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UNIVERSAL RELIGION.
A
SERMON,
DELIVERED IN THE UNITARIAN CHAPEL, PRESTON,
FEBRUARY 20th, 1876.
BY
F.
W.
WALTERS.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.
PRESTON:
THE GUARDIAN PRINTING WORKS, FISHERGATE.
1876.
��UNIVERSAL RELIGION
A SERMON,
DELIVERED IN THE UNITARIAN CHAPEL, PRESTON,
FEBRUARY 20th, 1876.
BY
F. W. WALTERS.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.
PRESTON:
THE GUARDIAN PRINTING WORKS, FISHERGATE.
1876.
�I am indebted for most of the quotations in this Sermon
to a Lecture by a member of the “Free Religious Association”
of America.
The Lecture is not published in England, and
I have therefore complied with the request of a venerable
member of my Congregation to publish a Sermon which he
believes will serve the cause of religious truth.
added some passages omitted in the delivery.
I have
�UNIVERSAL RELIGION.
“Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.”—John x., 16.
Nothing more deeply impresses us with the sense of the essential
unity of Man than the universality of the religious consciousness.
However profoundly men differ from one another in other
respects, you almost invariably find that, under one form or another,
they possess some ideas answering to the words, Religion, God,
Duty, and Immortality.
It was once considered essential to Christian faith to denounce all
other religions of the world as false, as great delusions invented by
wicked men under temptation from the Devil. Through all history, it
was supposed, the Spirit of truth had been confined to one narrow
channel, and all beyond had been given up to falsehood. The Old and
New Testaments were the only inspired scriptures; Judaism and
Christianity were the only true religions. But of late years we have
learnt better. We have come to look upon the whole development of
human life as the gradual unfolding of One Divine Spirit; we have
learnt that there can be no monopoly of God, but that to every age
and nation there have come higher Voices, whose message is enshrined
in old traditions and ancient books.
When I call myself a Christian, I do not deny the validity of
other forms of the religious consciousness ; but I merely express the
genesis of my religious faith,—namely, that it can be traced along that
line of spiritual movement inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth. When
I call myself an Englishman, I merely state my ancestry and nation
ality ; I do not cut myself off from the Brotherhood of men throughout
the world. Christianity, as we desire to understand it, is One Family
in a great Community of Religions ; and we shall better understand
and appreciate our own faith when we see in it one form of a religious
Consciousness common to the whole race of men.
Missionaries have told us so many tales of the idolatries of the
ignorant and vulgar classes, among whom they chiefly labour, that it
�I
is very difficult to realise the spiritual elements of the great Religions
of the East. Who would like a foreigner to judge of Christianity by
the materialistic worship of the Church of Rome, or the irrational and
immoral doctrines of Mr. Moody? Judging Christianity by such
samples, would not the foreigner return home to say that Christianity
was either the Worship of Bread and Wine, or else Belief in a cruel
Deity who could only be appeased by Human Sacrifice ? Just as
Christianity has spiritual elements which are frequently hidden beneath
gross outward forms, so every ethnic religion is nobler than the
superstitious forms of worship into which it is frequently degraded.
An Englishman in India was one day watching the sacred images
carried in pomp to be cast into the Ganges ; and he said to a venerable
Brahman standing near, “Behold your gods ; made with hands ; thrown
into a river 1” “ What are they, sir ?” replied the Brahman, “ Only
dolls 1 That is well enough for the ignorant, but not for the wise.’’
Then he went on to quote from an ancient Hindu Scripture
“ The
world lay in darkness, as asleep. Then He who exists for Himself,
the most High, the Almighty, manifested Himself and dispelled the
gloom. He whose nature is beyond our reach, whose being escapes
our senses, who is invisible and eternal,—He, the all-pervading Spirit,
whom the mind cannot grasp,—even He shone forth.”
