The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-03-26
THE IDEAL CHURCH
OF THE FUTURE.
DISCUSSED BY SEVERAL LEADERS
OF WIDELY Divergent
DENOMINATIONS
AT THE UNITARIAN DINNER
PROF. HoWIsoN TAKES ISSUE WITT
PROF. LIE CoNTE AS TO THE
ORIGIN OF MAN.

The annual dinner of the Unitarian
Club of California was held last night at
the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, and
brought together not only such a number
as to fill the great room given over to it.,
but to fill it with very distinguished people.
There were Professor LIE Conte, Professor
Howison, Rev. DR.. Stebbins, Senator Per-
kins, John P. Irish and other well-known
men on the list of speakers alone-men of
very divergent lines of thought, some of
them.
The coming religion was the topic for
discussion and after the discussion of an
elaborate dinner it was taken up, with
Professor Joseph LIE Conte striking the
first and the key note. He directed him
self specially to the subject of the ''per-
manent and the transient in religion" He
began by saying that he would not touch
upon the transient part of his topic. The
permanent in religion could be covered in
three thoughts, God, Immortality and hui
man freedom. Without moral freedom
there was no virtue, he said. He would
add fourth tenet: belief in God and in
man as a son of God. There was
the first God-the question of personal
and yet an imminent God. The atheist
would have us believe in something lower
tll2u d peTSOIdl1ty-d mere lnueuTlIe IOuC1
that pervades nature, determining all
things by necessity. But he (the speaker)
took the higher plane; something above a
personal God, a per-personality, not
the incomplete but the completed person
ality-the personality of Deity. He had
been told upon entering the room that the
word evolution was not to be mentioned
there that night and thereupon went on
and mentioned it. There was at first, he
said, an affluence from God which pervaded
all nature. Then there was the first germ
of life, of mantle first glimpse of the
personality, the Son of God. After long
| time there was quasi personality then
gradually this became the real personal
man.
'Shall we stop?" he inquired. 'Thus
we came down from the hand of God, be-
gotten of God; developed in the womb of
nature we shall go onward and upward to
his Gods own level.
"What of the relations of God to man
| Does it not go without saying that father
shall reveal himself to his chiId2 The
revelation is in different degrees and kind.
Every manifestation OF God is revelation,
| but the highest is the revelation of spirit
to spirit. The Father seems far away from
us but he will teach US and show US the
way"
Professor Howison followed by way of
answering Professor LIE Conte, He felt
deeply on the subject of the religion of the
future, he said, and felt concerned as to
what should be left of the religions of the
present. The real religion of the future he
thought had been long with US, however
He spoke of Professor LIE Conte as a
practical Christian, but his doctrine OF the
| origin of man he said was hopelessly at
| variance with the Christian belief in God
| with the belief in the divine sonship OF
| man, with his own belief in the moral free
4 6 &c 10 f<r l.
| this belief with the other, that the soul OF
man is the product of slow evolution.
What is the soul? Where does it abide ?
| You would say at onceNin our own bodies.
| Is it so? Can you measure the soul then
| Is it so many feet tall and SO many wide
The speaker was in the midst of his ar
gument, which attacked the strongholds of
much that is claimed as Unitarian, when
| his time elapsed ana he was compelled to
| leave it unfinished.
Rev. George r. Dobson of Alameda spoke
| upon the ideal church, which he said must
throw halo around all that is best; they
would not STAY the prophets, but would
| leave the old churches which stand for
| fixity and would look straight forward and
| make war upon chaos.
"Science," he said, sis the law that opens
! for us the door into the truth of God"
Rev. Mr.. RAIDER, associate pastor of the
First Congregational Church, was intro
duced as conservative man, but repudi-
ated that characteristic at once by declar-
| ing that if he was asked to say in the
| feWest words what he thought of the
church of the future he would be inclined
| to say that it would not be Congregational,
| but Unitarian. Science" he said, has
given US new church, new pulpit re-
| figion. new Christ. This is the church OF
! the future"
Rev. DIR. Stebbins, paying beautiful
| tribute to Professors LIE Conte and How
| ison and their science, said he had never
vet seen an account of the origin of things
| that satisfied his soul. Christianity, he
said. could not be defined. 1t was a
| method of the divine life of man. The
will of the present is pledge of the future,
and character is destiny.
John P Irish, speaking to ''The Ideal
Home" said he thought it the broadcast
topic of them all. 1t grew out of an old
| love-song and should last forever, monu-
ment to those two whose undying love and
plighted faith had founded it.
Rev. A. B. Payne of Berkeley, Senator
Perkins and others made short addresses
necessarily short, as the San Franciscans
had to hurry for the late boats to the city.