Morning journal and courier., 1891-06-05
Harvard Religion.

Within very recent tame U Ohtarlanish has in part only supplied religious minis try at Harvard, but the president, Charles W. Eliot, is of the advanced school of that faith, and at a gathering in Boston last week he took the chair, and stated his views in the following terms: "Our sim pie and hospitable church, he continued, seems to us the most cheerful in the world. It has rejected all the depressing fables and myths and the cruel imaginings which until lately have made part of &C., cepted Christianity, such as the fall of man, birth in sin, the devil and hell. It accepts with enthusiasm the uplifting doc Urine of the Roman Catholic Church that inspiration and revelation are perpetual. authority in religion except the au- thority of reason and conscience-from the authority alike of theocratic priest hood, of ecclesiastical councils and of traditional dogmas. We Unitarians try to follow reverently the transparent thought which the founder of Christianity cast upon the breezes of Judea, without
 
 except in the memories of his hearers, and we try to make inst applications of his thought under the new conditions of our time; but we care nothing for the decrees of those mi-barbarous con- ventions which centuries ago mysti- fled and perverted his thought. We take no interest in time-hallowed formularies. Mysteries we find all around us. We can not imagine how one blade of grass grows. We use familiarly electric force, but we can not conceive what it is, or even find words to shadow forth its nature. We know that moral and mental qualities are hereditary, but we cannot form any idea of the mode of their transmission. So in religion we find mysteries, but we do not try to for mulate them in human speech and then worship the formula. These are unspesk- able deliverances from bondage, fear and gloom. They make daily life for all of us the brighter and the sweeter.
 We are not at war with modern scholar ship, or in dread lest the objects of our worship undergo sudden and appar- to us can be addressed that startling statement which Professor J. Henry Thayer, one of the leading New Testament scholars in our time, addressed to an evangelical audience in this city three months ago: The critics are agreed that the view of scripture in which you and were educated, which has been prev alent in New England for generations, is untenable.' Heresy, trials, revisions of confessions and standards and elections of large-minded bishops have no terror for us. How thankful we should be that we are free to hold and proclaim our heretical opinions. It seems to me that we Unita- rians should never meet to rejoice together without remembering in loving gratitude the countless heroes and martyrs of civil and religious liberty through whose struggles and sufferings we are free. Within the Christian body we are the extreme Protestants of to-day, just as the exiles who settled Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were the extreme Pro- testants of their earlier day. As we value our own birthright, as we cherish our own privileges, let us never forget the hospital ity which is due on these New England shores at least to exiles for conscience sake, no matter of what religion or what race. Freely we have received, what shall we freely givea We must give to the pres ent and future generations the bold, fresh, candid thought which we have received from our teachers and guides, from Chan ming, Emerson ndParker, ,fromH Hedge, Clark and Martineau, and this stream should flow ever wider and deeper. We mus give this through our preachers ane writers, and through our children trained in the doctrines which we hold precious As present means for the conveyance o this thought we must provide presses ant churches. And against the needs of thu future we must provide for the raising up and the training of constant success sion of learned, devout and devoted minis ters of our faith.
 The ministers of our church have n, shields or coverings, like ceremonies O retuals; no resources, indeed, but their in tellectual powers and attsinments, an' their moral purity and vigor. No beatel paths are laid down for them to follow, n hedges keep them from wandering, n traditional or consecrated phrases cal make up the bulk of their utterances They must stand in the open and conten' for simple truth"