Indeed, it would not be difficult to prove that all the great
Religions of the world involve the doctrine of the Unity of God. Just
as behind the Christian Unity of Persons there is held to be One
Primal Divine Nature, so the philosophers of India have always pro
claimed an Essential U nity behind the multitudinous deities worshipped
by the common people. Rammohun Roy said,—“ If Christians affirm
God to be One, though in three Persons, they ought in conscience to
refrain from accusing Hindus of Polytheism ; for every Hindu, we
daily observe, confesses the Unity of the Godhead, even while making
it consist of millions of substances assuming offices according to the
various forms of Divine Providence.” In thus speaking of the Unity
of God, we must always remember that we do not use the word in the
vulgar arithmetical sense. It would be as reasonable to speak of God
as a Thousand or a Million as to say He is One in this sense. An
Infinite Being must include within His nature all numbers, not only
Unity but likewise Multiplicity. In the highest region of thought we
lose sight of number and quantity, and deal only with being and
quality. - I confess, I see much greater breadth of religious thought in
�5
the Eastern theology, which teaches that God has repeatedly become
incarnate, and may be worshipped under a thousand different forms,
than in that Western faith which monopolises God to one man, and.
admits only a triune expression of the Divine nature. When we speak
of the Unity of God, we use the word in the sense of Consistency and.
Order, as opposed to Contradiction and Caprice. The more we
know of the Universe, the more we are assured it is governed by
unchanging Law; and the more we know of History, the more are we
assured that Freedom and Will are within the sphere of an over-rulingProvidence. And these conceptions of Law and Providence guide our
minds to the sublime generalisation of the unity of God.
The most ancient collection of Hindu hymns, the Rig Veda, says,
“They call God Indra, Mithra, Varuna, Agni; that which is One the
wise call in divers manners.”
A later Hindu poem, the Bhagavat Gita, speaks of God as “the
Supreme Universal Spirit, the Eternal Person, divine, before all gods,
omnipresent, Creator and Lord of all that exists, God of gods, Lord of
the Universe.”
Amid the polytheistic mythology of Greece and Rome, the faith
of the Unity of God was held by such theists as Socrates and Cicero,
we are told that Xenophanes, casting his eyes upward to the heavens,
declared, “ The One is Godand that he taught that “ there is One
Supreme God among beings divine and human . . He governs all
things by power of reason.”
Listen to the sublime Theism of the “ heathen” Plutarch:—•
“ There are not different gods for different nations. As there is one
and the same sun, moon, sky, earth, sea, for all men, though they call
them by different names ; so the One Spirit which governs the universe,
the Universal Providence, receives among different nations different
names.” And again,—“We say to God, ‘Thou art:’ giving Him
thus His true name, the name which belongs alone to Him. For what
truly is ? That which is Eternal, which has never had beginning by
birth, never will have end by death,—that to which time brings no
change. It would be wrong to say of Him who is, that he was or will
be, for these words express changes and vicissitudes. But God is : He
is, not after the fashion of things measured by time, but in an im
movable and unchanging Eternity. By a single Now He fills the
For-ever. For Deity is not many, but that which is, must be One.” And
yet we have been accustomed to regard Plutarch as a benighted heathen'
�6
And still further. We often speak of Christianity as the religion
which is specially distinguished by the doctrine of the Fatherhood of
God. Listen to this Hindu hymn, written 1,500 years before Christ:—
May our Father, Heaven, be favourable to us. May that Eternal
One protect us evermore. We have no other friend, no other Father.
The Father of Heaven, who is the Father of men.” Horace calls God
“Father and Guardian of the human race.” Senecawrites,—“He,
the glorious Parent, tries the good man and prepares him for Himself.”
Listen to the confident faith of Epictetus, and tell me whether Jesus
ever spoke a more comforting doctrine :—“ If what philosophers say of
the kinship between God and man be true, why should not a man call
himself a citizen of the universe ? why not a son of God ? Shall not
having God for our Maker, Father, and Guardian free us from griefs
and alarms ? No human being is an orphan ; there is a Father who
incessantly cares for all.”
All religions likewise teach that union with God is to be attained
through the moral being.
The history of Religion is the history of the attempt to bring God
and the Soul into atonement, to reach harmony between the Infinite
and Finite, the Universal and Individual, the Social and Personal, the
Spiritual and Natural. So intense is the longing to see this union
realised between the Ideal and the Real, that most religions have
crystallised around some Model Man, the Type of Perfection, in whom
the Human and Divine were one, who was the great example to which
all men must seek to rise. But that which Theology declares was
miraculously realised in a unique Person, Spiritual Religion seeks to
realise by natural development in humanity. Humanity is the ever
living Christ, who is to be perfected through suffering, strengthened
by temptation, glorified by death, and at last made one with God.
