Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/734

* UNITARIANISM. 640 UNITARIANISM. ever, until 1S13 that the penal laws against Uni- tarianism were finally repealed. The British and Foreign Unitarian Association was organized in 1825. The seeds of the Unitarian movement were brought to America in the Mayfiouer. They were planted wherever a church was organized in New England with a coi'fHanf*instead of a creed. It was among the oldest of the Puritan and Pilgrim churches that Unitarianism in America started, and the majority of the orig- inal Massacliusetts churches followed later the lead of Clianning. Tliis development was with- out abrupt transitions, and did not require any alteration in the broad lines of the first cove- nants. The Pilgrims' Church in Plymouth, though now for a century Unitarian in fellow- ship, retains the original covenant by which in Holland the Pilgrims "formed themselves into a Church or State in the fellowship of the gospel to walk together in all His ways made known, or to be made known unto them." The First Church in Salem still retains the covenant of 1628. While the original Puritan churches in New England were rigidly orthodox in theology, the whole atmosphere of the colonial life was in- creasingly that of freedom. The democratic prin- ciples adopted in the State found also expres- sion in the C'lnirch, and soon after the Revo- lution many ministers of the older churches in New England assumed a practically Unitarian position. In 1787 King's Chapel in Boston, originally an Episcopal church, the first established in New England, modified the ritual of the Church by the e.xcision of the more orthodox and Trini- tarian phrases, and ordained James Freeman (q.v. ) as minister of the first avowedly Uni- tarian church in America. In 1805. when Henry Ware (q.v.). known to be a decided liberal, was appointed professor of divinity at Harvard Col- lege, the lines were drawn between the orthodox and Unitarian parties in the New England churches. In 1810 William Ellery Channing, minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston, preached at Baltimore a sermon which became famous as the Unitarian Declaration of Inde- pendence, and within a year nearly one hundred and fifty Congregational churches in New Eng- land had declared their adhesion to Channing's position. (See Changing, William Elleet. ) In 1825 representatives of these churches united in establishing the American Unitarian Asso- ciation, and began organic progress as a united religious body. The National Conference was formed in 1805. and the International Council of Unitarian and other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers in 1900. The briefest definitions of the Unitarian faith are such as these: "Christianity as Christ preached and lived it — not faith in .Jesus, but the faith of Jesus;" or "the affirmation of the present life of CJod in the soul of man:" or "the two great commandments applied:" or "the aflSrmation of the humanity of Ood and the divinity of man." Unitarianism is not so much a system of opinions as a habit of mind and a principle of conduct. Unitarians ask no one to sign a creed, because they believe that dogmas are not essential to religioxis life. What seems to them essential is not a transient form of opin- ion, but a method of truth-seeking and the prac- tice of righteousness. Unitarians believe in the unity to be discerned in all natural laws and jirocesses ; they hold that religion is natural, that faith is a matter not of tradition, but of personal insight, and that the true way to learn of the doctrines is by obeying the will of God. Unitarians believe in one God, the Father, not in a Trinity of persons in the Godhead. They believe that Jesus is a son of God, not that lie is God the son: they recognize him as the great teacher of spiritual truth and the example of the noble life, but they do not accept him as God, the equal of the Heavenly Father. They do not believe in worshiping Christ, but in fol- lowing him, and they discover no need of a mediator between God and man. Unitarians be- lieve in the Holy Spirit, not as the third person in the Godhead, but as the name for God's spiritual influence in the hearts of men. They consider all men Ciod's children, not merely His creatures, and therefore they declare the dig- nity, not the depravity, of human nature. The doctrines of the fall of man and of sacrificial atonement have, therefore, for Unitarians no reality or significance. Unitarians believe that the Bible contains the Word of GJod, not that every word it contains is God's word ; they use the Bible as an oracle of the spiritual life to touch the .conscience and to draw the soul to God. They hold that salvation is won, not through miraculous substitution, but through the energies of a good life: they hold that fruitful- ness is the test of religious vitality. To them heaven and hell are not places of bliss and misery, but states or conditions of the soul; each man making for himself his ovm heaven or hell and carrying it with him wherever he goes. Unitarians find an adequate basis for religious organization in a common purpose to do good and to be good. There are in the United States about 460 Uni- tarian churches, with 554 ministers. In Great Britain and Ireland there are about 400 churches: in Hungary. 125: and the movement is represented by churches and individuals in every civilized land. In Great Britain and America these churches are purelj- congregational in government. In Hungary a modified epis- copacy prevails. As is to be expected from the content of the Unitarian habit of mind, its energies have been expended not in the upbuild- ing of a denomination or of ecclesiastical in- stitutions, but in philanthropy, literature, and public-spirited service. In England we find in connection with this movement during the last century many eminent scientists, scholars, and leaders among women. In America, while the Unitarian churches have never contained more than one two-hundredth part of the population, yet the members of these churches have been conspicuous out of all proportion to their num- ber in public life. The chief working organizations of the Uni- tarians are the American Unitarian Association, Boston. Mass. ; the British and Foreign Uni- tarian Association, London; the Consistory of the Hungarian Churches. Klansenburg. Hungary; the .Japan Unitarian Association. Tokio. .Japan; the Icelandic Unitarian Association, Winnipeg. Manitoba, etc. In general alliance with these