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THE NEW THEOLOGY.

A SERMON

PREACHED AT THE

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NEWPORT, R. I.,

BY THE

REV. GEORGE W. GUTTER, A. M., M. D.

JANUARY, 1892.

NEWPORT, R. I.
F. W. MARSHALL, PRINTER.
1892.

We havf no power against the truth but for the truth.
2 Cor. xiii. 8.

CVERY religious body aims, or should aim, to
*— ' know and teach the truth. Every Christian
Society aims, or should aim, to teach the truth as
it was proclaimed to the world by Jesus Christ.
Some seventy years ago Dr. Channing, and those
who agreed with him, came out in an earnest, sol
emn protest against the dogmas of Calvinism, as
they were then taught in all the Protestant churches
of New England. It was not the design of Dr.
Channing and the early Unitarians to create a divis
ion or to start a new sect among the Congregational-
ists of this country, but by appealing to the simple
spiritual precepts of Jesus, they hoped to show that
much of the New England theology was wrong, and
that a purer, truer and more reasonable system of
faith ought to take its place.
I will not stop to review the history of those
times. You are familiar with the excitement, the
controversy, the strife of tongues and the war of
pamphlets which ensued; how Channing and his
associates were denounced and disfellowshiped ; and
how, from that day until now, the orthodox Churches
of the land have dreaded and disliked the name Uni
tarian. To them it was synonymous with infidel
and unbeliever. Of course much of this dread and
misunderstanding was due to ignorance of our real
aim and true position, to an unwillingness to adopt
our methods of inquiry, and a refusal to make the

reason and conscience the highest authority in re
ligious study. For more than half a century this
opposition and prejudice have continued unabated:
but now, at length, has come a change in the spirit
of the Churches — a change brought about by the
clearer light, the fuller knowledge and more liberal
sentiment of the times — and we have to note among
the so-called orthodox bodies certain leading writers
and preachers who are adopting the science and
scholarship of our age; who are ready to welcome
the "higher criticism"; who freely, yet reverently,
examine the contents of the Bible as of any other
ancient document; who are ready to abandon the
old Calvinistic doctrines; who frankly admit that
there is no infallible revelation for men, and that
in all spiritual and religious concerns we must obey
the light of reason and follow the dictates of our
moral sense. I refer to such men as Dr. Lyman Ab
bott, T. T. Munger, Washington Gladden, Dr. Briggs,
Heber Newton, Mr. Haweis and Professor Momerie,
who, while nominally occupying the traditional
evangelical position, have by various public utter
ances shown that they have quite outgrown the old
theology and are now eager to teach as the very
truth of God what they call the "New Theology."
And thus it singularly happens that this "New
Theology" is practically the same estimate of the
Bible, the same view of God, Jesus, man, and hu
man destiny, as was so strenuously urged and so
eloquently presented by Dr. Channing and his friends
fifty years ago. In fact some of the orthodox men
even go beyond Dr. Channing in accepting and ap
plying the philosophy of evolution, which in his day
had not been heard of.

5
The course of lectures, which have just been given
in Boston by Dr. Lyman Abbott, are so radical and
far-reaching as to have created almost as great a
sensation among conservative people as when Theo
dore Parker preached at the Music Hall.
In order that you may appreciate the remarkable
advance which has been made by our orthodox friends
and that you may see how some of their ablest men
have gone forward along the same lines that were
¦ marked out by the pioneers of Unitarianism : also
how close is their agreement with the conclusions
long since reached by the liberal thinkers of our
body, — let me bring together, for comparison, some
of their recent utterances and those of Dr. Chan
ning. This will enable you to understand better
than any description of mine the actual situation,
and to what extent the theological position, which
we have always held, is now actually taken and
defended by men in the opposite camp, so that we
may now apply to them, not as an idle compliment,
but with sincere cordiality, the words of the French
officer, "Our friends, the enemy."
Take the new interpretation of the Bible. The
whole long, weary, and at times bitter controversy
between the liberals and the orthodox may be summed
up in one question, whether the book is literally and
infallibly the Word of God, or only contains the word
of God. The old theory was that the scriptures are
divinely inspired throughout and therefore contain
no errors of doctrine, no misstatement of facts:
whereas, the liberal teaching has been that the book
was a human production, a compilation of many
books, most of unknown authorship. These books
show the gradual evolution of religious thought

