George T. Ashley

“ We can conceive of God as infinite; but we cannot conceive what infinity is. If we could, it would not be infinite, unless we are infinite. So all attempts to define God in terms of the finite are futile. And yet, when we look back over the past history of the human race and see what ruin has been wrought by this very thing it becomes appalling! All religious controversies, wars and bloodshed have had their ultimate source just here. Certain men have formed certain conceptions of God, of his character, his attributes, his will, and his purposes concerning mankind. ”

“ I firmly believe that the future holds in store a civilization, social status, human achievement, intellectual and moral attainment on this planet, as far above the present as this is above that of the Cave Man; and as inconceivable to us now as this was to him; and all this will be but the product, result, fruit of this eternal, never-ending process of inspiration and revelation that has brought mankind to where he is today. ”

“ But as a man, struggling with the last enemy, with eternity before him, a means of escape at hand, but deliberately devoting his life and his all in the most excruciatingly torturous manner known to human ingenuity in cruelty, it becomes a spectacle to command the awe and admiration of angels.
Jesus is indeed the savior of the world, not by having redeemed mankind with the purchase-price of his own blood; but by his life and words in teaching men how to live, and by his death how to die, if necessary, for the right. ”

“ I thought of such moralists and philosophers as Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, and thousands of others who have lived in the past, and left a lasting impression in the world for the good of mankind that continues to this day, some of them but little less than Jesus himself, in the moral sublimity of their lives and teachings, and wondered if these men were all in hell to roast and fry and burn forever because they had not "exercised faith" in the merits of a dying God of whom they had never known or even heard! ”

“ And if a thought is ever given to it, or any search made, it is but rarely for abstract truth, but for the proofs that support the inherited faith, the preconceived opinion. It is like one going into his house and bolting the door on the inside. Nothing is ever given out and nothing ever permitted to come in. This is exactly why for centuries the world was drenched in Christian blood, shed by Christian hands. Each had its infallible creed, to which all the world must bow—or take the consequences. ”

“ The Bible is thus the greatest book of religious instruction that the world knows, or ever has known. It contains inexhaustible treasures of religious thought, feeling, emotion and experience, of every conceivable type and variety, which makes it indeed "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness." It is an inexhaustible mine of the richest and purest gold, fused in the fires of human experience in many ages. ”

“ But if it still be insisted—and unfortunately it is by far the greater part of Christianity—that God is, nevertheless and notwithstanding, Infinite, Omniscient and Omnipotent, and either deliberately planned or supinely sat by and permitted these things to take place, then He is not a God of goodness, love, justice, truth, mercy and benevolence, but an unthinkable monster, more diabolical and cruel than the wildest savage ever known to the earth, or the most ferocious beast of prey in the jungle. I might naturally fear such a God, but never love or respect, but eternally hate him. ”

“ I soon found that whether I agreed with all other Unitarians or not, I at least had here a free and cordial fellowship for the worship of God and the service of man, without any ecclesiastical harness to put on, or any strings to limit me to prescribed bounds. A new light dawned upon me. The bondage of orthodoxy I had broken years ago. But I wandered for years in the desert of agnosticism, famishing and unfed. I had found in my own heart the bread of life; but I had no table at which to spread it—and man being a social animal as well as a religious one, cannot live alone. ”

“ I felt that since God had left me without any conclusive and indisputable proofs of the truth of those things which I had always believed to be of the most supreme importance to mankind for time and eternity, that this supreme, distinguishing feature of man that lifts him above all known forms of creation could, and should be, appealed to as the final authority and last test in all things. And since reason was universally recognized as the court of last resort in all other things outside of religion, why should it not be applied to this also? ”

“ But I was not yet ready to give up religion and Christianity. I began to look for some new basis of interpretation. I asked myself the questions: May not Christianity be substantially true after all? Is not man a sinner? And as such does he not need a Savior? Does not Christianity meet this necessity? Is not the Bible after all, tho of purely human origin as I now conceived, a valuable book? May we not yet find much valuable truth in it, tho neither inspired nor infallible? May not the "great plan of salvation" be true after all? Is it not of vital importance to know? ”

“ He knew himself as being alive, as a conscious individual, capable of exercising will and exerting force. Thus when he heard the roaring thunders, saw the clouds floating overhead, and the flashes of lightning among them, felt the force of the wind and the falling rain; in fact all the phenomena of nature and life about him, including his own aches, pains, diseases, suffering, and the ultimate death of his kind, he could only interpret these things in terms of living personality, some great, powerful individual, or individuals behind, and directing it all. These became man's first gods. ”

“ For thousands of years the world will depend on thee: Banner of our contests, thou shalt be the standard about which the hottest battle will be given. A thousand times more alive, a thousand times more beloved, since thy death than during thy passage here below, thou shalt become the cornerstone of humanity so entirely, that to tear thy name from this world would be to rend it to its foundation. Complete conqueror of death, take possession of thy kingdom, whither shall follow thee, by the royal road which thou hast traced, ages of followers. ”

“ Another definition that is perhaps more direct and simple than the above is this: "Religion is an impulse imbedded in the heart of man which compels him to strive upward. It is a yearning of the soul in man to transcend its own narrow limits, and to soar to the heights of supreme excellence, where it may become identified with the noble, the lofty, the divine." Another has said that "Religion is simply the zest of life." To these I will add that I understand religion to be that inner urge in all humanity that pushes it onward and upward ”

