I had been living at Johnstown, Pa., and had for three years foreseen without a doubt that the fearful disaster was coming to that place which actually befell it, and if in all those years, though mingling freely with the people, I had definitely alluded to their peril but three times in a way which would cause anybody to note it down, and then only momentarily, and in such hurried and indefinite terms as left it doubtful whether, indeed, I had ever spoken of the matter at all, does any one think the survivors of that catastrophe would bless me now as their benefactor and their savior from danger? SAMUEL C. BEANE.

Newburyport, Mass.

WHAT DO UNITARIANS BELIEVE?

For the purpose of rendering, if I may, some little assistance to the large number of persons all about us who are asking the above question, as well as with the hope, possibly, of stirring up others still who have not yet done so to inquire, I have prepared the following brief summary of information regarding the principles and positions of Unitarians.

Freedom of Inquiry in Religion.-We believe that the same God who is the author of religion is also the author of reason; that there is no other way in which truth can possibly be separated from error in religion except by investigation and the use of reason; and, therefore, that it is of the highest importance that there should be everywhere the freest and fullest inquiry with reference to religious things, in this inquiry every man being permitted to stand upon his own feet and to judge for himself, subject to no dictation or pressure from councils, synods, conferences, presbyteries, creeds, catechisms, fathers of the church, doctors of the church, or preachers.

No Creed. We have no creed; that is, no authoritative statement of beliefs which persons are required to subscribe to,- first, because we believe to the fullest extent in liberty of thought, and would do nothing to check it; secondly, because, in the very nature of the case, it is impossible for any two persons to see truth exactly alike, and therefore a creed made by one man for another must be more or less inadequate, if

not false; thirdly, because if we had a creed fitted to our wants to-day, we should either have to stop growing in knowledge and insight or else get a new one to-morrow; fourthly, because neither Jesus nor the apostles taught any, nor did the early church possess any; fifthly, because history gives unmistakable proof that creeds and authoritative statements of doctrine have always tended to tear the Christian Church to pieces, to multiply sects, to suggest and foster persecutions, and to hinder progress.

Something Better.-But, while we have no creed or fixed statement of doctrine which we prescribe as a condition of Christian fellowship, we do have a great, central principle and a few great, simple, central faiths. Our central principle is this: the necessary harmony of true religion with reason, or the supreme authority of reason and moral consciousness in the search after religious truth. From this fundamental principle, everywhere held to among us, has resulted an essential agreement as to the general, fundamental faiths upon which our movement builds,— an agreement probably quite as great as can be found in churches which have authoritative creeds.

God. We believe God to be one, not three or more; an intelligent First Cause, not an ultimate blind force; beyond our utmost thought, powerful, wise, holy, just, good, not malignant, or indifferent, or in any way imperfect; the embodiment of all, and more than all, that we can possibly mean by that name which Jesus taught us to call him,"our Father,"-and hence one who can never cease to love and care for all his children, in this world or any other.

Inspiration. We believe that inspiration is not something which can be locked up in writing, or confined to any age or people, but that now, to-day, and here with us, just as truly as two thousand or three thousand years ago, and in Palestine, the Infinite Spirit of Wisdom, Truth, Beauty, and Love waits to come with its inspiration into every receptive mind.

Revelation. We believe that revelation is progressive, not stationary; that it is of all times, countries, and races, not of the remote past or of a single people only; that it comes through many channels, including nature, history, and the mind of man, not through any single channel alone or in any

miraculous way; that, so far from revelation being confined to one book, all moral and spiritual truth known to man belongs to it; that as a race we are now standing only in the morning dawn of revelation, not in its evening twilight.

The Bible. We believe that the Bible is the greatest, the most influential, the most important, the noblest depository of this revelation that has come down to us from the past, and is therefore to be prized by us as the most precious and sacred of books, though not as the only sacred book of the world, nor by any means an infallible book. Jesus.-Accepting the Bible teaching that all men are "sons of God," we yet believe that Jesus, by reason of the exceptional purity and perfectness of his character, was pre-eminently what the New Testament in a number of places calls him, the son of God. We believe him to have been divine, but not Deity, as we believe that humanity, in the degree of its perfection, is everywhere divine. We teach tender love and earnest reverence toward him; but we do not worship him, because, among other reasons, he himself, both by word and example, taught us to worship only God, his Father and ours. Coming to Jesus.-While we believe that no words in our day are more often used among certain large classes of religious people in a sense which has in it no sense, but is mere sentimentalism and cant, we at the same time most sincerely believe in a real coming to Jesus; that is, a coming (through study and reflection and effort) to a constantly more and more perfect imitation of or conformity to his pure and exalted spirit and life.