among the Jews from the time of the patriarchs un
til Christ ; hence they contain an admixture of truth
and error, of gross and cruel superstitions and of
the noblest moral sentiments. Said Dr. Channing:
' ' The Bible is a book written by men, for men, in
the language of men, and its meaning is to be sought
in the same manner as that of other books." This
is precisely the ground today taken by Dr. Charles
A. Briggs, who has been in danger of excommunica
tion from the Presbyterian body on account of his
heresies. The old-fashioned Presbyterian believes
that his faith stands or falls with the verbal accuracy
of the Scriptures. Dr. Briggs denounces this as a
superstition. It is the blind worship of a book. It
is Bibliolatry. Heber Newton says: "The Bible
shows us the growth of Israel's religion from coarse,
cruel barbarism and fetishism, from low polytheistic
idolatries, up, through the inspiration of a series of
great men, to the recognition of the Eternal and
Infinite Being." Says Dr. T. T. Munger: "The
Bible is not a revelation, but a history of a revela
tion." "Every writer of the Bible wrote under hu
man limitations. " Says Rev. Washington Gladden :
"The Bible is a record of the development of right
eousness in the world." "It is not infallible either
historically, or scientifically, or morally." Prof. J.
Henry Thayer, addressing an evangelical audience
in Boston, made to them this startling statement:
"The critics are agreed that the view of scripture
in which you and I were educated, which has been
prevalent in New England for generations, is unten
able." Such announcements are received by most
persons in the orthodox world as novel and startling
declarations ; but to us they are no novelty, for upon

this very belief we have always proceeded in exam
ining the contents of the Bible, pointing out its er
rors and inconsistencies and setting aside the crude
and immoral teachings which belong to a past age,
while reverently holding fast to all the pure, true,
beautiful things which it also contains.
In regard to the doctrine of Inspiration, the idea
of Channing was that inspiration is "a free gift
incessantly poured out by God upon every willing
mind." "It is not capricious," said Theodore Par
ker, "but is a constant force." To Unitarians, as
you well know, this is common-place truth. Says
Dr. Abbott: "Inspiration is the breathing of God,
the touch of God on the soul of man — as universal
as the race — but reaching its 'highest manifestation
in the prophets of the Hebrew people." Says Dr.
Munger : ' ' Inspiration is God's breath. * * The
theories of the last generation are now fast disap
pearing — a plenary inspiration covering all scientific
and historical references, * * none of these are
any longer insisted upon." Washington Gladden
says : ' ' God never designed to give ,us an infallible
book. The same divine influence which illumines
the Bible is also waiting to enlighten our minds."
These statements again are exactly in line with what
has always been taught in this church, viz., that
God's spirit is poured out freely upon all his child
ren, that some receive more and some less of the
divine influence, and that the only difference between
the saints and prophets of the olden time and God's
faithful servants here and now, is a difference in de
gree, never a difference in kind.
So, too, we have always held, that a divine reve
lation did not come merely to the Jews, or to a few

8
chosen ones in Israel, but has come at all times and
in some measure to the pure in heart, the humble,
the faithful, in every land, and especially to those
who sought and loved the truth. To us this has been
a grand, helpful and comforting belief : and today
we rejoice that our orthodox friends are beginning
to find it out. Dr. Munger says : ' ' Revelation is
an unveiling of the thought and feeling of God to
men, in response to which they become sons of the
Most High." Dr. Abbott says: "Revelation is a
progressive unfolding, man continually growing in
knowledge of God as the veil of ignorance and deg
radation is taken away."
Again, we are glad to notice that oui* thought
about Incarnation is gradually growing in favor in
orthodox circles. I beg you to bear in mind that
when I say "our" thought, I do not presume to say
that we have any exclusive right to it. It is God's
truth, not ours. Only, we as a religious body have
always insisted upon it, emphasized it and urged it
as a beautiful spiritual belief, and have, moreover,
been sharply abused and condemned for so doing.
Well, our thought is that God is incarnated in every
soul, that a part of his divinity dwells in every human
being, and that the diyinity of Jesus instead of being
a miraculous or exceptional thing only proves the
rule and persuades us to believe, that if God was
in Christ he is in us all in the same way ; that what
Jesus possessed in the highest degree is possible for
all his disciples in some measure ; and that the more
faithful and obedient we are to the will of God, the
more shall we receive, even as Jesus did, of the
divine love and wisdom and power. "Though so
far above us," said Channing, "he is still one of

