angels or devils
is no part of Unitarianism." Unitarianism has no creed, yet briefly it
may be taken to be the denial of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, or
of the natural depravity of man, or that sin is the work of the devil, or
that the Bible is a book every word of which was dictated by God, or that
Christ is God united to a human nature, or that atonement is
reconciliation of God to man. Furthermore, the Unitarians deny that
regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit, or that salvation is
deliverance from the punishment of sin, or that heaven is a state of
condition without change, or that the torments of hell are everlasting.
It may be that the Broad Churchman entertains very much the same
opinions, but then the Unitarian minister has this advantage over the
Church clergyman, that he is free. He has not signed articles of belief
of a contrary character. He has not to waste his time and energy in
sophistications which can deceive no one, still less to preach that
doctrine so perilous to the soul, and destructive of true spiritual
growth, and demoralizing to the nation, that a religious, conscientious
man may sign articles that can have but one sense and put upon them quite
another. Surely one of the most sickening characteristics of the age is
that divorce between the written and the living faith, which, assuming to
be progress, is in reality cowardice.

In our day we have seen something of an Evangelical Alliance, that is, a
manifestation of the great fact that people are yearning after a Catholic
union, and are caring less and less for denominational differences. The
Unitarians all speak and write of the orthodox as of a body of Christians
perfectly distinct from themselves. Yet there is an approximation
between them, nevertheless. Unitarianism, as it becomes a living
faith--as it leans to the theology of the sweetest singers and most
impassioned orators of the universal Church--becomes in sentiment and
practice orthodox; while orthodoxy, as it grows enlightened, and burst
the bonds of habit, and, laden with the spoils of time, gathers up the
wisdom and the teaching of all the ages underneath the sun, sanctions the
Rationalism and the spirit of free inquiry for which Unitarianism has
ever pleaded and its martyrs have died in our own and other lands.
Actually, at the meeting of the British and Foreign Unitarian Society, an
effort was made to get rid of the title altogether, and to call
themselves ins