contradicted my conscience, I should say that probably my conscience
was wrong. I should wait at any rate, and try to find out. But, when I
find that the condition of things is simply this, that certain
fallible, unjust, uneducated, barbaric people have said that God has
done certain things, then it is another matter. I have no direct word
from God: I have only the report of men whose authority I have no
adequate reason to accept.

At any rate, the world came to the point where it demanded that
goodness on earth should be goodness up in heaven, too; that God should
at least be as just and fair as we expect men to be. And that, if you
will think it out a little carefully, is enough to revolutionize the
theology of the world; for the picture of the character of God as
contained in the old theologies is even horribly unjust, as judged by
any human standard.

In the third place, Unitarianism sprang out of a new elevation of love
and tenderness. As men became more and more civilized, they became more
tender-hearted; and they found it impossible to believe that the Father
in, heaven should not be as kind and loving as the best father on
earth.

And here, again, if you think it out, you will find that this is enough
to compel a revolution of all the old theological ideas of the world.

Just as soon, then, as the civilized modern world became free, there
was a new expansion of the sense of the right to think; there was a new
expansion of conscience, the insistent demand for justice; there was a
new expansion of tenderness and love; and out of these, characterized
by these, having these in one sense for its very soul and body, came