This union of God and man is to be attained through the moral
life. All great Religions proclaim Salvation by life and Atonement
through obedience. “ If thou wilt enter into life, keep the command
ments”—that is the doctrine of every great religious teacher. “ This
is nay religion,” said a Siamese nobleman to a Christian missionary,
“ to be so little tied to the world that I can leave it without regret;
to keep my heart sound ; to live doing no injustice to any, but deeds
of compassion to all.” Here is a passage from a Hindu Scripture :—
“ God is most pleased with him who does good to others, who never
utters calumny or falsehood, who never covets another’s wife or
�7
another’s goods, who does not smite or kill, who desires always the
■welfare of all creatures and of his own soul, whose pure heart taketh
no pleasure in the imperfections of love and hatred. The man who
conforms to the duties enjoined in the Scripture is he who best worships
God : there is no other way.”
We have been told that Moses gave the Ten Commandments by
special inspiration ; yet Buddhism has these five moral rules :—“ Thou,
shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery,
nor any impurity. Thou shalt not lie. Thou shalt not intoxicate
thyself with drink.”
Cicero, likewise, has this noble commendation of the moral law:—
“ The true law is everywhere spread abroad, it is constant, eternal. It
calls us to duty by its commandments; it turns us away from wrong
doing by its prohibitions. We can take nothing from it, change
nothing, abrogate nothing. Neither the Senate nor the People have
the right to free us from it. It is not one thing at Rome, another
thing at Athens; one thing to-day, to morrow another. But, eternal
and immutable, the same law embraces all times and all nations.
There is one Being who can teach it and impose it upon all: that is
God.” “ God is just,” says Plato, “ and there is nothing that resembles
Him more than the just man.” We admire the words of Jesus,—“Be
ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfectyet
Zeno used almost the same words,—“ Men ought to seek after perfec
tion, for God is perfect.” We speak of the Golden Rule of Jesus; yet
Confucius said,—“ What you do not wish. done to yourself, do not do
to others.” Thales, the first Greek philosopher, taught,—“ That which
thou blamest in another do not thyself to thy neighbour.” Let me
read to you two passages describing the Good Man. The first is from
Epictetus.—“ The good man must fence himself with virtuous shame.
He must purify his soul. He must know that he is a messenger sent
from God to men to teach them of good and evil. He must tell them
the truth without fear. He must consult the Divinity, and attempt
nothing without God. He will needs be smitten, yet he must love
those who smite him, as being the Father, the Brother of all. When
he rebukes he will do it as a Father, as a Brother, as the minister of
the Father of all. He must have such patience as to seem insensible
and like a stone to the vulgar. Instead of arms and guards, conscience
will be his strength. For he knows that he has watched and toiled for
mankind, that he has slept pure and waked purer, and that he has
�8
regulated all his thoughts as the minister of Heaven.” The second
passage is from Marcus Aurelius.—“ The good man is as a priest and
minister of the gods; devoted to that Divinity which hath its dwelling
within him; by virtue of which the man is incontaminable by any
pleasure, invulnerable to every grief, inviolable to every injury,
insensible to every malice ; a fighter in the noblest fight, dyed deep
with justice, accepting with all his soul that which the Providence of
the Universe appoints him. He remembers also that every rational
being is his kinsman, and that to care for all men is in accordance
with the nature of man.”