“ Religion is one in its origin. It is a part of the fundamental essence of human character. It is inseparable from the faculties of thought, reason and will. It is one and the same with these. Man without these faculties of thought, reason and will would not be man at all, but a brute. So without this inner urge, and the faculty of aspiration upward, which I have defined as the very fundamental essence of religion, man would still only be a brute. He would not be man at all. Religion is one in its origin because it is an essential characteristic of all human nature. ”

“ And this is all there is to Old Testament Messianic prophecy. And a great many of the most intelligent Jews of the Reformed School of today are beginning to think the same.
But if there was ever a true prophet of God, a man in whom the God-life in human form was truly manifest, a man supremely divine,—not by miraculous generation, but by spiritual union with God, whereby God indeed became manifest in human flesh,—that man was Jesus of Nazareth. And as such he becomes the eternal example for all mankind after him. As a man he justly commands the highest homage that the world can give to man. ”

“ I began to wonder how God could be just and make a creature, whom He knew in advance would do what Adam is alleged to have done, and knew in advance the dreadful consequences that would follow it, not only to Adam himself, but to all the unborn generations yet to people the world. Especially was I perplexed to understand how God could be just and visit all the consequences of Adam's sin on his entire posterity for uncounted generations when they were and could be in no way responsible for it and could not help it. ”

“ I wondered how the "Good Man" up in the skies on his great white throne in his beautiful city of gold, could be just and plunge a little child into hell and burn it for ever and ever because Adam ate fruit from the wrong tree! But I believed it then, because I was told so, and knew no better. I don't believe it now, and how any human being with the instincts of justice pertaining to the common brute creation can believe such a thing is a mystery to me.
As time went on I learned more about repentance, faith, conversion, baptism and the current theology of my time and environment. ”

“ This is the only logical conclusion any one can reach who insists that salvation is impossible except by accepting any prescribed creed. Only those who possess and accept the right creed can be saved. All the balance of mankind must be lost forever. To take either of these views of the atonement, or all of them together, as the only means by which mankind can be saved from hell is to make God a complete failure from beginning to end. As we have already seen, the orthodox view of creation makes God either a failure or a monster. ”

“ I have never yet seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind; but I confess, when I look on a world of sinners and sufferers, upon death-beds and graveyards, upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever; when I see my parents, my friends, my family, my people, my fellow-citizens,—when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger ”

“ What would have been the worth of that primitive innocence portrayed in the myth of the garden of Eden? What would have been the moral value or significance of a race of human beings ignorant of evil, and doing beneficent acts with no more consciousness or volition than the deftly contrived machine that picks up raw material at one end, and turns out some finished product at the other? Clearly for strong and resolute men and women an Eden would be but a fool's paradise. ”

“ If annihilation be considered too merciful and this hell the only adequate punishment, all very well for rebellious and sinful angels; but why should this yawning gulf of eternal woe open its throat to receive the future being to be made in God's own image and called man?
We are told that hell was not created for man, but for the devil and his angels. Nevertheless, if the story of Eden and the doctrines of modern orthodoxy be true, it is now and will ultimately become the eternal abode of about ninety-eight per cent of the entire human race. ”

“ This is what Jesus taught; and Jesus is the savior of mankind only in that he has taught mankind how to live,—not by dying for it. Thus to save this life to the highest, noblest and best of which it is capable, is to save it from sin unto righteousness; and this is to save it both here and hereafter. He that continually lives right cannot die wrong. And whatever the next life may be, it is but a continuation, a larger unfolding and fruition of this. Salvation is here, not hereafter. ”

“ The man who, in these revolutionary days, takes religion seriously—there are many who do not—must make a journey which is fraught with as many surprises and filled with as many anxieties—especially if it be a pilgrimage from orthodoxy to personal independence—as that which the explorer encounters in a voyage to the North Pole or the jungles of Africa. At every turning of the way he must be prepared for disillusions and the discovery of facts and errors which call for unlimited courage and boundless faith. ”

“ The idea of a literal lake of fire and brimstone to be the eternal abode of by far the larger part of the human race, according to the orthodox doctrine of Christianity, is not only unreasonable, but unthinkable. If it exists God must have made it; and such a thought is a caricature of God. Such a view of hell practically involves the necessity of the personal devil that has always been associated with it; and this is also both unreasonable and unthinkable. If such a being exists he is either co-eternal with God—which is unreasonable—or God created him—which is unthinkable. ”

“ Whatever truth may still remain as to these relations, since we have seen that inspiration is not something miraculous and supernatural, but purely and wholly natural, there can be no such a thing as revelation in any miraculous or supernatural sense. And yet, all that man has ever learned, accomplished, attained to, or achieved is a revelation. Man, with all his boasted knowledge and achievement, has never created anything; all that man has ever done, at his best, has been to discover and utilize things and forces that are as old as the universe itself. ”

“ The wonder is that there are not more. But that it contains only what the various writers of its different parts, at the time they wrote, honestly thought and believed to be true, may be freely admitted without in the least derogating from its true value, or adding supernatural sanctity to it. The Old Testament considered simply as a collection of ancient Jewish literature, reveals to us to-day many of the stages in the national, racial and religious evolution of ancient Israel, just as the literature of any nation or people reveals the same thing concerning them,—no more and no less. ”

“ The Bible was still an infallible divine revelation. Humanity was still lost, totally depraved, abiding under the "wrath of God"; hell was a reality towards which all humanity was bound; and the only means of escape was to "believe in the Lord Jesus Christ" according to the prescribed formula. The burden of my personal responsibility soon returned. I could not escape it. True, I was out of the church—the Baptist Church; but it seemed quite evident that God was using other agencies, outside the Baptist Church, for the salvation of souls, and seemed to be doing it quite successfully. ”