now; for such was not her intention or purpose. Had it not been for the errors of Arius and his followers, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity might not have been contained in the creeds of the church explicitly, even down to our own day. The supposition, however, that the mystery of the Trinity was not believed in the church “beforeConstantine” is as absurd as to suppose that the necessity of good works for salvation, or there being a purgatory, was not believed and maintained in the Catholic Church before the time of CharlesV., or that Papal Infallibility was not believed and held in the church before the time of William of Prussia, the Germankaiser! The discussions and definitions of the councils render Christian truths more explicit and intelligible than they were before; this is a matter of course, but who is so ignorant as to suppose that the councils originated these truths?
That the creeds “before Constantine” implied the Trinity and intended it Dr. Newman would have taught theRev.Edward E. Hale, if he had ingenuously quoted the two sentences which follow his extract. Dr. Newman continues thus: “Of course we believe that they [the early creeds] imply it [the Trinity]. God forbid we should do otherwise!”[90]Rev.Edward E. Hale ought to know that the Catholic Church repudiates with instinctive horror the idea of adding to, or taking away from, or altering in the least, the body of the Christian truth delivered once and for all to her keeping by her divine Founder when upon earth. The mistakes he makes on these points arise from his viewing the church solely as an assembly, overlooking that she is also a corporated body, informed by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the constitution given to her by Christ includes the commission to “teach all things whatsoever he commanded.”
Following what has gone before, theRev.Mr. Hale makes another surprising statement. He says:
“It was not to be expected—nor, in fact, did anybody expect—that a religion so simple and so radical should sweep the world without contaminating its own simplicity and blunting the edge of its own radicalism in the first and second contact, nay, in the contact of centuries. Least of all did Jesus Christ himself expect this. Nobody so definite as he in the statement of the obscurities and defilements which would surround his simple doctrine of ‘Love God and love men.’”
In all deference to Mr. Hale, this is precisely what everybody did expect from the church of Christ—to teach the truth with purity and unswerving fidelity, “without contamination in the contact,” for all “centuries.” For this is what the promises of Christ led them precisely to expect when he founded his church. He promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”[91]He promised also that he would be with his church through all ages: “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”[92]Does Mr. Hale read the Holy Scriptures and believe what he reads? Listen, again, toSt.Paul’s description of the church. After saying that “Christ is the head of the church,” and “the church is subject to Christ,” he adds: “Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, nor any such thing.”[93]Now, although theRev.E. E. Hale has thrown overboard the belief in the divinity of Christ and the supernatural inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, nevertheless the words of Christ and his apostle, measuredonly by the standard of personal holiness and learning, ought to be esteemed, when speaking of God’s church, of equal authority, at least, to his statement, even though he ranks “as one of the few thoroughly-furnished and widely-experienced men” among Unitarians.
But how did the church of Christ become “contaminated”? This is an important point, and here is theRev.E. E. Hale’s reply to it:
“And, in truth, so soon as the church met with the world, it borrowed while it lent, it took while it gave. So, in the face of learned Egypt, it Egyptianized its simple Trinity; in the face of powerful Rome it heathenized its nascent ritual; in the face of wordy Greece it Hellenized its dogmatics and theology; and by way of holding well with Israel it took up a rabbin’s reverence even for the jots and tittles of its Bible. What history calls ‘Christianity,’ therefore, is a man-adorned system, of which the methods can be traced to convenience, or even to heathen wisdom, if we except that one majestic method by which every true disciple is himself ordained a king and a priest, and receives the charge that in his daily life he shall proclaim glad tidings to every creature.”