Still further, we find the doctrine of Immortality, in different
forms, to be universal as the religious consciousness. Christian
theologians frequently teach us that apart from the resurrection of the
body of Jesus there is no proof of the immortality of the soul. Paul,
in his Rabbinical arguments about the resurrection, in the 15th chap
ter of 1st Corinthians, tells us that, apart from the resuscitation of the
wounded flesh and blood of Jesus, all religious faith and all hope of
immortality are destroyed ; that we are of all men most miserable, and
that our best wisdom is to live a sensual life,—“ Let us eat and drink,
for to-morrow we die.” I believe that many persons who have gained
a rational religious faith still find great difficulty in yielding up belief
in the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus, because it has always been,
associated in their minds with the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul. Such Christians, who can only believe a spiritual doctrine on
the ground of a physical wonder, might learn a lesson from the
“ heathen” Socrates. Listen to the words which Plato reports him to
have spoken on the day of his death.—“ Can the soul, then, which is
invisible, and which goes to another place like itself, excellent, pure,
and invisible, to the presence of a good and wise God (whither, if God
will, my soul must shortly go), can this soul of ours, I ask, being such
and of such a nature, when separated from the body, be immediately
dispersed and destroyed ? Far from it! The soul departs to that
which resembles itself, the invisible, the divine, immortal, and wise.
And on its arrival there it is its lot to be happy, free from error, ignor
ance, fears, wild passions, and all the other evils to which human
nature is subject.”
And again, after elaborate arguments, he says,—“ To affirm posi
tively, indeed, that these things are exactly as I have described them,
does not become a man of sense. That, however, this, or something
�9
of the kind, takes place with respect to our souls and their habitations,
—since the soul is certainly immortal,—this appears to me
most fitting to be believed, and worthy the hazard of one who trusts in
its reality ; for the hazard is noble and the hope is great.”
Plutarch has this noble utterance
Those who have lived in
justice and piety fear nothing after death. They look for a divine
felicity. As they who run a race are not crowned till they have con
quered, so good men believe that the reward of virtue is not given
them till after death. Eager to flee away from the body and from the
world to a glorious and blessed abode, they free their thoughts as
much as in them lies from the things that perish. Not by lamentations
and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of the good
man, but by hymns ; for, in ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he
enters upon the heritage of a diviner life.”
Cicero has this expression of spiritual faith
“ Although you do
not see the soul of man, as you do not see God ; yet, as from His
works you acknowledge 'Him, so from memory, from invention, from
all the beauty of virtue, do thou acknowledge the divine nature of the
soul. It cannot be destroyed.” To travel still further back into
antiquity,—in the Egyptian “ Book of the Dead,” mitten 2,000 years
before Christ, appear the following passages
The Soul lives after
he dies. Every god rejoices with fife ; the Soul rejoices with life as
they rejoice. Let the Soul go ; he passes from the gate, he sees his
Father God ; he makes a way in the darkness to his Father ; he is His
beloved ; he has come to see his Father ; he has pierced the heart of
the Evil Spirit to do the tilings of his Father God; he is the son
beloved of his Father. He has come a prepared spirit. He moves as
the never-resting gods in the heavens. The Soul says :—‘Hail,
Creator, self-created! do not turn away, I am one of thy types on
earth. I join myself with the noble spirits of the wise in Hades. 0
ye lords of truth, I have brought you truth; I have not privily done
evil against any man ; I have not been idle ; I have not made any to
weep ; I have not murdered ; I have not defrauded ; I have not com
mitted adultery: I am pure, I am pure!’ Let the Soul go; he is
without sin, without crime; he lives upon truth; he has made his
delight in doing what men say and the gods wish ; he has given food
to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked ; his mouth
is pure, his hands are pure, his heart goes to its place in the balance
complete. The Father of the spirit has examined and proved him. He
�has found that the departed fought on earth the battle of the
good gods, as his Father, the Lord of the invisible world, had com
manded him. 0 God, the protector of him who has brought his cry
to Thee, he is Thine, let him have no harm; let him be as one of Thy
flying servants. Thou art he, he is Thou ! Make it well with him in
the world of spirits.”
In the Hindu Vedas we are told that the God of the dead waits,
“ Enthroned in immortal light to welcome the good into His kingdom
of joy, into the homes He has gone to prepare for themreminding
us of the words ascribed to Jesus,—“ In my Father’s house are many
mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.”
By means of the U nion of God and Man through the moral being,
Universal Religion teaches the ultimate good of all creatures. Thus
the doctrine of Immortality is a Blessed Gospel of the final triumph
of Goodness and Truth. It is the hideous dream of Theology that
Sin and Suffering are to be perpetuated for ever in a dreadful Hell.
