Article April 10, 1902 Issue

Religious Items

In a recent article on "Back Bay Churches," Boston, George Willis Cooke says in the Boston Transcript: "The tendency in this denomination [Unitarian], as in most others is just now decidedly away from a vigorous intellectual consideration of problems that search the minds of inquiring men. Theological preaching has been discarded and seems to be wholly banished from the pulpit, except here and there on the part of some one bolder than his brethren. The old kind of theology is in fact outgrown, but I query if a new sort is not very much needed. Text-quoting, metaphysics, and dogma may be profitably dispensed with, but my opinion is that there never was a time when men were asking so many serious and deep-probing questions as now. I believe they are getting no real answers to their questions at the present time in the Boston pulpits. The tendency is in the direction of 'practical preaching,' much of which is simple, direct, spiritual, and helpful. It is also to a large degree superficial, lacking in philosophic clearness, and calls to men in anything but trumpet tones. It is my conviction that any man who will face the modern world in a studious fasion, speak out without hesitation what philosophy and science have to say that is affirmative and constructive, and with the prophet's insight into the larger meanings of human experience, will have a following beyond that secured by any man to-day in Boston; and that he will have the strongest men and women listening to him, without any regard to his denominational connection. Thinking men are not asking whether a man is Episcopalian, Baptist, or Unitarian, but whether he has anything to say that illuminates the deeper mysteries of existence."

We have almost daily evidence in our correspondence that most of the religious controversies of the time, which are happily a bating, would disappear altogether if there were on either side any real knowledge of the inner life and thought of those who represent the opposition. Protestant and Catholic, Orthodox and Unitarian, Ritualist and Quaker, often form mental images of each other which are grotesque even to the point of being libellous, if published. The misunderstanding is largely the result of unwillingness to admit that there can be any good thing said or done by the people who hold such foreign opinions. Patience, willingness to learn how the other man really feels, and a decent respect for our common nature will go a long way toward abating strife, bringing out the truth, and providing a better highway on which all right-thinking and God-fearing men and women may travel together.—The Christian Register.

God has provided that no good action shall go unrewarded. He has ordained a grand system of exchanges, and right bestowment brings enrichment—not that the thing given and the thing gained are the same—but that the thing gained shall be equivalent in worth; may, of a higher type and value as spiritual treasure. And so the benevolent and kindly heart, fulfilling its function through the various operations of a true benevolence, expands as an element in the life and issues in what we call "greatheartedness." Works of charity fulfilled daily, benevolence in all our association with our race, kindliness on all occasions in ways small as well as large, perfects us in that grace which Jesus named as the soul of his religion, which the apostle puts above faith and hope, and which the poet says "becomes the monarch better than his crown."—The Universalist Leader.

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