The common error of the class of men to whom theRev.E. E. Hale belongs, who see the church, if at all, only on the outside, is to “put the cart before the horse.” It is not the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, who teach the church of Christ, but the church of Christ which teaches the truth to the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Christ came to teach all nations, not to be taught by them. Hence, in communicating his mission to his church, he said: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations.”[94]The church, in fulfilling this divine commissionof teaching all nations, utilizes their gifts in bringing out the great truths committed to her care by her divine Founder. It is in this cooperation with the work of the church that the different nations and races of men find the inspiration of their genius, the noblest employment of their highest faculties, and the realization of their providential mission upon earth. For the scattered rays of religious truth which were held by the different nations and races of men under paganism were derived from primitive revelation, and it is only when these are brought within the focus of the light of universal truth that their complete significance is appreciated, and they are seen in all their original splendor. The Catholic Church, in this aspect, is the reintegration of natural religion with the truths contained in primitive revelation and their perfect fulfilment. Moreover, there is no truth contained in any of the ancient religions before the coming of Christ, or affirmed by any of the heresies since that event, or that may be hereafter affirmed, which is not contained, in all its integrity, in Catholicity. This is only saying, in other words, The Catholic Church is catholic.
But these men do not see the church, and they appear to regard Christianity as still an unorganized mass, and they are possessed with the idea that the task is imposed upon them to organize the Christian Church; and this work occupied and perplexed them not a little in their Unitarian biennial conference held in the town of Saratoga, in the United States of North America, in the month of September, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy-six!
“Poor wanderers! ye are sore distrestTo find the path which Christ has blest,Tracked by his saintly throng;Each claims to trust his own weak will—Blind idol!—so ye languish still,All wranglers, and all wrong.”[95]
“Poor wanderers! ye are sore distrestTo find the path which Christ has blest,Tracked by his saintly throng;Each claims to trust his own weak will—Blind idol!—so ye languish still,All wranglers, and all wrong.”[95]
“Poor wanderers! ye are sore distrest
To find the path which Christ has blest,
Tracked by his saintly throng;
Each claims to trust his own weak will—
Blind idol!—so ye languish still,
All wranglers, and all wrong.”[95]
Were the veil taken from their spiritual eyes, and did they behold the church as she is, they would easily comprehend that her unbroken existence for nineteen centuries alone, saying nothing of what glory is in store for her in the future, is a more evident and conclusive proof to us of the divinity of her Founder than the miracle of his raising Lazarus from the dead was to those who were actual witnesses to it. For, in raising Lazarus from the dead, he had but to deal with passive matter, and that for only an instant; whereas in founding his church he had to exert his power and counteract all the attacks of the gates of hell, combined with the persecutions of the world and the perversities of men, during successive centuries until the end of all time. None but the living God could be the author of so potent, comprehensive, and indestructible a body as the Catholic Church. Of all the unanswerable testimonies of the divinity of Christ, there is none so forcible as that of the perpetual existence of the one, holy, Roman Catholic Church. She is the standing miracle of Christ.
The reverse sense of the statement of theRev.Edward E. Hale on this point contains the truth. The Catholic Church welcomes all nations and races to her fold, and reintegrates the scattered truths contained in every religious system, not by way of reunion or composition, but by simplicity and unity in a divine synthesis; and as the ancient Egyptians, and the Greeks,and the Romans, so also the modern Franks and Celts, have served by their characteristic gifts to the development and progress of Christian truth. In like manner the Saxons, with their peculiar genius and instincts, will serve, to their own greater glory, in due season, in the same great cause, perhaps, by giving a greater development and a more scientific expression to the mystic life of the church, and by completing, viewed from intrinsic grounds, the demonstration of the truth of her divine mission.
Leaving aside other misstatements and errors contained in the first part of this sermon from want of space, we pass on to what may be termed its pith. Mr. Hale starts with the hazardous question, “What is the Unitarian Church for?” As far as we can make out from repeated reading of the main portion of the sermon—for there reigns a great confusion and incoherence in his ideas—the Unitarian Church has for its mission to certify anew and proclaim the truth that “God is in man.” “God in man,” he says, “is in itself the basis of the whole Gospel.” Undoubtedly “God is in man,” and God is in the brute, and God is in every grain of sand, and God is in all things. God is in all things by his immensity—that is, by his essence, and power, and presence. But this is a truth known by the light of human reason, and taught by all sound philosophers, heathen and Christian. There was no need of the Gospel, nor of that “fearlessness” which, he tells us, “was in the Puritan blood,” nor of the Unitarian Church, to teach this evident and common truth to mankind.
