UNITARIANISM.

BY THE REV. DR. BEARD,

MANCHESTER.

pacity, but exist as individuals and in churches, with such partial combination and unity of action, as may be called forth by local circumstances, or the maintenance of religious liberty may seem to require.

UNITARIANISM is the name taken by or can be spoken of, as a body. Strictly those who bear it, in order to declare speaking, they have no corporate catheir belief in the strict and unqualified unity of God both in essence and in person. The designation had its origin in the sixteenth century, among the Unitarians of Poland, who, in order to distinguish themselves from believers in Monotheism in general, added the epi- In a body thus loosely compacted, thet, Christian, and so declared that diversities of opinion are inevitable. they were "Christian Unitarians." Such diversities are not regarded by These terms are sometimes reversed; Unitarians with disapprobation or alwhence comes the denomination of arm. Denying that salvation depends "Unitarian Christians." The title, on the reception of any forms of "Unitarian," has also its negative opinion, they prefer a free mind to side, being assumed in opposition to "Trinitarian," used to designate those professors of Christianity who hold the doctrine of a "Trinity in unity." Thus viewed, "Unitarian" is equivalent to "Anti-Trinitarian,' by which name, also, the Polish Unitarians were accustomed to designate themselves. The Polish Unitarians were disciples of Laelius and Faustus Socinus, and the masters of other Unitarians in different parts of the world. The connection, imperfect and loose though it was, occasioned the name, 66 "Socinian," While these facts and tendencies make which was given to Unitarians by their it difficult to lay down, in set forms of opponents, which has become, in some speech, the tenets held by Unitarians, measure, a term of reproach, and which they serve also to supply features for Unitarians warmly and steadfastly re- our portrait, and, at the same time, pudiate, on the ground, mainly, that in relieve the responsibility which the religion they follow no human authority. writer has assumed, in undertaking to It is not easy to expound, in general speak for others. In a few points terms, and with exactitude, the doc- Unitarian Christians are of one mind. trine of the Unitarians. The difficulty All Unitarians recognise the authority arises, in part, from the fact, that it is of the sacred Scriptures, as containing only in a qualified sense that they exist," the sole and sufficient guide in faith

a stereotyped creed; and holding that the only faith which is of value before God, is the faith which is the result of individual inquiry, simplicity of purpose in a pure love of truth, and holiness of life in accordance with the laws of Nature and the spirit of the Bible, they encourage unrestricted freedom of thought and speech, and regard the consequent diversities with toleration, if not complacency, as the appropriate and inevitable results of their fundamental principles.

Christianity. All are Unitarians who believe in the personal and essential oneness of God. The diversities to which we have referred, as existing among Unitarians, touch not this fundamental doctrine, the maintenance of which, in its integrity, is the condition,

and morals." All Unitarians hold, that the universe, as the handiwork of God, and the temple of God's Spirit, is replete with Divine truth and religious impulse. All Unitarians believe that the human soul, as created in the Divine image, is capable of receiving religious impressions, and forming re-and the sole condition, of the permaligious convictions; and that while in nent existence of Unitarianism. its lower tendencies it is carried away Regarding the person of Christ, from God, and led into sin, in its higher various opinions are held by Unitariaptitudes and longings it is borne ans—opinions as various as are comtowards its Creator, and has no rest patible with the retention of the title, until it has become one with Him. Unitarian. Those opinions range from Again, all Unitarians solemnly pro- the high Arianism of Milton, to the fess, and earnestly maintain, a belief in simple Humanitarianism of Belsham, one only God, that august Being who, corresponding alike to the pre-existent in the New Testament, is designated logos of John, and the "man approved "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, of God" of Luke. (Acts ii. 22.) There the Father of Glory." (Ephes. i. 17.) are other Unitarians who decline specBy this they mean, that "the Father" ulating on the point. Holding that the of the Scriptures is the Creator, the purpose of God, in the gift of his Son, Governor, and the Benefactor of all was not to make theologians, but worlds and all men. Consequently, | Christians—not to set forth the incomthey deny all heathen divinities; they prehensibilities of nature and essence— also deny the supreme deity of the Son not to fix the psychological position in and the Holy Ghost, considered as the universe of the Lord Jesus Christseparate hypostases or persons in the but to expound the eternal truths trinity. The notions-the state of which concern man's relations to God, mind—out of which grew the meta- and exhibit God's disposition towards physical formulæ of the Athanasian man; and to offer, in the life of his Son creed, were, they affirm, long posterior our Lord, a great remedial, restorative, in date to the days of Jesus and his and uplifting power, by which man may Apostles; and find no justification, still be drawn and raised to himself, many less any counterpart, in the teaching of Unitarians do not feel themselves rethe New Testament. Those teachings quired to dogmatise as to the person are strictly monotheistic, and, by anti-and nature of the Saviour, the rather cipation, anti-Trinitarian. Proclaiming that they discover diverse views therethe sole Deity of God the Father, the on, even within the New Testament Scriptures disown the alleged deity of any other being, and, at least, by implication, condemn the scholastic speculations respecting the essence of God, which came into repute, and received a definite form and an ecclesiastic sanction, in later and degenerate ages.