Believing in Jesus.-Believing in Jesus we do not understand to consist in believing any speculative theological doctrines about him, -as his incarnation, his deity, his atonement, his relation to a trinity. True believing in Jesus we understand to consist in believing in him,- in what he was and did, in the kind of life he lived and character he exhibited, in such love to God and man, such devotion to truth and duty, such beautiful self-sacrifice, such patience and gentleness, such bravery and fidelity, as he everywhere taught and exemplified.

Following Christ.-We believe that the truest following of Christ is to go about doing good.

Conversion.-The word "convert" means "to turn," or "to turn about." Inasmuch, therefore, as all men, being imperfect, are liable to commit errors, and fall to walking in ways that are not right, we believe that all men have need to be converted,—not once, but again and again.

The New Birth.-We believe that to be born again, and to continue to be born again, into new and perpetually new, into finer and higher and forevermore finer and higher spiritual life, is what Jesus taught to be the law of our being and the design of the Creator for all men.

Salvation. We believe in salvation by character, not salvation by purchase or transfer; and that Jesus saves men solely by helping them to become better, not by vicariously atoning for their sins.

The whole idea, in all its forms, that God, before he can or will pardon men's sins, must have some third party to make him willing, or some sort of "plan" or "scheme," whereby he becomes able to pardon, we utterly reject. We believe that God's paternity is real, and not a mere pretense of paternity; and therefore that the moment any human child of his manifests sincere penitence, and seeks forgiveness of his sin, God freely and joyfully forgives, without any thought ever of requiring first the suffering of an innocent person in the place of the guilty. In our reading of the parable of the Prodigal Son,-that part of the teaching of Jesus in which he illustrates most fully God's dealing with his erring children, -we find the father represented as running to meet the penitent son "while he was yet a great way off"; and we do not find even a hint that the elder brother, who had not sinned, was required first to make an "atonement" for the younger, or to "intercede" for him, or to "satisfy justice," or to "propitiate" the father, or to do anything in any way to promote the father's willingness or ability to forgive.

The Guilt of the Race for Adam's Transgression.—We believe that nobody can be guilty for anybody's sin but his own.

Good and Evil.-We believe that the world is not fallen, but incomplete; and that, in the nature of things, evil is transient, and good eternal.

Human Nature.-We believe that human nature is imperfect, but not inherently bad;

that it has been wisely appointed to man to rise by slow degrees and long and even painful effort out of low conditions into conditions ever higher and better, and not that we are the degenerate descendants of pure and perfect ancestors in some remote past. We believe that the race, as a whole, occupies a higher plane to-day than ever before, and that this progress of the past gives us ground for faith in a greatly increased progress in the future.

Retribution. We believe that no wrongdoing will go unpunished, and no rightdoing unrewarded; that all punishment for sin is natural, not arbitrary, reformatory in its aim, not vindictive, and therefore cannot in the nature of things be everlasting.

Heaven and Hell.-The doctrine of an eternal hell we unqualifiedly reject, as the foulest imputation upon the character of God possible to be conceived, and as something which would render happiness in heaven itself impossible, since no beings whose hearts were not stone could be happy anywhere, knowing that half the human family, including many of their own loved ones, were in torments. Instead of such a dark and God-dishonoring doctrine, we believe that the future existence will be one ruled by Eternal Justice and Love, that he whom in this world we call "our Father" will be no less a Father to all his human children in the world to come, and that that world will be so planned as not only to bring eternal good to all who have done well here, but also to offer eternal hope to such as have done ill here.

Faith and Works. We believe in faith, faith in God, faith in man, faith in truth, faith in duty, and that all these faiths are "saving faiths." We believe in works, that the more good works a man does, so that his motives be good, the better pleasing to Heaven is his life; and that no salvation of any worth ever comes to any human being except through faithful and earnest work.

Worship, Love, and Service of God.-We believe that man is as much made to worship as to think, but that perfect worship of God includes reverence for everything high and pure in humanity; that perfect love of God includes love to all God's children; that he best serves God who is most useful, and who obeys best every law of his being, -physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual.

Church Membership.—We believe that the true basis of church membership and all Christian fellowship is not an intellectual belief of formulated creeds or articles of faith, but a sincere desire to unite for a common purpose of Christian worship, moral culture, and human helpfulness.

