Los Angeles herald., 1892-10-17
POET WHITTIER'S CREED.
AN ANALYSIS OF THE DEAD BARD'S
THEOLOGY.
Tho Services Yesterday by DR.. Thomson
of the Unity Church-The Poet
Claimed as q Uni
tartan.

yesterday morning to large cOngrega-
tion, upon The Theology of Whlttier's
Poems, taking his text from Mark /, 4:
John did baptize in the wilderness and
preach the baptism of repentance for the
remission of sins."
The sum and substance of Johns
preaching, said DIR. Thomson, was re-
pentance; nothing but that was asked
as con dition precedent to the remis-
sion of sins. Jesus described John as
the greatest soul that ever lived, and
Endorsed his teaching. Whittier's the
ology appears to be founded on the same
lines.
In every church there is progressive
wing and stationary wing. There are
the men who steadily believe that they
have enough of religious knowledge,
that the book of revelation has closed,
that the clock has struck IL in the re-
ligious world, and growing into belief
in their own infallibility, they become
largely prosecutors. The other wing is
composed of men who think differently;
they believe that religion must grow,
and they have that broad character that
makes it impossible for them to be per-
secutors. Both wings are needed in
every church in the world. Whittier
belonged to the progressive wing. He
says:
"Hail to the coming sinpersl
Hail to the brave light t-bringers!
Forward reach ana share
All that they sing and dare"
Whittier detested creeds, 'siron
creeds," he calls them. He belonged to
a hot hae hv,t
has belief in abundance. No man since
fire of the Hebrew life. He was born
and died in the Quaker religion, which
is belief in the inner light, regarded
by the Quakers as divine, no matter
where or through whom it speaks. The
speaker then launched into an eloquent
panegyric of Quakerism, and remarked
that if the whole world today were
Quakers it would be heaven upon earth.
The old methods of education are
dropping away, and the new method of
employing hands as we'll as heads will
rnle. In Whittier's case, his struggle
with the hand helped the brain. At
first farmers boy, he afterwards
learned the trade of shoemaker, and
the influence of this manual training
brought him into sympathetic relation
to the toilers of the race.
He was also Unitarian in belief.
The Unitarians have good company.
There are 240, 1000. 600 of our race, Ma
hometans, who believe in one God.
"Allah il Allah," is their cry "there is
but one God" There are 5000, 900 of
Hebrews who repeat, "Hear. o Israel,
the Lord our God is one Lord" state
ment of belief which Jesus himself in
dorsed. Read Whittier's Trinitas, and
you will see that "Creation, Providence
and Love" were the trinity in which he
believed. That Christ came as the
highest possible manifestation of God
in humanity, and that there can be none
higher; that Jesus stands as manifes-
tation of brotherhood in the relation
ship of man to ali the powers above and
beneath; this was Whittier's belief.
Think of the power and the sarcasm of
the lines:
"Thou well anst spare a love of thee
Which ends in hate of man."
That was his gospel.
Consider the difference between the
man OF the world and the mystic; the
scientific man and the poet. One has
outsight and the other has insight. If /
turn from the study of geology to the
study of the 23d Psalm, which of the
two goes nearer to my own life? Flom
agriculture to Tennyson's In Memoriam;
from the Mecanique Celeste of La place
to Victor Hugo, we find which comes
nearest to our life. After all, life is the
only truth we can have clear compre-
hension of, and we realize it in turning
from Humboldt to Goethe; from Tyndall
to the Bible; from Huxley to Shakes
peare.
The great poets of America, Whittier,
Bryant, Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell,
are all on the side OF progress and free
dom. Whittier was Universalist by
his writings. 1t is religion that has
preached with grand emphasis the power
of the love of God as the leading part of
the gospel of Christ. Its followers de-
pend upon that one feature of the gospel
and deserve to be immortalized therefor.
Quoting at length from the poem enti-
tied The Eternal Goodness, DIR. Thorn
son called attention to its wonderful
combination OF sarcasm, indignation and
tenderness, characterizing it as an evil
dence of the poets universalism.
In peroration of great dignity and
power, the eloquent speaker claimed
that the churches are not the same to-
day that they were 20 years ago; that
they are drifting, whether they realize
it or not, along with the stream of pro-
gress; that the activity of the human
soul must find employment and move
along to higher things. A soul that
wants not, that is satisfied, is degener-
ating. We are living and working be-
cause we believe in the years to come,
and If we believe that our lives are
hinged to lives innumerable in eternity
we work for that, and death seems then
but q covered way to glorious future.
30 brothersl If my faith is vain,
If hopes like these betray,
Pray for me that my feet may gain
The sure and safer way.
And Thou, o Lord by whom are seen
Thy creatures as they be,