Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/360

Rh a God, or an immortal soul, and religious duties, as it is certain that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, or that John wrote the fourth Gospel and never made a mistake in it! It has somebody's word for it. But whose? Its religious doctrine is legitimated only by the sensations of the apostles. This party says, as the Unitarian fathers never said: There must be limits to free inquiry; we must not look into the grounds of religious belief, lest they be found no grounds; “where ignorance is bliss 't is folly to be wise!” The old landmarks must not be passed by, nor the Bible questioned as to its right to be master over the soul. Christianity must be rested on the authority of Christ, and that on the miracles, and the words of the New Testament. We must not inquire into their authority. If there is a contradiction between the Word of the New Testament and Reason, why the “Word” must be believed in spite of Reason, for we can be much more certain of what we read than of what we know!

Thus the old school assumes a position abhorred by primitive Unitarianism, which declared that free inquiry should never stop but with a conviction of truth. Unitarianism, as represented by the majority of its adherents, refuses to fall back on Absolute Religion and Morality, with no reliance on Form, Tradition, Scripture, personal Authority. It creeps behind texts, usage, and does not look facts in the face. The cause, in part, is plain as noonday. It is connected with a poor and sensual philosophy, the same in its basis with that which gave birth to the selfish system of Paley, the scepticism of Hume, the materialism of Hobbes, the denial of the French Deists; the same philosophy which drives other sects in despair to their supernatural theory. This cuts men off from direct communion with God, and curtails all their efforts. Unitarianism, therefore, is in danger of becoming a truncated supernaturalism, its apex shorn off; all of supernaturalism but the supernatural. With a philosophy too rational to go to the full length of the supernatural theory, too sensual to embrace the spiritual method and ask no person to mediate between man and God, it oscillates between the two; humanizes the Bible, yet calls it miraculous; believes in man's greatness, freedom, and spiritual nature, yet asks for a Mediator and Redeemer, and says, “Christ