, 1877-08-11

education OF the Christian mind And
now, before sit doIn, just let me men
ton few of these ideas, They are
Redemption from the bondage Of the
letter.
The rights of reason, as against ecclc.
siastical authority.
Salvation deiverauce from sin; not
at all troe the penalties of sin.
The essential rectitude of human na.
ture.
Punishment remedial, not vindictive,
The final triumph of God in the hu-
man soul.
Christianity not an arrest, but
growth.
The true church union OF loyal and
loving souls of every faith and age
The next specimen of Unitariansm
that shall give you is from DR.. o. W.
Holmes, poet and professor in Harvard.
who calls this speech his first sermon:
"Old orthodoxy has been stripping
itself like a circrs-ridcr who throws one
garment after another, as it has ridden
round the ring Of successive generations.
First came of the scarlet hanting suit of
the witch finder, then the Geneva cloak
of the professionalism, then the Jewish
gaburdine of the Sahbatarians, and |
know not how many more; and already
we see the tnir outlines of our common
humanity which has been more or less
obscured for long time by these dis
guises.
When l think Of Increase Mather burn
ing Robert Colefs book against the
witchcratt deusion in the yard of Har.
ward College, OF which he was Presi
ident, and imagine his successor OF to-
day taking part in similar ceremony,
feel as if you might as well read the
Stamp Act to the great-grandchildren Of
the sons of liberty" as the old New
England confessions of faith to the de,
scendonts of the Pilgrims and the Puri-
tans
When l remember that the ancestor Of
the little child, by whose thread of life
alone hold TO the generatisn yet in the
tender bud, disposed of the infants on
taial before their final Judge 10y making
Him say that, although
In bliss
They may not hope to dwell.
Still unto them he will allow
The easiest room in hell,
When | remember that jonathan Ed
wards. the great champion of later
New England orthodoxy, spoke of chill
dren, with certain rare exceptions, as
"young vipcrs and infinitely more hate
fu than vipers" in the sight OF Cod
"exposed every day to eternal burDings"
and think what universal cry OF out
ragged motherhood would silence this
Herod of the pulpit in the Boston OF to-
day, l can believe that almost any
cherished dogman that stands in the
WA, of true catholic union of all be.
levers in the eternal gospel of righteous
ness may fade out as obsolete, if it is not
blotted out as inhuman, and therefore
ungodly.
May l. without committing any one
but myself, mention few of the stum5-
ling. blocks which will stand in the way
of some who have many sympatlie
with what is called the liberal school OF
thinkers / believe these are quite as
much anthropologiCal as theological
Some of these doctrines might be at once
repudiated by those who hold other be-
liels, which in reality grew out of them.
The notion that man is responsible for
the fact of suffering and death, whereas
both existed long before his appearance
on our planet.
Tie notion that there can be such a
thing as natural moral evil; as lit any
one but the God of nature could be re-
sponsiblc for natures effects.
The notion OF sin as a transferable
object. As philanthropy has ridded us
| of chatteI slavery, so pAilosopy must rid
of chattel sin and all its logical Conse
quences.
The notion that what we call sin is any