The Gospel message means more than that, and theRev.Mr. Hale has some idea that it does meanmore. He adds: “Every man is God’s child, and God’s Spirit is in every life.” Again: “Men are the children of God really and not figuratively”; “The life of God is their life by real inheritance.” After having made these statements, he attempts to give the basis and genesis of this relation of God as father to man as child, as follows:
“That the force which moves all nature is one force, and not many, appears to all men, as they study it, more and more. That this force is conscious of its own existence, that it is conscious of its own work, that it is therefore what men call spirit, that this spirit has inspired and still inspires us, that we are therefore not creatures of dumb power, but children of a Father’s love—this is the certainty which unfolds itself or reveals itself, or is unfolded or is revealed, as higher and higher man ascends in his knowledge of what IS.”
That man, by the light of his reason, can, by the study of nature, attain to this idea of God and his principal attributes, as Spirit, as Creator, upholder of the universe, and as Providence, is no doubt true; but that, by the study of “the force which moves all nature,” our own consciousness included, we can learn that we are the “children of a Father’s love,” does not follow, and is quite another thing. It is precisely here that Unitarianism as a consistent, intelligible religious system crumbles into pieces. Nor can Unitarians afford to follow theRev.Edward E. Hale in his attempt to escape this difficulty by concealing his head, ostrich-like, under the sand of a spurious mysticism, and virtually repudiating the rational element in religion by saying: “The mystic knows that God is here now. He has no chain of posts between child and Father. He relies on no long, logical system of communication,” etc. The genuine mystic, indeed,“knows God is here,” but he knows also that God is not the author of confusion, and to approach God he does not require of man to put out the light of his reason. He will tell us that the relation of God to all things as created being, and the relation of God to man as rational being, and the relation of God to man as father to child, are not one and the same thing, and ought not, therefore, to be confounded. The true mystic will further inform us that the first relation, by way of immanence, is common to all created things, man included; the second, by way of rationality, is common to the human race; the third, by way of filiation, is common to those who are united to God through the grace of Christ. The first and second are communicated to man by the creative act of God, and are therefore ours by right of natural inheritance through Adam. The third relation is communicated to us by way of adoption through the grace of the new Adam, Christ, who is “the only-begotten Son of God.” This relation is not, therefore, ours by inheritance. We “have received from Christ,” saysSt.Paul to the Romans, “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry: Abba, Father.”[96]“By whom also we have access through faith into this grace, wherein we stand, and glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God.”[97]It is proper to remark here that it is an error very common among radicals, rationalists, and a certain class of Unitarians to suppose that the relation of the soul to God by way of filiation, due to Christ, is intended as a substitute for our natural relations to God by way of immanence and rationality; whereasChristianity presupposes these, reaffirms, continues, completes, and perfects them, by this very gift of filiation with God. For it is a maxim common to all Catholic theologians thatgratia supponit et perficit naturam.
Our intelligent mystic would not stop here. Proceeding further, he would say that to be really and truly children of God by inheritance implies our being born with the same identical nature as God. For the nature of a child is not a resemblance to, or an image of, that of his father, but consists in his possessing the same identical essence and nature as his father. If the son is equal to his father by nature, then he is also equal to his father in his capacities as such. Now, if every man, by nature, has the right to call God father, as theRev.Mr. Hale and his co-religionists pretend, then all men by nature are equal to God, both in essence and attributes! Is this what Unitarians mean by “the divinity of human nature”? TheRev.E. E. Hale appears to say so when he tells us: “What we are struggling for, and what, if words did not fail us, we would fain express, is what Dr. James Walker called ‘the identity of essence of all spiritual being and all spiritual life.’” All, then, that the believers in the divinity of Christ claim exclusively for him is claimed by Unitarians equally for every individual of the human race. But the belief in the divinity of Christ is “the latest and least objectionable form of idolatry”—so theRev.H. W. Bellows informs us in his volume entitledPhases of Faith. The Unitarian cure, then, for the evil of idolatry is by substituting an indefinite multitude of idols for one single object of idolatrous worship.
