TO THE EDITOR OF THE ARGUS,
Sir,—In your remarks in, your excellent leader of 5th inst. on "the hostile, the apathetic, or the discreetly reticent attitude assumed by the teachers of religion towards the teachers of science," you overlook one denomination of professing Christians to which the rebuke by no means applies—the Unitarian— whose minister I have been in this city for eleven years past.
From those days of atheistical revolutionary convulsion which shook the old world to its centre (as one of your correspondents says), at the end of, the eighteenth century, when Dr. Priestly published (1793) his Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France on the Subject of Religion, and his Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever (1780 to 1794), the Unitarian denomination has been never slow to meet all discoveries of science, real or supposed, with a fairly appreciative examination ; and at the present day the Rev. James Martineau is generally admitted to be the most eminent opponent of the school of Mill, Spencer, and Comte. If may be remarked that in meeting scientific and metaphysical objections to Christianity, Unitarians have the great advantage of not being hampered by the theory of verbal inspiration, nor by creeds superadded to the New Testament, such as The Argus (November 14, 1857) forcibly called " narrow, unphilosophical, bitter, and sometimes inhuman''—the spirit of which quotation I am happy to recognise in your leader of the 5th inst.
Acting then, on the traditions of my church, no less than on grounds of common sense and respect for revelation, I have felt it my duty, during fully ten years past (as, your advertising columns will testify), from time to time to treat scientific-religious subjects as they have arisen; such as " "Genesis and Geology;" " The Animal Races in Australia, how introduced, when we consider the Scriptural Narratives of the Creation and the Deluge;" " Professor Huxley's "Ideas of Monkeys and Man" and Professor Halford's "Remarks thereon;'' "Darwin's Theory and an extension thereof, by a High Legal Functionary of an adjoining colony;'' and other subjects of a scientific character. Then, as to criticism and interpretation, I have treated fully the Essays and Reviews, and, more cursorily, Colenso's work on the Pentateuch, showing that our fathers in the church, as well as ourselves, have long worked on such unquestionable, and, by no means new, principles of criticism . . . with a few words of caution as to the random manner in which these new converts brought them forward ; and Ecce Homo, more recently, I read over with such of my people as pleased, considering it a far more original book than the others, and highly religious, in spirit Gladstone's review of it has also had a notice from my pulpit.
Thus, in my position as a religious teacher, I submit that tor ten years I have acted in the spirit of your leader already referred to; which, hardly with a word excepted, I cordially adopt. Yet I do not complain that you and your correspondents have entirely overlooked our denomination—for it is small and despised. You see, we believe too much for some of your correspondents, who consider us superstitious; too little for others, who have superadded creeds to those Scriptures which we believe to be sufficient for true Protestants. We had hoped, indeed, by the exhibition of a pure and rational Christianity, to stem the tide of deism and atheism ere it became, as one of your correspondents fears, irresistible, at the close of the nineteenth, as formerly of the eighteenth century. In England some symptoms of such a success are dawning upon us—still more cheeringly in the United States. Here, through all discouragements, we persevere ; convinced that no effort made in accordance with a sense of duty is, in the end, ever lost.
H. HIGGINSON.
Parsonage of Unitarian Christian Church,
Dec 9, 1868.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ARGUS.
