Christian Churches and Churches of Christ; Lutz, Henry Frey, 1868-1926 -- Biography; Restoration movement (Christianity)
The time came and I entered the school. And a fine school it was from
an intellectual standpoint and for the purpose of investigation. I have
been a student at six educational institutions since I left the high
school, but this was far ahead of the others for the development of the
logical and philosophical faculties. Here there was absolutely no
restraint to thought; and all kinds of systems and ideas were
represented, from philosophical anarchy to socialism and from mysticism
to materialism. The moral and spiritual earnestness I expected to find
among the Unitarians I did not find, especially among the younger and
more radical ones. Its effect, on the whole, was to relax rather than
intensify the moral fiber. Their ideals seemed so grand and noble that
I thought those possessed with them could scarcely find time to eat and
sleep in their zeal to put them into practise; but I discovered that
they not only had plenty of time to eat and sleep, but also for
dancing, card-playing, theater-going, etc. Many of the young men
studying for the ministry often spent a large part of the night in
card-playing, and the Sunday-school room served also as a
dancing-floor. Unitarians pride themselves upon the high standard of
morality among their people and upon the few prisoners you find among
their members, but this is due to the character of the people they
reach rather than to the restraining influence of their teaching
My reading had given me a wrong impression as to the teaching of
Unitarianism. Like many others, I was fascinated and enticed by the
writings of conservative Unitarians, whose contention is largely
against the bad theology of human creeds; but the present-day teaching
of the vanguard of Unitarianism is an entirely different thing. It
rejects all the miraculous in the Bible, and, in many cases, even
denies the existence of a personal God. All the students were required
to conduct chapel prayers in turn. Those who did not believe in a
personal God explained that they were pronouncing an apostrophe to the
great impersonal and unknowable force working in the universe. I had
read Channing, Clark, Hale, Emerson, and other conservative Unitarians,
and found much food for my soul, but I discovered that these were
considered old "fogies" and back numbers by most of the students in
attendance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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