There is one class of Unitarians, to whom the author of this sermon seems to belong, who accept boldly the consequences of their premise, and maintain without disguise that all men are by nature the equals of Christ, and that there is no reason why they should not, by greater fidelity, surpass Christ. Up to this period of time, however, they have not afforded to the world any very notable specimen of the truth of their assertion. Another class attempt to get over the difficulty by a critical exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, denying the authenticity or the meaning of those parts which relate to the miraculous conception of Christ, his miracles, and his divinity. A representative of the extreme wing on the right of Unitarianism replied, when this point was presented to him: “Oh! we Unitarians reject the idea of the Trinity as represented by Calvinists and other Protestants, for they make it a tritheism; but we accept the doctrine as holy mother Church teaches it”; while a leader of the extreme left admitted the difficulty, and in speaking of Dr. Channing, who championed the idea of the filiation of man to God, he said: “No intelligent Unitarian of to-day would attempt to defend the Unitarianism of Dr. Channing.” He was right; for no Unitarian, on the basis of his belief, can say consistently the Lord’s Prayer; for the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation is a rigorous necessity to any one who admits the infinite and the finite, and the necessity of a union of love between them which authorizes the finite to call the Infinite Father! One may bestow sympathy upon the pious feelings of that class of Unitarians of which Dr. Channing is the representative, but the lesssaid about their theological science the better.
Our genuine mystic would not stop here. He would continue and show that the denial of the Incarnation involves the denial of the Trinity, and the denial of the Trinity reduces the idea of God to a mere abstraction. For all conception of real life is complex. Intellectual life in its simplest elements, in its last analysis, will be found to consist of three factors: Man as the thinker, one factor; the thing thought, the second factor; and their relation, the third factor—or the lover, the beloved, and their relation; again, the actor, the thing acted upon, and their relation. Man cannot think, love, or act where there is nothing to think, to love, or to act upon. Place man in an absolute vacuum, where there is nothing except himself, and you have manin posse, but not man as being, as existing, as a living man. You have a unit, an abstraction, nothing more. But pure abstractions have no real existence. Our conception of life in accordance with the law which governs our intelligence is comprised in three terms—subject, object, and their relation.[98]There is no possible way of bringing out of a mere unit, as our absolute starting point of thought, an intellectual conception of life. But the Unitarian idea of God is God reduced to a simple, absolute unit. Hence the Unitarian idea of God is not the conception of the real, living God,but an abstraction, a non-existing God.
Our genuine mystic would proceed still further; for infused light and love from above do not suspend or stultify the natural action of our faculties, but quicken, elevate, and transform their operations. He would apply, by way of analogy, the same process of thought in confirmation of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. If there had been a time, he would say, when there was no object before God, then there would have been a period when God was not the real, living God, but only Godin posse, non-existing. But this is repugnant to the real conception of God; therefore the true idea of God involves a co-eternal object. If, however, this co-eternal object was not equal to God in substance as well as in attributes, then there would have been a period when God did not exist in all his fulness. Now, this object, co-eternal and equal to God the Father, is what the Catholic doctrine teaches concerning Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father, “begotten before all ages, consubstantial with the Father.” But the Father and the Son being co-eternal and co-adequate, their relations to each other must have been eternal and equal, outflowing toward each other in love, commensurate with their whole nature. This procession of mutual love between Father and Son is what the Catholic doctrine teaches concerning the Holy Spirit. Thus we see, however imperfectly, that the Catholic doctrine concerning the Trinity presents to our minds nothing that is contrary to our reason, though it contains an infinite abyss beyond the present scope of our reason, but which we shall know when our reason is increased, as it will be, bythe gift of the light of glory. But every mystery of Christianity has an intelligible side to our natural reason, and by the light of faith it is the privilege and joy of a Christian while here upon earth to penetrate more deeply into their hidden, divine truth.
Again, the Unitarian is mistaken when he supposes that Catholics, in maintaining the Trinity, exclude the divine Unity. They include both in one. Herein again is found in man an analogy. Man is one in triplicity. Man is thought, love, and activity, and at the same time man is one. He thinks, he loves, he acts; there are not three distinct men, one who thinks, another who loves, and still another who acts. There is, therefore, a sense in which man is one in three and three in one. So there is in the Trinity. The Unitarians are right in affirming the divine Unity; their error consists in excluding the divine Trinity. All heresies are right in what they affirm, and wrong in what they exclude or deny; which denial is the result of their breaking away from that divine Unity in whose light alone every truth is seen in its co-relation with all other truths.
