Boston

The "Arian heresy" (see above) ha existed throughout Christendom al most from the beginning. Its mos distinguished appearance has been in the form of Unitarianism, late in fulfilment. During the week, the Unitarians of America celebrated at Bos ton the centennial of their formal organization. Significance. Theologically, the chief characteristic of Unitarianism is its denial of the Trinity*--a doctrine on which nearly every other Christian body is in substantial agreement. Denial of the Trinity is tantamount to denial of the divinity of Christ. To the layman, Unitarianism means both these denials--and one thing more: a spirit, urbane, tolerant, intellectual lofty but not dynamic, illustrious but not victorious. Today, Unitarians regard themselves as having a special significance. They see about them "liberals" among Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, hard pressed to maintain their freedom of thought and action against "fundamentalists." They think liberals should become Unitarians and even charge them with intellectual dishonesty for not so doing. Their current literature and speeches express the wonder that men whose minds are open to Science can remain in the old creedal denominations. Celebration. But it was not the motes in their brothers' eyes which inspired the opening sermon delivered by Rev. Paul revere Frothingham Boldly he analyzed: "We want a divine inheritance and a spiritual birthright. To be willing to exchange it for a mess of scientific pottage indicates and Esan-like yearning for the wilderness of doubt. . . . "The Unitarian doctrine has effectively softened and finally transformed the stern theology of New England, as it was meant to do; but let us beware if it softens also the sinews of a social conscience." And forthrightly he proclaimed: "The social order is an affair of the will much more than of the heart. There are times when it is necessary to be hard. It is no child's play to make the world safe, whether for democracy or for decency. And finally he counseled his fellows to remember that, although "Jesus Christ is not God, but man; not the second person int he Trinity." He is nevertheless, "the first person in a mighty unity of human relationships," whose will must be done on earth.

Among those officiating were Dr. Samuel A. Elliot, Senator William E. Borah, Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, who brought greetings from the Federal Council of Churches.

History. Recently, President Earl M. Wilbur of the Pacific Unitarian seminary went to Poland. Leaving Cracow early one morning, he rode by train three hours down the banks of the Vistula, back into the foothills of the Carparthians. From an unpronounceable station, he drove seven miles in an antique wicker wagon drawn by antique horses to the village of Luclawice. Finally, in the midst of shabby hovels on a hillside, he found a rude wooden canopy from which the wind had torn the roof. Beneath it was a stone. This was a monument to the fallacy that ideas cannot be crushed by force, for it was the tomb of Faustus Socinus. In the 16th Century, his religious followers dominated all that art of Poland. At one stroke, in 1660, all recanted or fled into exile. Catholic shrines now dot the road that leads to Socinus' graves; there is scarcely a Unitarian in Poland. Yet Socinus* was the Augustine of the Unitarians.

To the South, in Hungary, History wrote a different tale. There, in the first century of the Reformation, arose Francis David. After being successively Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, he adopted Unitarianism and even converted King John Sigismund (the only Unitarian monarch in history), Bishop David's spiritual seed prospered, although it never rivaled the established Catholic faith. To Boston came, last week, his two successors: George Boros, Suffragan Bishop of Transylvania, and Nicholas Jozan, Suffragan Bishop of Hungary.

During the centuries, a small Unitarian sect was developed in England, but it was left for New England to bring forth the full flower. The intellectuals of Harvard resented the excesses of the Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield "revivals"; and, by the beginning of the 19th Century, a large number of the pulpits of Boston were supplied by Unitarian ministers. William Ellery Channing was the great interpreter of the new rationalistic Christianity. Its annals modestly record:

Benjamin Franklin

Thomas Jefferson

John Adams

John Quincy Adams

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Louis Agassiz

George Bancroft

John Marshall

James Russell Lowell

Oliver Wendell Holmes

William Cullen Bryant

Peter Cooper

Daniel Webster

Horace Mann

Charles W. Eliot

William H. Taft

* Doctrine that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost are three persons in one, their "glory equal" their "majesty co-eternal."

* Socinus, nephew of a less famous theologian, Lelio Socinus, was an Italian who was twelve years in the service of Isabella de Medici, daughter of Grand Duke Cosimo of Tuscany. He fled the country to escape the Inquisition.