ABSTRACT
In spite of this alleviation, partly perhaps because of it, the general impression I received from what I saw of Unitarianism from the side both of its theology and its social philosophy was that it was suffering from a species of motor ataxia. It had a splendid record behind it in England of courageous battle for freedom in the teaching of its ministers. It had recently eman-, cipated itself from the idea that the essential truth of Christianity was in any way dependent on miraculous historical events. But the appeal to the authority of conscience, on which it sought to erect its own theology, as only explicable if based on the intuitively discerned commands of a personal Deity seemed to me far too narrow to support a truly spiritual and universal form of religion. If the choice was between a doctrine of Incarnation broadly interpreted as "God manifest in the flesh," and (beyond the "flesh") in Nature and human history, and so attenuated a faith as this, it seemed hardly doubtful which was in closer touch with the larger outlook that was then opening out as to the foundations of religious consciousness, as this had found expression in the great religions alike of East and West.
