Gospel Herald, 1860-02-25

              Devoted, to Christianity, Morality, the Interests of BabTiatli Schools, Social Iraprovement, Temperance, Edncatioii, and Greneral News.
"BEHOLD,   I   BRING   TOU   GOOD   TIDINGS   OE   GEEAT   JOT
.  ON   EARTH   PEACE,   GOOD   WILL   TOWAED   MEN.
VOL. 16.
DAYTON, O., SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1860
IS 0.41.
ORIGINALJPOETRY.
To My Father.
Old -winter's come at last, father
Cotre with hie sleet, and enow; But Tm thinking of the past, father,
Of the happy loug ago ;— When I -was but a child, father
Nestling ou your knee, But those days are past and gone, father,
Forever gone from me.
Long years have gjone since then, father Some with joy, and some with pain,
Butthose days of childish innocence, Can ne'er be mine again.
Then thou wert in thy prime, father My step was light and fi ee,
In those happj  days of childhood, When I played around thy knee.
-They seem to me but yesterday,
Those happy days of yore, My memory plainly pictures yet
The sweet brier near the door, The honeysuckle ou the walk,
And o'er the window crept, The purple jasmine, peeping in
The bedroom where I slept.
The porch onr evening resting place,
With vines waa shaded o'er, The blue-bell, and the peony,
Were blooming  near the door, The sweet-brier from the door, father,
Was long since torn away, And the honey-suckle from the wall,
Haa mouldeied to decay.
The blue-bell and the peony,
In spring-time blossoms yet, Al morn their lovely petals seem,
With glittering tear-drops wet, Ye well may wetp, dear gentle flowers,
Thy friend and mine is dead, She sleeps within the church-yard no-ff,
No flowers adorn her ted.
No more at morn her form is seen,
Those lovely flowers among, No more we hear in accents sweet
The gentle songs she sung. She is happy now, I ween, father,
Happier than you, or I, She dwells where we've not been, father.
But will be when we die.
The time will not be long, father,
Till -we shall weep no more, We will launch upon the t oaring tide,
And reach tliat radiant shore, Then thou wilt not be sad, father,
Or bowed with grief, and care. The one we loved long yoars ago,
Will alwaya love us there.
M B	
StewartsviUe Ind. Eeb. 5th 1860.
ORIiGINALmES.
Written for tlie t^ospet Herald
Are Christians  and Unitarians  One in Faith.
BY CLAUDIUS BRADFORD.
Bro. Ellis:—Though I am a stran¬ ger to you, and to these parts, having but lately arrived here from the Eaat, I take the liberty to address you a few lines on a subject of vital impor¬ tance to the interests of Christianity, particularly as those interests are committed to the care, and embodied in the organization, of two large, powerful and important denominations, viz: Christians and Unitarians.
My attention has lately been drawn to an article in a recent number of your paper, with the above caption, "Are Christians and Unitarians one m faith?" The writer is a perfect stranger to me, and I to him; but, with all christian courtesy and kind¬ ness to him, and with no disposition to enter into a controversy, but mere¬
ly to state the truth, as I understand it, may I he permitted to endeavor to throw some light (and having been brought up under Unitarian influen¬ ces, aud been a preacher of that de¬ nomination in Massachusetts for twen¬ ty years, I ought to have some light to throw) on the question he proposes.
He asks, "Are Christians and Uni¬ tarians one in faith?" I answer, thoy are not; nor are any two denomina¬ tions, nor any two individuals of the same denomination, precisely "one in faith," in every particular on religious, any more than on other subjects, lit¬ erary or political. All the works of God are marked by variety. Why not then the mind of man—His no¬ blest work. No two leaves in the mul¬ titudinous forest are exactly alike.— No two men's minds, in all the count¬ less generations of men were ever ex¬ actly alike—any more than their faces. So that, if that is all the question, it is soon answered. But there is another question, and it is this: Are not Chris¬ tians and Unitarians so nearly "one in faith" that, especially with such a sad lack of Christian liberality as now exists in tho world, it is both possible and desirable that there should be the most cordial sympathy and co-opera¬ tion between them for the spread of G-ospel truth? To this question I have myself but one answer to give. I think there should be, by all means, this cordial sympathy and co-opera¬ tion between these two denominations. I should think so, if the speculative differences between them, were far greater than they are; for I have long been of opinion that the bitter strifes and dissensions that have so long marked the professed followers of the same common Lord and Master—Him¬ self of so large and Catholic a spirit, who so perpetually enjoined love and charity among his followers, and in his last prayer with his disciples, so fer¬ vently prayed lor Ohristian union among all the future receivers of his Gospel—are a disgrace to Christianity; that, among their many other woful results, by putting arms and argu¬ ments into the handsof infidels against it, they have done an immense injury to the cause of Christian truth and righteousness, and immeasurably re¬ tarded and defeated its spread and triuiijph in the world. Especially, therefore, should I think such cordial Christian fellowship to be desirable, and its absence exceedingly deplorable, in two denominations whoae religious faith is so nearly identical as 1 under¬ stand theirs to be. But the writer in question, while he desires that Unita¬ rians and Christians should "treateach other with friendship and kindness," seems to think there oan be no such close Christian union between them for the three following reasons:
1. Unitarians do not worship and pray to Jesus as the supreme Jehovah and everlasting Father. With regard to the first part of this assertion, I would first enquire, what is here meant by the word worship ? If by it be meant what the word frequently signifies both according to Scripture and the Dictionary, (viz. reference,) then I would say we hope we yield to none in our reverence for Jesus. With¬ out pretending to settle his exact rank and position in the  spiritual universe,
for ho himself says, "no man knoweth who the Son is but the Father;" we yet regard him as occupying, as, in¬ deed, this very expression implies, a most mysteriously exalted nearness to the Fattier, such as was never enjoyed by any other. We regard him, as in every sense, "the way, the truth, and the life;" and the light and hopo ofthe world. We fully accept all he ever said concerning his own nature, power, and authority. " My Father is greater than I." " i and my Father are ono." We believe in both these assertions, and that, so far from being contradic¬ tory they are naturally necessary (and this is why Christ gave them) to afford us an idea of his true relation to His and our heavenly Father. Ever and forever would we exclaim with those in Heaven: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisd.jm, and atrength, and honor, and glory, and blessing." On a cer¬ tain occasion indeed, Jesus put the identical question to Peter. "Whom say ye that I, the son of man am?"
