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OUR UNITARIAN POSITION.

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.- MATT. vii., 20, 21.

OUR American Unitarianism has been passing, and is still passing, through what at least has threatened to be a very serious crisis. I am aware that many of you have not been especially interested in what you have looked upon as purely denominational matters. You have been accustomed, and within certain limits I have encouraged you in this, to think that your best thought should be given to something higher than mere denominational themes. And to-day it is not denomination first in which I am interested; but, in the providence of God, we, as a denomination, actually stand as leaders in what I believe to be a great world movement, reaching out after a larger hope for man. Questions, then, of denomination may take on a broader, deeper, higher meaning than mere denominationalism; and we by our folly may not wreck it, for it is in God's hand ultimately, but we may delay the hope of the world. This is my apology, if it needs any, for bringing to you to-day my contribution to this great discussion. I think I should fail in my duty to you and to my brethren throughout the world, and to the principles that are involved, if I did not add my part to a calm, earnest, if possible, peaceable solution of this great debate.

The discussion began last spring. church was closed for the summer.

Shortly after that, our I have been away, and

have only heard echoes of what has been going on from a distance. This is the reason why I have not entered into this debate before. But let me now try to set before you clearly what it is that has been done, and the condition of things at the present time.

The Western Unitarian Conference held its regular annual meeting at Cincinnati in May last. At that time, by a majority vote, though there was a strong, earnest, vigorous protest against it, the following resolution was passed: "Resolved, That the Western Unitarian Conference bases its fellowship on no dogmatic tests, but welcomes all who wish to join it to help establish truth and righteousness and love in the world."

That resolution, I say, was passed by a majority vote of the Western Conference. Under the leadership of Rev. J. T. Sunderland, then secretary of the Western Conference, there was a strong protest against the passing of this resolution. Those who were not able to carry their point against the majority present at that time seceded from the Conference, and established what has come to bear the name of the Western Unitarian Association; and this Western Unitarian Association, whether they meant it or not, whether they wish it or not, must of course, if it be permanent, come to stand as a rival of the Western Conference, which is a body organized under State laws. If these two bodies are to exist in the West, standing over against each other, seeking for support from the churches, the result must inevitably be not only a division of the churches of the West, but it must result in running a line of cleavage through the individual churches themselves. The outcome of this would be nothing less than bitterness of feeling and crippling of power.

Let us stop a moment to see the meaning of this. Why did the minority protest against the passage of such a resolution? What was their feeling? How did they justify their secession? It would seem, at first sight, as though no very great damage could be done to the West or to the East by the establishment of truth and righteousness and love in the

world. It looks like a very simple, very innocent resolution on the face of it. But the charge made against it is this. It was said that the majority, in passing this resolution, intended to remove the Western churches from their distinctively religious basis, and place them on the simple ground of Ethical Culture Societies. You will notice that the resolution says nothing about Christianity, nothing about the Church, nothing about worship, nothing about any hope of immortality. But you are aware that the great majority of Unitarians in this and in other lands, whatever else they may be in doubt about, do stand strongly and firmly for some form of theism,- for placing Jesus in some position. of leadership, for church, for worship, for, at least, a grand, strong hope, as we stand looking out toward the future.

The charge, then, was made that these men were attempting to change the churches of the West into Ethical Culture Societies, and so to take from them their religious character, -to take them out of any distinctively Christian confession, and to make them merely associations for the promotion of goodness in this world, without recognizing any divine. leadership or inspiration. On the basis of this charge, these men seceded from the Western Conference, and established a rival association. This charge has been reiterated throughout the summer, in this country and in England; and the result has been an intense though perhaps quiet feeling of protest, of honest indignation on the part of many,- a feeling that these Western brethren were being faithless to the trusts that were committed to them. They have even been charged with the misuse of money furnished by the Eastern Association with the distinct understanding that it was to be used for the upbuilding of Christian churches in the West. This money, some say, they have taken, and have used to establish churches that are only Ethical Culture Societies. This I say is the charge. It has been widely and most industriously circulated throughout the West and the East, and echoes of it are coming back to us from the newspapers of England. It was on account

of this that there was manifested such intense, such deep, such threatening earnestness at our National Conference at Saratoga. For I think that I shall not misrepresent the facts if I say that, for the first three days of our National Conference, the feeling of myself and I think I express the feeling of the majority-was that we were walking through a theological powder magazine, with loose matches lying about us on every hand, and that there was danger almost any moment that some one, on purpose or by accident, might step on one of these matches, and produce an explosion that might be disastrous for the time to our whole. Unitarian cause. Many of us, on both sides,― radical and conservative, joined most earnestly in discussion, in persuasion, in work in public and in private, to avert what we feared as a disaster. We did not conceal or cover up our principles, and none of us, on either side, felt any hesitation concerning the question whether we were willing to fight for those principles, if need be; but we did feel that that was neither the time nor the place for a discussion, that people were not properly educated as to the real questions at issue, and that they were in no state of calm feeling for profitable discussion. If a quarrel had come then, it would have been largely between passionate men, fighting in the dark, and perhaps injuring the very principles for which they ought to stand, and for which they would stand in clear daylight and the open air.

The result of it was that some of us worked together to prepare a statement, very simple and innocent it will look to you, which appears as the immediate closing words in the address which was delivered by Mr. De Normandie, President of the Council. James Freeman Clarke moved its adoption by the Conference. I seconded that motion; and then, with the help of a great many others who did perhaps even more, we succeeded in postponing what we would have regarded as an untimely and profitless debate.

But now the matter is not ended. Like all questions that are up for discussion, it will not be ended until it is ended