In their maintenance of the unity of God, and their denial of the trinity, as being a doctrine of the schools, Unitarians find their point of union and co-operation. This is their characteristic tenet. By this they are distinguished from other professors of

itself; but finding in him a great human soul and a Divine power, the two combining to form the holiest, most lofty, most wise, and most benign being that ever trod the earth, they regard it as their duty, and make it their aim, to study, with profound attention, the sublime character of Christ, with a view of entering, by sympathy, into its spirit, and receiving, by love, the essence of that spirit into their own souls, that, seeing spiritual realities as he saw them, they may be raised to live in his sphere of thought,

while they are still occupied here below in his sphere of duty.

man

sudden calamity, or by words of a mighty 66 The Holy Spirit, Unitarians hold to Howsoever it may be, they be God himself, regarded in that spir- the way of Nature, and the w itual influence by which the Creator therein, are not heterogeneous communicates with man, and keeps up flicting, but that the hand t and strengthens that union with man the heart, and daily fills it wi... viesswhich had its origin in man's creation, ings, can, and when He pleases does, and still has a link in every individual effectually smite the rock and make it soul, from the first moment of existence gush with its own pure stream. Reto the last. Thus regarded, God is generation, in their opinion, is not very nigh to man. Nigh unto man coercion, nor supercession; but a stage in the wonders of creation, the in moral growth, a process of spiritual mysteries of life, the teachings of development, a revival of dormant the Bible, and the grandeurs of a renewal of suspended Christ, God is still nearer to man in virtue of his Holy Spirit, in and by which he is even in man in a deeper and more spiritual sense than that general one which is implied in the fact that "in Him we live, move, and have our being;" for as "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself," so is God in the soul of every true disciple of Christ, guiding him, strengthening him, comforting him, winning over his will, purifying his motives, refining his character, and withal deepening and brightening the fountains of his happi

ness.

Believing that human beings are born men, not Christians, and that Christian is the highest style of character to which man can attain, Unitarians hold that a second birth is necessary in order to enter into the high spiritual life of the Gospel. In agreement with the teachings of Jesus, they maintain that all men must be born again. But they do not feel at liberty to define or restrict the mode of the Divine operation in this spiritual, any more than in that natural, birth. Recognising as of indispensable necessity the hand of God in both, they know and acknowledge that "the wind bloweth where it listeth," and consequently, that now a child of God may be raised and trained under the gentle care of a Christian mother's hourly love, and now may be brought forth amid the throes and pangs of the terror and distress of a conscience smitten by

energies,
life.

Regeneration has its perfect work in salvation. By salvation, Unitarians do not mean any thing merely negative, such as redemption from curse, or escape from hell. Regarding such views as only rudimental, and such results as nothing more than first steps in the Divine life, they place salvation in the utter extinction of sin in the soul, and in the establishment there of the kingdom of God, in its true power and glory. According to them, a man is saved when the purposes of God are fulfilled in him, both for the life that now is and that which is to come. Those purposes are all purposes of infinite wisdom, and boundless love. Not always clear, those purposes are always good. Going forward sometimes in cloud and mystery, they ever advance, like the darkened sun toward the meridian, and, when at their zenith, pour down streams of joy into the human soul. Always to be loved and revered, they are also always to be followed; and they reward a simple, earnest, childlike obedience, by carrying man into the bosom of God, and making him the undying possessor of the peace of God. Salvation therefore is not only freedom from sin, but it is the perfection of virtue: in other words, it is humanity instructed, enriched, refined, and elevated to its highest pitch, in virtue of the power, and after the model, of Christ.

The ordinary views of Atonement are

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denied by Unitarians. Regarding God | prophetic view of atonement, which, as an essentially loving and merciful based on the internal nature of religion, being, they see in the Atonement of the the necessity of internal obedience, and New Testament a display of love, the abuses to which the externalities of which, originating in the goodness of sacrificial observances had been found God, was effected by the benignity of to lead, disallowed, and even severely Christ, and will issue in the happiness reprobated all outward oblations, and of man. So far was God from being propitiatory tokens whatever, declaring placated, that his kindness and com- that God could accept only a pure passion was the fountain and the heart and a benevolent life. (Is. i. 11; moving cause of "the redemption Amos v. 21; Micah vi. 7; Jer. vi. 20; which is in Christ Jesus." And so far vii. 22.) The final step in this process was the death of his Son from being of revelation and of spiritual refinement the vicarious penalty, that death was was set by the Lord Jesus Christ, when the special ground of God's complacency teaching men to regard God as the toward Christ, (John x. 17.) and of Father of all, especially of those who Christ's elevation to the right hand of believed, (1 Tim. iv. 10,) he taught God. (Phil. ii. 9.) It is not denied them also to consider his own sufferings that sacrificial language is applied in as an expression and exemplification of the New Testament to the passion of love-of everlasting, unpurchased, and the Saviour. But that language, it is unprompted love-on the part of the maintained, had parted with its prim- Father, and of pity, and the widest and ary import, while the strictly vicarious most generous philanthropy on his own sufferings and literal atonements of part. Coming, however, as he did to heathenism were unknown in the put away sin by the voluntary sacrifice Hebrew Church. The general idea of of himself, (Heb. ix. 26.) he became atonement, it is thought, passed, in the the great sacrifice-the ideal atonement religious history of man, through several stages. In the rudest religious conceptions, sacrifices were vicarious means of appeasing the Divinity, and so averting the consequences of His displeasure and wrath. Here we have the offender, man; the being offended, God; and the atoning medium, the most precious of man's possessions, his substance, his captive, his child. By the Mosaic law God was set forth as essentially good, and surpassingly merciful, willing therefore to accept man's offerings, not so much as means of appeasement on his part, as tokens of a submissive, grateful, and obedient heart on the part of the repentant sinner; consequently atonement in the Hebrew Church was a system of covering, and as of covering, so of obliteration for sin, a system by which God threw a veil over human transgressions, and, receiving marks of man's homage, graciously remitted the sin, and forewent the penalty. Another stage in the conception is found in the