What was Peter's answer? "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." What was the reply of Jesus to this? "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar- Jona, flesh and blood hath not re¬ vealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." Thus, in the ful¬ lest manner, endorsing Peter's answer as the correct one. Now we fnllj'- be¬ lieve that Jesus is "the Christ, the Son ofthe living God." So that if Simon Peter was right on this point, and Christ says he was, we are. But the writer in question aays, Unitarians do not pray to Christ. No, thoy do not, strictly speaking. The expression sometimes hoarii in prayers: "Oh, thou Jehovah—Jesus," is not pleasing to their ears. They prefer to follow Christ's own direction, "after this man¬ ner pray ye: Our Father which art in Heavon." Nor, so far as I can learn, do our Christian brethren, as a gener¬ al thing, i")ray to Jesus. So that there is here, at least, no great difference be¬ tween us. Butthe -writer.referred to, thinks that after all this is of far less consequence than another point, viz:
2. That "the Unitarians are generally Universalists or Eestorationists, but mostly Eestorationists." Now with regard to the dark, but most solemn subject of Future Eetrihution, there are various shades of opinion among Uni¬ tarians. They persecute and denounce none for their conclusions upon this point. Some Unitarians are Eestora¬ tionists :—in the goodness oftheir hearts and best conclusions of their under¬ standings, from what they know and be¬ lieve ofthe character of God and the design ofthe Gospel, they have honest¬ ly come to the hope and behef that all mankind will finally—they do not pre¬ tend to say when—be restored and brought into a place or state of holi¬ ness and happiness in another world.— But what I call Unitarianism proper is no more to be confounded with Universal¬ ism or Eestorationism, than it is with Calvinism. Indeed, some of us think that, so far as this particular point is concerned, there is more affinity be¬ tween Universalism and Calvinism than there is between Universalism and Uni¬ tarianism. And of this I might multi¬ ply endless evidence from somo of the best and most prominent of Unitarian
writers and preachers, bnt prefer now to present the following proofs, whieh may possibly be deemed somewhat striking and conclusive.
1. Tho Christian Register, printed at Boston, tho acknowledged newspa¬ per organ of the Unitarian denomina¬ tion in this country, has never taken the ground of UnivcrsaliBin or Eestor¬ ationism. Some time since, a certain prominent IlniversaliBt paper at the Bast came out with an article strongly advocttting the union ofthe two denom¬ inations,on the groundthatthey thought exactly alike on the subject of fintil uni¬ versal salvation, only that the Univer¬ salists come out openly and boldly with their belief in the doctrine, while the Unitarians, for some reason or other, covertly, not to say cowardly (it was strongly intimated cowarcKy) kept theirs back. The Christian Eegister very mildly and courteously replied in sub¬ stance that, while they t cgarded with peculiar sympathy and interest their Universalist brethren as another branch of the much maligned, htited andopposed Libera) body, with respect to this particuhir ism of universal sal¬ vation, there was at present an impas¬ sible gulf between them; and it all lay between the two tenses of a certain verb—may and will. The Universalists say that all mankind will eertainljr in¬ fallibly be saved in a future sttite. Uni¬ tarians say all mankind may ho saved —ifthey will. Jesus came into the world to save all men. "And ye will not come to me that ye might have life," said Josus to the Jews.
2. I would adduce—if I may he al¬ lowed, my o-wn personal position, as, perhaps, an average specimen of Uni¬ tarian conclusion on this subject. I am not a Eestorationist. That is to say, I do not read, and do not believe that Jo¬ sus Christ ever taught, or wished to be understood as teaching, that all mankind shall finally be saved. I re¬ member, in this connection, that most solemn assurance in the last verse of the 25th chapter of Mathew : 'And these,' speaking ofthe wicked, 'shall go away into everlastingpunishment, but the righteous into life eternal.' 1 read no Eestoration there. I pretend not to lift the veil that is let down at the close of that tremendous chapter. So that hero again the Unitarians and Christians are not at issue.
3. The writer in question says that the Unitarians are not a revi-val peo¬ ple, and here again a prelilninary question arises, what do we moan by a revival. If we mean by that term, revivals such as we have generally seen them—Sectarian revivals—revivals in which some questionable machinery has been employed—revivals, the aim apparently, and certainly the tenden¬ cy of which has been not to improve and enlighten and enlarge, but to make more narrow and sectarian, to prolong the reign of ignorance, and error, and superstition, and prejudice and strife— to work upon the nerves rather than to amend the heart and life, and pro¬ mote that charity, whieh, according to the apostle Paul, is greater than faith and hope, and tho bond of Chris¬ tian perfeotness,—revivals, whose, re-, suit consequontly, has been in the end only greater coldness, darkness, and Sectaritm hardness and bitterness j-— no. Unitarians are so far from beingin favor of sach revivals as   these that