The preface by Mr. Savage gives the reasons, clearly and concisely, why a book like this is needed. It answers a great demand, and it will supply a serious deficiency. Having had the privilege of reading the contents very thoroughly, I gladly record my satisfaction in the character of the work, my hope of its wide acceptance and use, my appreciation of the author's motives in preparing it. The questions and answers allow of supplementing, of individual handling, of personal direction. It is not a hard-andfast production. There is a large liberty of detail, explanation, and unfolding. The doctrinal positions are in accord with rational religion and liberal Christianity, the critical judgments are based on modern scholarship, and the great aim throughout is to assist an inquirer or pupil to a positive, permanent faith. If any one finds comments and criticisms which at first sight seem needless, let it be remembered that a Unitarian catechism must give reasons, point out errors, and trace causes: it cannot simply dogmatize. I am sure that in the true use of this book great gains will come to our Sundayschools, to searchers after truth, to our cause. EDWARD A. HORTON. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. This little Catechism has grown out of the needs of my own work. Fathers and mothers have said to me, "Our children are constantly asking us questions that we cannot answer.' Perfectly natural! Their reading and study have not been such as to make them familiar with the results of critical scholarship. The great modern revolution of thought is bewildering. This is an attempt to make the path of ascertained truth a little plainer. This is the call for help in the home. Besides this, a similar call has come from the Sunday-school. Multitudes of teachers have little time to ransack libraries and study large works. This is an attempt, then, to help them, by putting in their hands, in brief compass, the principal things believed by Unitarians concerning the greatest subject. The list of reference books that follows the questions and answers will enable those who wish to do so to go more deeply into the topics suggested. It is believed that this Catechism will be found adapted to any grade of scholars above the infant class, provided the teacher has some skill in the matter of interpretation. GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. Published weekly. Price $1.50 a year, or 5 cents single copy Entered at the Post-office, Boston, Mass., as second-class mail matter. DEC 30 1893 MR. SAVAGE'S BOOKS. Beliefs about Man. 130 pages. 1882 SERMONS AND ESSAYS. Christianity the Science of Manhood. 187 pages. 1873 $1.00 The Religion of Evolution. 253 pages. 1876 Life Questions. 159 pages. 1879 1.50 1 00 I 00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1883 1.00 1.00 1.00 1885 1.00 Social Problems. 189 pages. 1886. 1.00 My Creed. 204 pages. 1887. Religious Reconstruction. 246 pages. Four Great Questions concerning God. 86 pp. The Evolution of Christianity. 178 pages. 1892 .25 1.00 .25 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.50 .50 -75 1.00 Mr. Savage's weekly sermons are regularly printed in pamphlet form in Unity Pulpit." Subscription price, for the season, $1.50; single copy, 5 cents. GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST. "Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?". MATT. xxii. 41, 42. I TAKE it for granted that most of you, at any rate, are familiar with the fact that this celebration did not originate with the birth of Jesus, but it is far older than Christianity. Perhaps no one special feature of the day's celebration but has come to us from some outside source. We can trace the hope that this day gives expression to back to the very twilight of human history. But that does not take away from the fact that to-day, with all the dwellers in Christendom, our thoughts turn to the Nazarene, and that Jesus is the central figure of our Christmas thought and of our Christmas celebration. This question that I propose to ask, and as briefly as may be to answer, is a crucial question. The answer to it determines the place where we stand, the point of view. from which we look out over human history, in the light of which we interpret the past and look forward to the future. Nearly nineteen hundred years ago a little babe was born in Nazareth of Galilee. His father was Joseph, the carpenter: his mother's name was Mary. He was taken to the temple, according to the ordinary Jewish rites, and received his name, and an offering was made,- an offering of redemption, as it was called; for the first-born, according to Jewish custom, belonged to God, and, if he were not offered to God in his own person, some offering as a substitute must be made. We suppose that this little boy grew up quietly in his home, like any other child of his age and time, educated, perhaps, in such Jewish schools as there may have been in his village, accustomed to attend the service in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. We get a glimpse of him at the age of twelve, as he is taken up for the first time to Jerusalem to visit the temple on the occasion of one of the great national festivals. Then all is silence concerning him until he appears, an enthusiastic young man, at the baptism of John, ready to cast his influence in favor of the new kingdom of God, whose expectation was in all the air. Then a brief life follows after the death of John has thrown the leadership into his hand; and he preaches throughout the cities and villages and along the ways of Galilee, telling those wonderful stories that we call parables. He faces the high priest and the elders of his religion in Jerusalem, and flames against their abuses and their wrongs, and plants the seed by his teaching of a wider outgrowth and farther spreading religion than any of which these people had ever dreamed. He becomes the radical leader of his time, the lay preacher, the one in whose words there is promise for the future. At the last, and, as the result of his word, uncompromising, earnest, spoken as he believes, he comes into conflict with the authorities of his time, and is put to death. Such, in a few words, is all we know about the history of this man who has occupied a larger part of the thought of the civilized world than almost all others put together. Let us, then, this morning, the morning when we celebrate his advent, ask the question which he himself asked of the Pharisees," What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?" On the answer to this will of course depend the relation in which we stand toward him, what he shall be to us, and perhaps largely what we shall be to the world. When Jesus himself asked this question,- it is well for us to note in a brief consideration of the text,- he had nothing whatever in mind corresponding to the meaning which attaches to the question as we ask it to-day. It was merely a question as to the popular opinion of the time concerning the Messiah, as to whose son he was to be. Jesus in the words that he utters does not claim to be the Messiah him |