the completion and the fulfilment of all divinely-recognised sacrificial ideas, types, and observances,―so that, while all the phraseology connected therewith was applicable, and in its highest import applicable, only to him, that import was not physical, not material, but divested of all merely human and earthly elements of wrath, equivalence and propitiation, had risen into pure spirituality, and represented, as its essential ideas, sin and suffering on man's part, love on the part of God and Christ, and such a remedy emanating from the latter as would inevitably cover, obliterate, and remove the former. Thus eliminating all the gross conceptions which had their reason, if not their origin in low states of moral culture, and early periods of civilisation, the Gospel presents in its atonement " a new and better way -a way in which mercy triumphs over justice, love has "free course and is glorified;" and, while sin is subdued and extirpated, the sinner is redeemed, restored, renovated,

and made everlastingly happy, by | On account of sin, Christ came, suffered, becoming essentially holy.

and died. By sinful lips was his saintly life aspersed; by sinful hearts was he hunted up and down the land; and by sinful hands was he taken and put to an ignominious death. The malignity of sin, the inveteracy of sin its perverseness, its pollutedness, its recklessness-were exemplified in the death of Jesus, in colours of the darkest hue, in shapes of the most frightful proportions,-colours and shapes never before or since scen on earth, and fitted, if any can, to make the heart weep in sympathy, and glow with indignation and sorrow for its own sinfulness in a truly godly sort.

The entertainment of such views is, Unitarians think, a sufficient answer to the charge that theirs is a system of morality rather than religion. A moral life they do consider an indispensable part of the duty they owe to God. But, cultivating morality as of Divine obligation, and not merely as a matter of utility, interest, or expediency, they hold that morality is not only inseparable from religion, but in truth is a part of religion, is religion itself in one of its aspects, is religion in motive and in act, viewed in regard to God as its source, and earth as its arena. But morality in their opinion is not reli- The Scriptures of the Old and New gion; for religion is something more Testament are generally received by than morality. And specially do they Unitarians, and acknowledged as the identify the Gospel with religion, source of their belief, and the standard regarding the Gospel as a divinely- of their practice. Believing that the given remedy for human sins and woes, Bible was given in order to teach men and recognising in it, especially as their relation and their duty to God, embodied in the all-powerful life of and to lead men, in the observance of Christ, a restorative agency, a develop its holy teachings, to duty, peace, and ing and uplifting agency, sufficient to eternal life, they study the Bible, in save the world notwithstanding its order to discover the will of God, and numerous and terrible evils. The with a view to submit themselves imsceptre has been given to the Son, and plicitly to His laws. It is, therefore, as he will reign until he has vanquished a religious manual, that they receive all enemies. and revere the Bible. Other subjects, Nor can Unitarians, as they them-found in the Scriptures, they regard as selves think, be justly charged with incidents and channels for the conveymaking light of sin. Sin they accountance of religious truth, and do not conthe source of all human woe. Without sider that the statements or implicaindulging in speculations respecting the tions connected with them, have any origin of sin, they recognise and bewail other authority than belongs to the its virulence and terror. They are opinions of the age in which they were equally convinced that sin is as hateful uttered. In history they know that to God as it is baneful to man. And the Bible contains not only the most it is, they think, because sin is so ancient, but the most trustworthy antagonistic to the will and purposes records. Its geology, however, and of God, and so destructive, so ruinous its astronomy, they consider local and to man, that the Almighty Father has temporary. Equally has its legislation taken such special pains in alike "the-pre-eminently exalted as was its law, the prophets," and the Gospel, to general tenor-no binding authority aid his children in the terrible conflict, now, since Christ, in establishing his and enable them to "come off more church, put an end to the Mosaic inthan conquerors through him who loved stitutions. Of the religion of the Bible, them, and gave himself for them." it may also be added, that it appears, Sin they look upon as the occasion of in an historical form, and under the atonement which is in Jesus Christ. historical developments; consequently,