The Gospel of Development has for ever destroyed that blasphemous
dogma, and opened up to our minds the transcendent possibilities of
the future. Popular Christianity represents Jesus ascending to the
right hand of God, and gathering his redeemed in crowds around his
throne; while he leaves the great majority of men for ever lost in
hopeless misery. In this respect the Saviour of Buddhism far sur
passes the Saviour of Christianity, for he registers a solemn vow “ to
manifest himself to every creature in the universe, and never to arrive
at Buddha-hood till all are delivered from sin into divine rest, receiving
answers to their prayers.”
I make no apology for bringing these numerous extracts to you
this morning. The discovery of them has greatly refreshed my own
mind. There are “ other sheep,” not of the Christian fold. In the
Father’s house there are “ many mansions,” room for all the great
family of mankind. Now we begin to see a deeper meaning in the
words of the creed,—“I believe in the holy Catholic (universal)
Church.” The spiritual Communion to which we belong is larger, both
in Time and Space, than we supposed ; we find its members in every
age and every nation. We must give up the fond hope, which many
have cherished, that some day the world will become Christian. Believe
me, the Religion of the Future will be grander than the Faith held by
any one race ; it will be a Religion based upon that deep Religious
Consciousness common to all men.
�11
We are told that in Japan a very remarkable movement is taking
place. The educated people of that island have given up the popular
doctrines of Buddhism, but find themselves at the same time unable to
accept the Christianity taught by Protestant and Roman Catholic
Missionaries. A Manchester paper, the other day, gave the following
curious information with regard to this religious movement in Japan.
—“A vernacular paper, anxious for a sure foothold somewhere, is
quite unable to close with the Gospel of the missionaries. In the first
place, its pride is hurt by the airs of superiority which some of the
Missionaries assume. They are not content with proclaiming the
principles of Christianity ; they must also give those among whom they
are labouring to understand that they regard Asiatics as ‘ barbarous
and ignorant? But still more fatal to their success are the demands
which they make upon the faith of the people whom they seek to
instruct. The miracles of the Bible are, according to this writer, the
great obstacle to the spread of Christianity in Japan and in the
East generally. ‘ To teach Asiatics such things,’ he says, ‘ who have
been for many generations steeped in then’ own superstitions, only
tends to make them cling all the closer to their own beliefs, and, far
from attracting them to it, only drives them further away from
Christianity, for we have a mass of traditions of supernatural deeds in
our own mythology? He has heard of the Unitarians—a sect
‘ disliked by all the others ;’ and, if all he has been told about them be
true, he has ‘ little doubt that there are many Japanese of the middle
class’ who would embrace the religion they teach.”
Now, such facts as these should make us exceedingly thankful
that we profess a form of Christianity which is in perfect sympathy
with spiritual religion throughout the world. “ There is diversity of
operation, but the same Spirit.” Though we may still think it well
to retain the distinctive name of Christian, yet we are able to look
beyond the bounds of our fold, and realise our union to those “ other
sheep” who are likewise being guided by the same Divine Providence.
The Moslem proverb says,—“ The leaves of God’s book are the
religious persuasions.” There are pages in that book which we have
learnt by heart, there are others we have scarcely looked into ; but
all the pages are sacred, all are the utterances of that great Religious
Sentiment which lies beneath our outward differences, all are the
expressions of that universal Soul that reveals itself in a thousand
forms. As the intercourse of different races becomes more frequent
�12
and intimate, there will arise a deeper sympathy between different
worsliippers ; the sense of the oneness of Human Nature will lead to a
higher conception of the Unity of God ; and the two great doctrines
of Universal Religion -will be,—that One is our Father, and that
All Men are Brethren.
Then shall be fulfilled the intuition of Jesus, expressed in the
words,—“The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain
nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. The hour cometh and now
is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in
truth for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit;
and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”
TOULMIN, PRINTER, THE GUARDIAN WORKS, PRESTON.
���
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Universal religion. A sermon, delivered in the Unitarian Chapel, Preston, February 20th, 1876
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Walters, F. W.
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Place of publication: Preston
Collation: 12 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Printed by Toulmin, Preston. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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The Guardian Printing Works
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1876
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Unitarianism
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Conway Tracts
Unitarianism