Our true mystic would not be content to rest here, but, soaring up upon the wings of divine light and love, and taking a more extended view, he would strive to show that where the doctrine of the Trinity is not held either explicitly or implicitly, there not only the theory of our mental operations and the intellectual foundation of religion dissolve into a baseless fabric of a vision; but that also the solid basis of society, the true idea of the family, the right conception of the state and its foundations, and the law of all genuine progress, are wanting, andall human things tend towards dissolution and backward to the reign of old chaos.
We give another characteristic statement of theRev.Edward E. Hale’s opening sermon which must have grated harshly on the ears of the more staid and conservative portion of his audience; it is under the head of “The immanent presence of God.” He says:
“The Roman Church will acknowledge it, andSt.Francis andSt.Vincent and Fénelon will illustrate it. But, at the same time, the Roman Church has much else on her hands. She has to be contending for those seven sacraments, for this temporal power, all this machinery of cardinals and bishops, and bulls and interdicts, canon law and decretals, so that in all this upholstery there is great risk that none of us see the shrine. So of the poor little parodies of the Roman Church, the Anglican Church, the Lutheran Church, and the rest of them.”
Again:
“All our brethren in the other confessions plunge into their infinite ocean with this hamper of corks and floats, water-proof dresses lest they be wet, oil-cloth caps for their hair, flannels for decency, a bathing-cart here, a well-screened awning there—so much machinery before the bath that one hardly wonders if some men refuse to swim! For them there is this great apology, if they do not proclaim as we must proclaim, God here and God now; nay, if they do not live as we must live, in the sense of God here and God now. For us, we have no excuse. We have stripped off every rag. We have destroyed all the machinery.”
TheRev.Mr. Hale regards the seven sacraments, the hierarchy, the canon law—briefly, the entire visible and practical side of the church—as a “hamper,” “machinery,” “rags,” and thinks there “is great risk that none of us see the shrine.” The difficulty here is not where Mr. Hale places it.
“Night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.”
“Night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.”
“Night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.”
The visible is not the prison of the invisible, as Plato dreamed, but its vehicle, asSt.Paul teaches. “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity.”[99]The author of this sermon is at least consistent in his error; as he believes in an abstract God, so he would reduce “the church of the living God,” “the body of Christ,” to an abstract non-existence. Suppose, for example, that theRev.Edward E. Hale had reduced “all the machinery” of his curiously-devised body to an abstraction before the Unitarian biennial conference was held at Saratoga; the world would have been deprived of the knowledge of that “simplicity which it is the special duty of the Unitarian Church to proclaim.” Think of the loss! For it was by means of the complex “machinery” of his concrete body that theRev.E. E. Hale came in contact with the “machinery” of the Unitarian biennial organization at Saratoga, and, thus “upholstered,” he publicly rants against all “machinery.”
There may be too complex an organization, and too many applications of it, and too much made of these, owing to the necessities of our times, in the Catholic Church, to suit the personal tastes and the stage of growth of theRev.Edward E. Hale. But the Catholic Church does not exist solely for the benefit of Mr. Hale, or for any peculiar class of men, or any one race alone. He has and should have, and they all have, their own place and appropriate niche in herall-temple; forthe Catholic Church takes up in her scope every individual, and the human race entire. But there are others, with no less integrity of spiritual life and intelligence than he, who esteem those things of which he speaks so unappreciatingly as heavenly gifts and straight pathways to see more clearly the inner shrine and approach more nearly to the divine Presence. Are the idiosyncrasies of one man, though “thoroughly furnished and widely experienced,” to be the norm of all other men, and of every race? Men and races differ greatly in these things, and the church of God is not a sect or conventicle; she is Catholic, universal, and in her bosom, and in her bosom alone, every soul finds its own place and most suitable way, with personal liberty and in accord with all other souls and the whole universe, to perfect union with God.
