and much love for humankind, seemed to me legitimate
weapons of reform. In other words, I was again a victim of the logic
of Christianity. And where did this logic hold me, if not to the
church? Where could I make plain my spiritual position, or bring to
bear my spiritual influence, apart from the church? If this
institution must hold me altogether aloof from the social question,
then of course my duty was manifest. But its pulpit was wide open to
social preaching; its altar a chosen place for social consecration;
and its machinery of service all at hand to be shifted from the gear
of [10] charity to the gear of justice. Why not stay, therefore, in
the church, as Theodore Parker stayed, and fight capitalism, as he
fought slavery, in the garb of a minister of Christ?

Decision on this point came fairly early, and it was favorable to
the church. Strangely enough, however, it brought me little peace
and surety in my church relations. Outside, in the denomination at
large, I found myself in almost constant conflict with my fellows.
There were few meetings or conferences in which I did not speak in
protest and vote with minorities. Here in the Messiah parish there
was no trouble, thanks to your forbearance, friendship, and
scrupulous loyalty to freedom; but almost from the beginning there
was uncertainty, wonderment, at times unrest, on the part of those
longest associated with this society; and the records show a
melancholy tale of withdrawals of those, not unable to endure
differences of opinion, but impelled to turn away when the
institution, long precious in their sight, no longer presented the
recognizable attributes of a Unitarian church. That my own
shortcomings as a man and a minister were responsible for much of
this disturbance inside and outside the parish, I have no doubt. But
as I look back over the years, I also have no doubt that there was
something much more fundamental here, at the heart of the trouble.
That I was a heretic on the social question was insignificant, for
Unitarians have long since learned not only to tolerate but to
respect their heretics. What was infinitely more important, as I now
see, was the fact that unconsciously through these years, I was
coming to question not the church itself, as I have explained, but
the whole order and purpose of the church as it now exists. Every
ecclesiastical institution today is denominational in character. It
belongs primarily to some particular sectarian bo