REASONABLE RELIGION A SERIES OF TWELVE Uracte for the Cfmee Zonbon BRITISH AND FOREIGN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION ESSEX HALL, ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W,C, s893 CONTENTS. Page. I. The Principles and Ideals of the Unitarians. By Rev. R. A. Armstrong, B.A. ... ... ... ... ... ... 2. The Nativity : the Story of the Birth of Jesus in the Light of Modern Criticism. By Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. I The Story of Robert Elsmere and its Lessons. By Rev. Charles W. WendtZ: ... ... ... ... ... 3 4. Fifty Years since Channing. By Rev. John W. Chadwick 61 5. Unitarianism an Affirmative Faith. By Rev.C. J. Perry, B.A. 89 6. Jesus Christ. By Rev. Charles Beard, B.A., LL.D. ... 105 7. The Future Life. By Rev. Charles Wicksteed, B.A. .. 123 8. God or Christ? By Rev. Edward F. Hayward ... ... 145 9. Is God Conscious, Personal, and Good ? By Rev.M. J. Savage 155 10. ' The Revelation of the Spirit. By Rev. F. H. Hedge, D.D. 169 11. Science and Religion. By W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S. 181 12. How does a Man become one with God 3 By Rev. James Freeman Clarke, D.D. .. ... .. ... .. ~gz The Princiiples and Ideals of the Unitarians. OU have many of you listened on the last six Sunday Y evenings to expositions of the principles and ideals of six several groups of Christian believers, as given, either in person or by letter, by those identified with the various groups." To us of Hope Street Church it has been a great delight to find that the time has come when men of such various schools are willing, through the medium of our free pulpit, thus to set forth the positions which they hold sacred. I believe that we all have heard much more that we agree with than that we dissent from. It has been as a new Pentecostal day, and it has seemed as though Catholics and Protestants, Coagregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, and Upitarians, we did all "hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God." I trust that it may be given me so to speak to-night that this happy harmony of sentiment amid diversity of creed may not be marred. The position of this Church and of the kindred churches throughout the land must be clearly stated. They trace their lineage from the great Presbyterian exodus from the Church of England, which resulted from the Act of Uni- formity in 1662. On the day of St. Bartholomew in that year, two thousand clergymen left their parsonages rather than con- form to a mode of worship which their consciences c6uld not accept. "In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often," these men spent the days, till the scanty liberty was allowed them in holes and corners, in garrets and in cellars, once more to gather their followers round them. From them and their associates all the older congregations now commonly called Unitarian * See note at the end of this Tract. TRACTS FOR THE TIMES descend. These men were rigidly orthodox in their personal belief. But they left the churches which they founded free; and from that day to this no theological bondage has been laid upon them. And so, for the most part, through Arminianism and Arianism, with steady forward pace, they have gradually reached the Unitarian conceptions which are now generally prevalent among them. But you will see that historically they are not Unitarian Churches, but free; the freest ,churches in the world. Neither is any minister or worshipper among them at the present day pledged to Unitarianism; he is only pledged to truthfulness before God and man. If you hear of some of us even now refusing to call our churches Unitarian churches, it is not that we are afraid or ashamed of that most unpopular name. On the contrary, we are proud . of it, and of the stand for freedom and for truth with which it is associated-the prouder of it that it has been so much reviled. But we wish to guard the perfect com- prehensiveness of these churches even at the present moment, as welcoming on equal terms all men who care to enter our fellowship, be they Unitarians or not; and we wish to guard the perfect freedom of these churches in the future, as no more bound to the Unitarianism of to-day, if God should give some brighter light, than we are bound to the Arianism of yesterday, or our Arian grandfathers were bound to the Arminianism or the Cal- vinism of the old time before them. Should any one of you wish to enter our fellowship, neither I nor any other would ask you any question whatsoever as to your opinions ; nor should I, as minister, ever desire to know any more of your thoughts on the highest themes than you might in the course of time be moved to confide to me in the intercourse of private friendship. Indeed, we value beyond all price this principle of perfect intellectual freedom in our churchmanship, both congregationally and individually. And every one of the ordinary methods by which other churches strive to secure some sort of theological unity within their territory, we absolutely and unhesitatingly reject. We have no sub- scription to any Articles of Faith, like the Church of PRINCIPLES AND IDEALS OF THE UNITARIANS 5 England and the Presbyterians. We lay down no creeds to be recited in public worship, like the Church of England. We have no prescribed order of worship, like the Catholics or the Church of England. We have no statements of doctrine in our Trust Deeds, like the Congregationalists and the Baptists. We put no doc- trinal questions to students in our colleges; or candidates for our pulpits, or persons desiring to become members of the Church, like most of the Baptists, and, I think, all the Congregationalists. we have never expelled any man from fellowship with us for doctrinal unsoundness, like the Quakers. If a minister and a congregation so radically disagreed, whether in theology or in anything else, that they could not work together to their mutual good, they would naturally part. But neither would have any right or any desire to call the other heterodox. The only undertaking of the minister is that in the worship of God and in all his teaching his language shall be true to his own inmost thought. We are theologically the freest religious communion in the world. Our critics say that the freedom is more in theory than in fact. The answer is our history for the past two hundred years. A smaller answer, but not, I think, less striking, is this present course of lectures. If there be in Liverpool any other pulpit as free as this one and those kindred to it, let a similar course of lectures be inaugurated there. My con- gregation could to-morrow serve me with notice to quit, and invite Father Nugent, or Mr. Lund, or Mr. Hamilton, or Mr. Aked, or Mr. Russell, or Mr. Turner, to become minister of Hope Street Church in my stead. It is sympathy, and sympathy alone, that binds me and them together. What then, you will ask, has been the result of this boundless ireedom? Surely, you will say, dissension, chaos, outbreaks of theological differences anlong a people rallying round no common standard, pledged to no common confession of their faith. On the contrary, I do not think that any other group of churches in England has from first to last enjoyed so remarkable an immunity from theological convulsions. Other churches have been from time to time thrown into tumult and alarm by the sudden outbreak of TRACTS FOR THE TIMES new modes of thought and statement. "Essays and Reviews" shook the church of England like a tree in a storm. Dr. Dods and Dr. Bruce have set agog half the Presbyteries of Scotland. The " Down-grade " among the Baptists filled the late Mr. Spurgeon and his pupils with alarm. Thomas Toke Lynch had hard times among the Con- gregationalists. In America, Theodore Parker suffered in much the same may from the Unitarians of his day, whose churches had not the same traditions behind them as ours. But \ye in England have no similar records interleaved in our history. As philosophy, and physical science, and literary and historical criticism have disintegrated old beliefs, and pressed new forms of thought on the mind of educated Europe, our fathers and we have quietly, sometimes almost unconsciously, discharged the old ideas which had becom'e inconsistent with the new knowledge, and, assimilating the new thought, let it silently penetrate our religious conceptions, always making them purer and sweeter, and bringing God more near. Even the un- paralleled revolution in science and criticism of the last , thirty years-a revolution more rapid and complete than the world has ever seen before-has only accelerated the rate of development of our thought a little, has caused hardly any friction, and has left those of us whose minds it has most thoroughly penetrated, with clearer vision than we had before of the Fatherhood of God and the Brother- hood of Man and the gracious power and loveliness of the character of Christ. And not only has our freedom resulted in this gradual evolution of opinion amongst us; but I believe that you would at the present moment find a closer sympathy in our religious views uniting us to one another than you will find in any church which has attempted to secure theological agreement by formulas of doctrine to be signed by candidates for the ministry, or to be recited in public worship, or to be incorporated in trust-deeds conditioning the tenure of property.