The matter with theRev.E. E. Hale is, he has missed his vocation. His place evidently was not in the assembled conference at Saratoga; for his calling is unmistakably to a hermit life. Let him hie to the desert, and there, in a forlorn and naked hermitage, amid “frosts and fasts, hard lodgings and thin weeds,” in an austere and unsociable life, “unswathed and unclothed,”in puris naturalibis, “triumphantly cease to be.” TheRev.E. E. Hale is one-sided, and seems to have no idea that the Catholic Church is the organization of that perfect communion of men with God and each other which Christ came to communicate and to establish in its fulness upon earth, and is its practical realization. God grant him, and others like him, this light and knowledge!
But we would not have our readers think that all Unitarians agreewith theRev.E. E. Hale in his estimate of the visible or practical side of the church. We quote from a leading article in theLiberal Christianof August last, under the head of “Spirit and Form in Religion,” the following passage:
“It seems painfully indicative of the still undeveloped condition of our race that no truce or medium can be approximated in which the two great factors of human nature and society, the authority and supremacy ofspiritand the necessity and usefulness ofform, are reconciled and made to serve each other or a common end. Must inward spirituality, and outward expression of it in forms and worship, be for ever in a state of unstable equilibrium? Must they ever be hostile and at cross-purposes? Must all progress be by a displacement in turn of each other—now an era of honored forms, and then of only disembodied spirituality? There is probably no entire escape from this necessity. But, surely, he is the wisest man who can hold this balance in the evenest hand; and that sect or school, whether political, social, or religious, that pays the finest justice and the most impartial respect to the two factors in our nature, spirit and form, will hold the steadiest place and do the most good for the longest time. This is the real reason why Quakerism, with all its exalted claims to respect, has such a feeble and diminishing importance. It has oil in the lamp of the purest kind, but almost nowick, and what wick it has is made up of itsthee-ing andthou-ing, and its straight coat and stiff bonnet. These are steadily losing authority; and when they are abandoned, visible Quakerism will disappear. On the other hand, Roman Catholicismmaintains its place against the spirit of the age, and in spite of a load of discredited doctrines, very largely because of its intense persistency in forms, its highly-illumined visibility, its large-handed legibleness; but not without the unfailing aid and support of a spirit of faith and worship which produces a devoted priesthood and hosts of genuine saints. No form of Christianity can boast of lovelier or more spiritual disciples, or reaches higher up or lower down, including the wisest and the most ignorant, the most delicate and the coarsest adherents. It has the subtlest and the bluntest weapons in its arsenal, and can pierce with a needle, or mow with a scythe, or maul with a mattock.”
The same organ, in a later number, in speaking of the Saratoga conference, says:
“The main characteristic of the meeting was a conscientious and reverent endeavor to attain to something like a scientific basis for our faith in absolute religion, and in Christianity as a consistent and concrete expression of it,”
and adds that the opening sermon of theRev.Mr. Hale “had the merit of starting us calmly and unexcitedly on our course.” Our readers will form their own judgment about what direction the course leads on which theRev.Edward E. Hale started the Unitarians assembled at Saratoga in their seeking after a “scientific basis” for “absolute religion, and Christianity as a concrete expression of it”!
[89]“A Free-born Church.” The sermon preached before the National Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches at Saratoga, Tuesday evening, Sept. 12. TheLiberal Christian, New York, Sept. 16, 1876.
[90]An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,p.14. Appleton, N. Y.
[91]Matt. xvi.18.
[92]Matt. xxviii.18.
[93]Eph. v.25, 26, 27.
[94]St. Matt. xxviii.18, 19.
[95]Dr. Newman.
[96]Rom. viii.15.
[97]Ibid.v. 2.
[98]“Liquido tenendum est, quod omnia res, quamcumque cognoscimus, congenerat in nobis notitiam sui. Ab utroque enim notitia paritur, a cognoscente et cognito.”—St.Augustine,De Trinitate, s.ix.c.xii.—Wherefore it must be clearly held that everything whatsoever that we know begets at the same time in us the knowledge of itself; for knowledge is brought forth from both, from the knower and from the thing known. Again, “Behold, then, there are three things: he that loves, and that which is loved, and love.”—s.viii.c.x.,ibid.
[99]Romansi.20.