We
do not even say that character is a condition of salvation. Character
is salvation. A man who is right, who is in perfect accord with the law
and life of God, is safe, in this world, in all worlds, in this year,
in all future time.

And, then, lastly, we believe in the eternal and universal hope. We
believe that God, just because he is God, is under the highest
conceivable obligation, not to me only, but to himself, to see to it
that every being whom he has created shall sometime, somewhere, in the
long run, find that gift of life a blessing, and not a curse.

We believe in retribution, universal, quick, unescapable; for we
believe that this is mercy, and that through this is to come salvation.

These, then, are the main principles, as I understand them, of
Unitarianism.

There is one point more now that I must touch on. When I was
considering the question of giving this series of sermons, one of my
best friends raised the question as to whether I had better put the
word Unitarian? into the title. He was afraid that it might prejudice
people who did not like the name, and keep them from listening to what
I had to say. This is a common feeling on the part of Unitarians. I was
trained as a boy, and through all my youth and early manhood in the
ministry, to look with aversion, suspicion, on Unitarianism, and to
hate the name. But to-day, after more than twenty years of experience
in the Unitarian ministry, I have come to the conviction, which I wish
to suggest to you, that it is the most magnificent name in the
religious history of the world; and I, for one, wish to hoist it as my
flag, to inscribe it on my banner, not because I care for a name, but
because of that which it covers and comprehends.

Now, not in the slightest degree in the way of prejudice against other
names or to find fault with them, let me note a few of them, and then
compare Unitarianism with them. Take the word "Anglican," for example,
the name of the Church of England. What does it mean? Of course, you
know it is simply a geographical name. It defines nothing as to the
Church's government or belief or anything else. There is the word
"Episcopal," which simply means a church that is governed by bishops;
that is all. Take the word "Presbyterian," from a Greek word which
means an elder, a church governed by its old men or its elders. No
special significance about that. Then "Baptist," signifying that the
people who wear that name believe that ba