us and is only an illustration of the capacities which
we all possess." "I am persuaded that there is not
a glory, virtue, power or joy possessed by Jesus
Christ to which his disciples will not sucessively
rise." Says Dr. Abbott: "God was in Christ rec
onciling the world to himself, but we believe he was
in a human Christ." "It was a man that was lifted
up to be the recipient of the divine glory and the
manifestation of the divine personality to all coming
ages." * * "Out of such as you and I God is
making a humanity that will be gloriously mani
fested at last in one which fulfills to the full the
type presented by Jesus Christ." Now, if you recall
the one special view under which the Unitarians
have always chosen and loved to present Jesus, it
was as the type of humanity, the ideal man, as the
divine representative of that which we all, under God,
may aspire to become. Dr. Abbott believes that
Jesus was a man, but a man filled with the spirit
of God. This is Unitarianism pure and simple,
as set forth by Channing, James Freeman Clarke
and Dr. Furness. It is quite another thing, you
notice, from the "second person in the eternal trin
ity." Jesus is not "very God of very God," asset
forth in the creeds. When Dr. Abbott was installed
as successor to Henry Ward Beecher, as pastor of
the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, he was expressly
asked by one of the council to define the Trinity.
He replied "I never use the word 'trinity,' nor the
expression ' three persons in one God, ' nor ' three
substances and one essence.' I believe in only one
God. There is one divine Spirit which fills all the
universe with his presence. " To Dr. Abbott, Jesus
is only a manifestation of the one God ; and this was

IO
precisely Channing's idea. In a little book, recently
published by Dr. Eaton, an Episcopalian, called the
"Heart of the Creeds" he says, "Triads or Trini
ties belonged to many religious and philosophical
systems before Christianity. The number three was
a sacred or mystic symbol and as such was borrowed
by the early Christians from the Greeks at Alexan
dria. In the Latin Church the doctrine soon har
dened into what seems very like a belief in three
Gods, and in the Calvinistic theology of New Eng
land there can be no doubt that a belief prevailed
very nearly allied to heathen polytheism. " Now, it
was against this heathen polytheism, this belief in
three Gods, that Dr. Channing so earnestly protested.
Today that protest is heard and obeyed by the lead
ers of the very churches, which at that time spared
no pains to condemn him for his monstrous heresies.
Take one more point, upon which the advance
guard of the older churches is pressing very close
to the teachings of Unitarianism. I refer to the
terms and conditions of salvation. You know that
for centuries the Church has taught a scheme of
salvation by which the blood of Christ was made
the one essential condition of divine pardon for the
repentant sinner. The sacrifice of Christ upon the
cross, by which he took upon himself the sins of a
fallen world and made an infinite atonement to al
mighty God, so vindicated the justice of God, or so
appeased his righteous anger, that all who accept
the merits of Christ are saved, whereas all who
neglect or refuse to accept Christ as their Savior
and substitute are eternally lost. This is the popular
scheme of salvation, which, in one form or another,
has been taught for centuries by all orthodox church-

1 1
es, whether Catholic or Protestant. The Unitarians,
however, have always tried to show how unjust,
unreasonable and even immoral was this doctrine,
and how utterly incompatible with the perfect wis
dom, justice and love of our heavenly Father. All
along we have said that salvation depended solely
upon purity of life and character and upon personal
righteousness before God ; that whosoever loves and
obeys the will of God shall be saved. Hence we
now rejoice and with exceeding great joy to see
that this old heathenish idea of redemption through
a cruel bloody sacrifice is passing away. Says Dr.
Abbott : ' ' Salvation is not the recovery of the race
or a part of the race, from a state of fall into which
it has stumbled : it is the great process of education
and development." " Reconciliation or atonement
is not a mere letting men off from penalty: it is
not mere putting aside of anger or wrath. We do
not believe, and we are ready to profess our unbe
lief, that God looked on his great family of children
with wrath and hatred and that it required the blood
of Christ to extinguish the flames that were burning
in his soul. If that is. atonement we do not believe
in it. We believe that God is reconciling the world
to himself by taking the world to himself, pouring
his own heart into it, filling it with his presence,
doing more than relieving it from penalty and more
than cleansing it from sin : he is transforming it and
recreating it and making it divine." Mr. Beecher
once declared with tremendous earnestness, "The
idea that God had determined to destroy the whole
world and that Jesus Christ said, ' I will go on earth
and die in their stead, ' is a doctrine as infernal as if
it had come from the bottomless pit. " Says Prof. Ely:

12
"Salvation means righteousness in all the earth."
Thus the bloody sacrifice of Jesus, which Mr. Moody
holds up as the most essential and divine act in his
entire life, is being set aside as contrary to the purest
teachings of the Master himself. In future men will
preach less about the vicarious and sacrificial nature
of Christ's death and more about his life, his love,
his sublime example and his moral influence. For
having placed the emphasis upon these last, which
to us are the vital elements of Christianity, we have
often been accused of ' ' denying our Lord, who died
to save us, and bought us by his precious blood."
There are still other points of doctrine in regard
to which the New Theology is equally outspoken.
It rejects the old ideas of "election" and "foreordi-
nation," of "total depravity," and infant damnation,
the regeneration of infants by baptism, the damna
tion of unconverted heathen, and the fixed and ever
lasting condition of joy in heaven, or of misery in
hell, in the future life. I have many excellent Evan
gelical friends, who grow indignant and charge me
with misrepresenting them, when I declare that it
is orthodox to believe in eternal punishment and in
a personal devil.
More than ten years ago Mr. Beecher, who ac
cepted the principles of evolution and clearly foresaw
the impending crisis, wrote, ' ' To admit the truth
of evolution is to yield up the reigning theology.
It is to change the whole notion of man's origin
and nature, the problem of human life, the philos-
.ophy of morality, the structure of moral government
as taught in the dominant theologies of the Chris
tian world, the fall of man in Adam, the theory of
sin and the method of atoning for it. * * The

13
doctrine of the Fall of Man in Adam is not an ex
treme or antiquated notion. It is fundamental to the
whole orthodox theology of the world. That system could
not stand a moment if it be exploded. It is the
working theory of the Christian theology as much
today as it was five hundred years ago. But men
no longer preach doctrines to which they swore in
their ordination vows, or they give them new mean
ings at variance with historic fact. "
Now, when we stop to consider how long and
how persistently these dreadful doctrines have1 been
maintained, what suspense and anguish they have
brought to thousands of tender hearts, how many
men they have driven from the Church and into
infidelity and atheism, and also how terribly those
liberals have been denounced who refused to accept
these ideas, how they were often denied even the
name "Christian," and were cut off from all fellow
ship with the Evangelical bodies, we are undoubt
edly thankful that the long expected day of pure,
spiritual Christianity is at hand and that a more
reasonable, just and humane religion is destined to
prevail. For myself, while I rejoice profoundly at
these most welcome signs of the times, it is with no
sense of triumph or exultation that I see the light
spreading and the ideas and principles so dear to us
at last winning that favor and recognition to which
they are in every way entitled. Rather do I lament
for the great mass of orthodox men and women who
still hold back in distrust, who still hide away from
the light and learning of our time, who still evade
the plain issues of truth and honesty which are urged
upon them, and still 'cling to dead traditions and out
grown creeds in which they no longer believe.

14
In this new and onward movement we shall prob^
ably pass through the same slow process of transi
tion which has marked every moral reform that ever
emancipated men from bondage and superstition.
First, a period of contention and persecution ; second,
a period of gradual and general conversion to the
new ideas; third, a period when everybody will
eagerly declare, "Why, we always thought so." I
venture to predict that twenty years from now it will
be difficult to find among the intelligent Protestants
of this land, any one, in any denomination, who
will be willing to admit that he ever held the teach
ings of the old theology which are today called in
question. Now mark my word : what is today taught
by the leaders will be tomorrow accepted by the
masses. The heresy of this generation will become
the orthodoxy of the next, and the commonplaces
of Unitarians and Universalists will become the ac
cepted and popular form of Christianity in the twenti
eth century. For all this let us give thanks. Let us
devoutly praise God not only that it was our privilege
to be free-born but also that it is given us to live to
witness the wonderful moral transformation, the intel
lectual progress and theological revolution which are
now going on. ' ' Truly do I say to you that many
prophets and righteous men desired to see the things
which ye see and did not see them, and to hear
the things which ye hear and did not hear them."
Many an earnest, devoted student, many an heroic
reformer, many a pure-minded, consecrated preacher,
who has taught, toiled and prayed for God's kingdom
of truth and righteousness, would have closed his
eyes upon the bitter censures and condemnation of
men in perfect peace, could he have been permitted

i5
to foresee the final triumph of the sacred cause for
which he laid down his life. Oh, ye noble and ven
erated shades of Channing, Ware, Norton, Dewey,
Parker, Clarke, Bellows and Hedge, your words and
works were not unavailing ; ye did not toil and write
and pray for naught!
It is our duty, however, not to waste time in idle
congratulations, but rather to look about us and see
what still remains to be done. Two things are clear:
(i) To welcome, as cordially as we may, all those
who are advancing so rapidly towards our position,
to show our readiness to forget the old feuds and
contentions, and to join in hearty cooperation with
them, not for our truth, nor yet for their truth,
but for God's truth, which is above and beyond us
all. (2) To do all that we can to commend this
"new theology," our old theology, to those who are
still in ignorance or doubt concerning it. What we
prize above all is the pure, reasonable, practical
interpretation of the Gospel of Jesus. And our high
est aim, as his disciples, should be to prove to the
world how good, beautiful, helpful and comforting
that Gospel is when freed from the errors, terrors
and superstitions which the churches and creeds have
laid upon it.

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