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<Index to Etexts on Women's History>
This address to the 1893 Parliament is presented in the language which Rev.
Hultin used.
The speech is reproduced here as printed in
The World's Parliament of Religions, Volume II, edited by the Rev. John Henry Barrows, D.D., Chicago, 1893.
Ida C. Hultin (1858-1938) was raised a Congregationalist, and initially served
several independent liberal churches in Michigan. From 1884, she served
Unitarian churches in Iowa, Illinois, and Massachusetts, including Moline,
Illinois, where she was serving at the time of the 1893 Parliament. She was
prominent in the Western Unitarian Conference, at one time vice-president of the
Central States Conference of Unitarian Churches. She was also an activist for
woman's suffrage.
Rev. Hultin was an "ethical basis" Unitarian, active in the Free Religious
Association (as was Jenkin Lloyd Jones of Chicago, a key organizer of the 1893
Parliament). These were people who already defined themselves beyond or outside
traditional Christianity. They sometimes talked of a "religion of humanity" or
"rational religion." Many considered themselves the next generation of
transcendentalists. While the ideas are not the same as late-twentieth-century
humanism, the development in that direction was well underway in the thought of
women and men like Ida Hultin.
The Essential Oneness of Ethical Ideas Among All Men
Ida C. Hultin, 1893
Of ethical ideas, not of ethical systems or doctrines, am I bidden to
speak to-day. Let me say ethical sense. It will mean the same and be more
simple. The universality of the ethical sense.
Gravitation is not more surely a fact, it seems to us, than is the unity of
all life. If life is a whole, then that which is an essential quality of one
part must be common to the whole. Through all life not only an eternal purpose
runs, but an eternal moral purpose. Human history has been a struggle of man to
understand himself and the other selves, and beyond that the Infinite Self.
Right and wrong can never be found in outer conditions, forces or results.
These may furnish data by which decisions may be made in regard to the
usefulness or uselessness of certain ways of doing, but there is no element here
of rightness or wrongness. Not the flotsam and jetsam of exterior conduct, but
the conscious purpose, the imperative I ought, I will, changing by virtue of
divine necessity to I must — this is the ethical intent of all religions. For
out of the heart are the issues of life. The results of reasoning will inform
conscience and man will discover higher incentive for action, newer
interpretations of expediency and finer variations of choice, as he passes
through God's judgment days by the way of intellectual development. Evil, yea,
sin, will be found to be a necessary condition of advancement, the growing pain
of the soul; the unquenchable spirit will have its way with all these, yea, they
shall serve. Thus man grows, humanity rises.
This is not a question necessarily of theologies or churches. Humanity does not
reach its best life through any scheme of redemption, but through an age of long
struggle with God to help. It is not "What shall I do to be saved?" but "What
shall I do to inherit eternal life?" The moral man is obeying the God-voice,
whether he knows to call it that or not. If he denied theological classification
it will not be surprising if he enters heaven without a label. He who cannot
hear God, see God, feel God, in the living, potent things of every day, must buy
a book and find God and his law there. But if the church disband or his book is
burned, where shall he turn for authority? May he lie and steal now with
impunity? Pity the man whose moral nature is not a law unto itself.
Strive from it though we may, the truth appears when we are honest with
ourselves, that churches and creeds have never done the world's best work. The
church has never freed the slave of any land. Even while the armies were
gathering which eventually freed the slaves in this country, ministers were
preaching that slavery was divinely ordained and right according to the Word of
God. But the spirit of eternal justice, ignoring the dogma and its expounders,
moved against the wrong and overcame it. There were those who could read but one
page of God's word, but in the "terrible swift lightning" of that judgment day,
men read the law written on human hearts.
Try to evade the truth if you will, you must face it at last. No credal
church and no form of ecclesiasticism has ever lent itself to the emancipation
of the woman-half of humanity. She has suffered, and still suffers, because of
the results of dogmatic beliefs and theological traditions. But the ethical
sense of the humanity of which she is a part is lifting her out into the
fullness of religious liberty. She does not come into the fellowship to write
creeds nor to impose dogmas, but to cooperate in such high living as shall make
possible religiousness. She comes to help do away with false standards of
conduct. By demanding morality for morality, purity for purity, self-respecting
manhood for self-respecting womanhood, she will help remove odious distinctions
on account of sex, and make one code of morals do for both men and women. This
not alone in the western world, where circumstances have been more propitious
for woman's advancement, but in all parts of the world.
Churches as a whole do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the
sick, turn prisons into reformatories, and unite to stay the atrocities of
legalized cruelty. If churches were doing the humane work of the world there
would not be needed so many clubs and associations and institutions for
philanthropic work, and as outlets for the ethical sense. Men and women in the
churches and out of them do this work, while theologians are busy with each
other and the creeds; these men and women belonging to all countries and all
races, who perhaps have not had time to formulate their beliefs about humanity,
are busy working for it; who have never known how to define God, are finding him
in their daily lives. Faith? Yes, but "faith without works is dead." When the
ethical intent has been removed from a theological system it is dead faith.
Interesting as the history of a religious evolution, and not to be lightly
estimated, but as a working force in spiritual advancement it is useless.
It was well said from this platform by the preacher from Brooklyn a few days
ago, "Not Christianity but Christ I plead." Many of us are not particular about
the Christian name, but we do care about the Christ spirit, that same spirit
that has been the animating force in every prophet-life. The religious
aspiration which gave birth to the ethical sense that made to be alive old
forms, has passed on to vivify new forms and systems that yet shall have their
day and give place to others. "It is the spirit that giveth life, the letter
killeth."
When you remember some of the things that have been taught and have been done in
the name of Christ do you wonder that our brother from Japan said, "If such be
the Christian ethics, well, we are perfectly satisfied to be heathens." Do you
wonder that the calm-souled prophet from India pleads with us for a
manifestation of the spirit that was in Jesus? Do we need assurance that
boasting of our religion will not prove us to be religious? We talk too glibly,
yes, sometimes irreverently in our boastfulness about these high things. We need
to learn humility. We are only beginners after all, all of us. When asked for
definitions that define, man stands dumb, even before a grass blade, and he is
growing more reverent in contemplation of the all-wise, the all-true, the
all-good and all-loving. Even as a little child is he learning to enter the
kingdom. Spelling out the best name he knows for his highest ideal, and hoping,
loving, trusting more than he can word or think.
<Index to Etexts on Women's History>
Part of a collection of etexts on women's
history produced by Jone
Johnson Lewis. Editing and formatting © 1999-2003 Jone Johnson Lewis.
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