Science and Religion.-We believe that science and religion, having the same author, can never, by any possibility, be antagonistic, but that true religion is scientific, and true science is religious. We cheerfully acknowledge that science has already been of incalculable service to religion in helping to rid it of many degrading and hurtful superstitions and errors; and we bid all scientific investigators a most sincere Godspeed in any and every investigation which can throw light upon any of the great religious questions of the time.

Fellowship of Religions.—While we believe that Christianity is the highest and best religion of the world, we believe also that the other great religions of mankind have in them much that is true and of God, and that God, instead of having arbitrarily chosen out one single people and made it the sole channel of his communication with the race, leaving the rest in midnight darkness, "has not left himself without witness among any people, and that "in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness [according to the best light he has] is accepted with God."

The Above.-The above, while not a creed, or authoritative statement, or one binding upon any but the writer, is yet believed to be in essential harmony with what is commonly held and taught as fundamental among Unitarians, as it is also believed to be in essential harmony with reason, science, the best scholarship and thought of the age, and the teachings of Jesus.

SOME LEADING POINTS OF

UNITARIAN BELIEF, WITH SCRIPTURE REFERENCES.

1. One God, and only one, the Father, a Spirit, the only proper object of worship; in contradistinction from a trinity, and worship of Jesus or of the Virgin Mary. Matt. vi. 9; Mark xii. 29; John iv. 24, xvii. 3, xx. 17; Eph. iv. 6; 1 Tim. ii. 5.

2. Jesus not God the Son, but the son of God (his sonship consisting in moral godlikeness, many others besides him being

nine Unitarian churches. Yet the real influence of Unitarianism is nowhere, not even in Boston, to be measured by the number of its churches. Unitarian views are spreading in every direction,-among the educated and thinking classes, among the common people, into the orthodox bodies. Dean Stanley, shortly before he died, expressed the conviction that the Liberal Theology will be the prevailing theology of the twentieth or the twenty-first century.

The American Unitarian Association, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, is the leading organization of the denomination in this country. Any person desiring information, books, or tracts on Unitarian subjects, can obtain the same by applying to that address.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND UNITARIANISM.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the greatest and most judicial minds that America has produced, left behind him this creed, as the result of his life-long study and reflection: "I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe; that he governs it by his providence; that the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children; that the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion. As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think his system and his religion, as he left them to us, the best that the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend they have received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters of England, some doubts of his divinity." This statement of belief, embracing the ripest conclusions of perhaps the greatest mind of the New World, constitutes, as will be seen, a correct, condensed statement of the doctrines commonly held by Unitarians.

PRESIDENT ADAMS AND UNITARIANISM.

Says Charles Francis Adams, writing of his grandfather, John Adams: "He devoted himself to a very elaborate examination of the religions of all ages and nations, the result of which he committed to paper. The issue of it was the formation of his theological opinions very much in the mould adopted by the Unitarians of New England. Rejecting the prominent doctrines of Calvinism, the Trinity, the Atonement, and Election, he was content to settle down

upon the Sermon on the Mount as a perfect code. In this faith he lived with uninterrupted serenity, and in it he died with perfect resignation."

The Sermon on the Mount, so rational, so universal in its application, our most complete statement of Jesus' teachings,-but containing, be it noticed, no intimation of his Deity, the Trinity, the Fall of the Race in Adam, the Atonement, the Infallibility of the Bible (except to deny it,-see Matt. v. 33-44), Election, or any other of the distinctive, leading doctrines of "Orthodoxy,”— this sublime and wonderful sermon of Jesus has never been by any people so persistently set forth and urged as a sufficient religious code as it has been by Unitarians during their entire history.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND UNITARIANISM.

Says the author of "Six Months at the White House," with reference to the religious creed of President Lincoln: "The conversation turned upon religious subjects, and Mr. Lincoln made this impressive remark: 'I have never united myself to any church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize their articles of belief and confessions of faith. When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both Law and Gospel, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself," that church will I join with all my heart and with all my soul.""

Had President Lincoln only known it, there is one Christian church which does "inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership," exactly this sublime injunction of Jesus. J. T. SUNDERland.

Ann Arbor, Mich.

THE BLESSING OF SERVICE.*

New blessings every morning,
New blessings still at eve,
Our lives with goodness crowning,
We as Thy gift receive.
As are the stars in number,
As are the seashore sands,
So many are the bounties

Still flowing from Thy hands.

A hymn composed for the New York League of Unitarian Women, January, 1891.