UNITARIANISM.

BY THE REV. DR. BEARD,

MANCHESTER.

speaking, they have no corporate capacity, 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 their 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.

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

sudden calamity, or by the truthful words of a mighty "man of God." The Holy Spirit, Unitarians hold to Howsoever it may be, they hold that be God himself, regarded in that spir- the way of Nature, and the way of God itual influence by which the Creator therein, are not heterogeneous and concommunicates with man, and keeps up flicting, but that the hand that made and strengthens that union with man the heart, and daily fills it with blesswhich 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 energies, a renewal of suspended Christ, God is still nearer to man in life. 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

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

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-the completion and the fulfilment of several stages. In the rudest religious all divinely-recognised sacrificial ideas, conceptions, sacrifices were vicarious types, and observances, so that, while means of appeasing the Divinity, and all the phraseology connected therewith so averting the consequences of His was applicable, and in its highest imdispleasure and wrath. Here we have port applicable, only to him, that the offender, man; the being offended, import was not physical, not material, God; and the atoning medium, the but divested of all merely human and most precious of man's possessions, earthly elements of wrath, equivalence his substance, his captive, his child. and propitiation, had risen into pure By the Mosaic law God was set forth spirituality, and represented, as its as essentially good, and surpassingly essential ideas, sin and suffering on merciful, willing therefore to accept man's part, love on the part of God and man's offerings, not so much as means Christ, and such a remedy emanating of appeasement on his part, as tokens from the latter as would inevitably of a submissive, grateful, and obedient cover, obliterate, and remove the forheart on the part of the repentant mer. Thus eliminating all the gross sinner; consequently atonement in the conceptions which had their reason, if Hebrew Church was a system of not their origin in low states of moral covering, and as of covering, so of culture, and early periods of civilisation, obliteration for sin, a system by which the Gospel presents in its atonement God threw a veil over human trans- new and better way -a way in which gressions, and, receiving marks of man's mercy triumphs over justice, love has homage, graciously remitted the sin,"free course and is glorified;" and, and forewent the penalty. Another while sin is subdued and extirpated, the stage in the conception is found in the sinner is redeemed, restored, renovated,

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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 seen 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 religion; for religion is something more than morality. And specially do they identify the Gospel with religion, regarding the Gospel as a divinelygiven remedy for human sins and woes, and recognising in it, especially as embodied in the all-powerful life of Christ, a restorative agency, a developing and uplifting agency, sufficient to save the world notwithstanding its numerous and terrible evils. The sceptre has been given to the Son, and he will reign until he has vanquished all enemies.

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are generally received by Unitarians, and acknowledged as the source of their belief, and the standard of their practice. Believing that the Bible was given in order to teach men their relation and their duty to God, and to lead men, in the observance of its holy teachings, to duty, peace, and eternal life, they study the Bible, in order to discover the will of God, and with a view to submit themselves implicitly to His laws. It is, therefore, as a religious manual, that they receive 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 account ance 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. 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,

And