Things Commonly Believed Among Us
Proposed by William
Channing Gannett at the Western Unitarian Conference, 1887
"We believe that to love the Good and to live the Good is the supreme thing
in religion;
"We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matters of
religious belief;
"We honor the Bible and all inspiring scripture, old and new;
"We revere Jesus, and all holy souls that have taught men truth and
righteousness and love, as prophets of religion;
"We believe in the growing nobility of Man; We trust the unfolding
Universe as beautiful, beneficent, unchanging Order; to know this order is
truth; to obey it is right and liberty and stronger life;
"We believe that good and evil invariably carry their own recompense, no
good thing being failure and no evil thing success; that heaven and hell are
states of being; that no evil can befall the good man in either life or
death; that all things work together for the victory of the Good;
"We believe that we ought to join hands and work to make the good things
better and the worst good, counting nothing good for self that is not good
for all;
"We believe that this self-forgetting, loyal life awakes in man the sense
of union here and now with things eternal - the sense of deathlessness; and
this sense is to us an earnest of the life to come;
"We worship One-in All -- that life whence suns and starts derive their
orbits and the soul of man its Ought, -- that Light which lighteth every man
that cometh into the world, giving us power to become the sons of God, --
that Love with which ours souls commune."
Proposed by William
Channing Gannett at the Western Unitarian Conference, 1887