Sir,-As your correspondent " Habitans in Deserta" has made, in the fourth paragraph of this morning's letter, a most unjust attack on what he calls 'infidels," will you kindly permit me to reply. He must have presumed largely on the known unwillingness of editors to insert anything against the popular theology before he could have sent for publication the audacious paragraph in question, in which, though evidently a man of some education, he panders to the malicious vulgarity which applies the word " infidel" to those who, for very good reasons, cannot accept the Bible as a revelation from God When men of education write, we expect them to instruct, and not further vitiate, the illiterate and ill informed. But he goes further, and libels the free-thinker, by saying that he denies the Bible in order to be released from its restraints, and left free to indulge in vicious courses. If he is not culpably ignorant of the subject, he must be aware that the bulk of free thinkers discard the Bible because it lowers the character of God by making it appear that he sanctioned—nay, even commanded—the atrocities of barbarous ages and countries. The free thinker must be excused if he cannot believe that the character and attributes of God are influenced by the ignorance and vice of barbarous times, or if he sees good reason to believe that the writings of the thinking men of all countries have had as much to do with the enlightenment and progress of the world, as a book which has never been beyond the ignorance of its contemporaneous period. Have such men as John Stuart Mill, Lord Brougham, Buckle, Froude, G. H. Lewes, Theodore Parker, Dean Stanley, Dean Milman, Bishop Colenso, Darwin, Huxley, Thomas Carlyle, Lyell, and a host of others, no higher motives for discarding revelation than that they might silence a " diseased conscience," and indulge in forbidden pleasures ? In conclusion, recent events have shown that it is by no means necessary to become an "infidel" in order to outrage all laws of honour and morality. If "Habitans in Deserta'' really feels it to be his duty to enlighten and convert the free thinker, let him throw open his church to the discussion of these subjects, as Mr Service does, and he will then find out whether there are " only a very few" reasoning infidels, also, whether they include in their numbers men whoso characters are beyond reproach.
Trusting that you will, under the circumstances, find room for, if not all, a part, of this communication, I remain, Sir, yours respectfully,
Dec 9. A FREE THINKER.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ARGUS
Sir,-It is a pity that your correspondent, "Habitans in Cedar," does not bring to the consideration of the all-important subject on which he writes more of the spirit of a writer in the third series of Tracts for the Christian Seasons, who, commenting on that noble piece of inspired composition, the 11-th, chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, says :— " As we gaze upon the portraits of these men of renown, famous in the patriarchal church of old, and as we trace the outlines of the saintly character, and remember how God was with them, and manifested himself to them in signs and wonders, we seem to gather no weak assurance of the truth of the sacred story which embodies the record of their simple faith and piety—their self-denials and obedience—their, deeds of noble daring—preserved to the church through all time by the good providence of God, and committed to Writing by faithful men, according as they were moved by the spirit of God. Can we believe, we ask ourselves, that St Paul, as he sketches out these men of faith with the few master strokes of the skilled artist, was unacquainted with the wondrous history of the Pentateuch, and the story of the fortunes of God's chosen people ? Or can we doubt that he who declares so emphatically that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, received these records without exception and reserve, as divine and faultless, refusing to stumble at them through unbelief. We belief to the full that we have St. Paul on our side when we are told, in spite of the sneers of self satisfied sceptics, to accept with implicit credit the story of the flood, and, follow in no doubting spirit the footsteps of the great father of the faithful along his pilgrim course, and ascending with him Moriah's awful mount, descry in that typical: altar a shadow clear and true of that other, altar, and that one only sacrifice in which sinners find their redemption and atonement. We accept with a firmer and ever increasing faith all that is set down concerning Moses in the Scriptures of God, the divine marvels of the passover and the exodus, and the journeyings of the children of Israel,the mystic manna, and the smitten rock in Horeb, as we study the speech of St Paul concerning the first fathers of the holy seed."
If "Habitans in Cedar," and others of his way of thinking, could enter upon the study of the subject in such a spirit as this, there would be no need for the elaborately argumentative discourses from the pulpit which he requires, and the clergy would be able to occupy themselves more profitably, as many of them now do, in faithfully "preaching Christ and Him crucified," instead of setting up arguments for the sake of demolishing them; for there is no doubt that the more the inspired writings are studied, not in a spirit of cavilling but with an earnest wish to discover the truth, the more do their intrinsic evidences of truth become apparent, and in spite of the predictions of "Habitans in Cedar," who seems to leave altogether out of the question the influences of early training, we need not fear, so long as our Sunday-schools, and other Christian means of instruction exist, that our youth in the next generation will degenerate into the race of sceptics that he anticipates.
Yours obediently,
HABITANS IN SYLVA.
Parkleigh, Dec, 6.
The Argus 11/12/1868,
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