person of Christ that slighted his humanity and dishonored the Eternal Father, in the face of opinions that made history godless and terrible, that construed salvation as outward, forensic, mechanical, that regarded religion as alien to the nature of man, at war with the intellectual and moral wealth of the world, the Unitarian protest was wholesome, magnificent, providential." It is evident, then, that the Unitarians had been fighting the same battle that Bushnell was fighting; and it is more than probable that, if the dogmas against which he began his warfare in 1848 had been modified a generation sooner, the division of the Congregational body would never have taken place. We all honor to-day the fidelity to their ethical convictions of the men who went out from the Congregational camp; but some of us deeply deplore the separation. Always, in such a rupture, not only is love put to shame, but truth suffers: each party magnifies out of due proportion the points for which it contends, and is wont to close its mind against the essential truths which are held by its antagonist. The Orthodox and the Unitarians have both suffered in their way: each party has made more than was profitable of the tenets which it has held as against the other; each has been impoverished by rejecting precious elements cherished by the other. I wonder if we have not nearly come to the point at which the weapons of controversy can be laid aside and the spirit of criticism give place to the spirit of appreciation; at which the desire to magnify the things wherein we agree, and to discover, each in the treasure of the other, that which we can appropriate and use, shall make us brethren in deed, if not in name. If such a spiritual friendship should bring into closer and more helpful relations the two branches of our Congregational brotherhood, I cannot but feel that good would come to both of them and to the kingdom of the truth. Surely, we need not fear that in such a loving endeavor to understand one another and help one another anything really precious would be lost; for it must be that, when we are working and praying together and bearing one another's burdens, we are more likely to find out the truth as it is in Jesus than when we are engaged in criticism or controversy. And, if the spirit of peace and concord should lead us into closer friendship with each other and with the Lord whose name we bear, we shall all confess that no one has done more than Horace Bushnell to make possible such a consummation. |
