wisdom. What loftiness would be found in communing with them! — what wisdom might be gathered from the tablets of old time! what inspiration from the quickening breath of universal knowledge! I look for a generation that shall understand its position and its privilege!

0. D.

ART. II. The Christian Teacher, for April, 1839. London: containing the correspondence between the Clergymen and the Unitarian Ministers at Liverpool. Nine of the Lectures published on both sides.

UNITARIANS seem to have inherited the sentence of Ishmael, "every man's hand is against us." Our brethren will hardly allow that there is one point of sympathy between us and them. It must be admitted that we have an unshaken faith in our own system, for we are called on all sides to fight its battles. Differing on one or another point from all religious parties, we incur reproach from all. The advocates of the authority of tradition and antiquity murmur at the slights which we put upon the Fathers and the primitive customs of the Church, and we maintain against them that we know more about Christianity than these old Fathers did; and as to primitive customs, we scarcely give ourselves the trouble to dispute about what they really were, while we cover more ground by asserting that we have to do with them no further than we please. On these points we are at issue with the true descendants of the old Fathers, the men who have folios in their libraries, who buy up bodies of divinity, and know all about the councils of the Church. On the subject of discipline, there are three distinct parties who assail us with different weapons, Popes, Convocations, and Presbyteries. We care the less for these, indeed, for the weapons have been sadly blunted against each other before we feel them.

And then as to that vast array of tenets, which have been brought under the protection of creeds, confessions, and covenants, every holyday and Saint's-day in the calendar may be kept as the anniversary of a contention with us. Plans of

Christian Union, though seemingly designed with a full apprehension of all the varieties of Christian belief, and proposing a mantle of charity, apparently large enough to cover all who avow a Christian faith and labor for Christian ends, have, in every instance, most pointedly excluded Unitarians. The Gospel net, as it is drawn to the shore, evidently shows various specimens of bad and good, as the Savior predicted; but contrary to his authority, and very unwarrantably, the fishes have taken upon themselves the work of selection. After having been caught over and over again, and battered about by stronger fish, we are thrown back into the waters for revivification, or left high and dry upon the land.

It is hard in most cases to trace the origin of each new controversy against us. In our own country it is called forth sometimes by the appointment of a theological professor, or by the return of the annual prayer meeting for the conversion or perversion (whichever it might prove to be) of our University, or by the sundering of an old congregation, or by a trial for heresy in another denomination, (for heresy invariably assumes a garment of light, and that of course is Unitarianism.) In Scotland, if a member of the Establishment, or even an orthodox dissenter from it, presumes, as in a late instance, to go to a Unitarian chapel, he is "awfully reproved" for his offence, as were the obdurate Indians, the playing urchins, and the giggling negroes, by our good fathers, at the Thursday Lecture. Then a new controversy will arise about the insidious and soul-destroying heresy of Unitarianism. In England some new cause of strife comes with every day. The repeal of acts and tests, which never should have been passed, makes openings in the body politic, through which the monster creeps; and the moment he shows head or tail, down come the blows both from those who have long been inside, and from those who have just been admitted there. The Right Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of London, with a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year, and an equal number of parishioners in one city who have no clothing to cover their nakedness, and a million more in the same city who are the subjects of no pastoral care, and have no opportunity of attending public worship, however much disposed for it, the spiritual head of this diocese proposes a plan for the erection of new and free metropolitan churches; and one of the arguments found most forcible is the check which will thus be put upon dissent and Unitarianism. Two venerable

prelates of the Church dared to subscribe to the practical sermons of an aged Unitarian minister, who, as he is about to lay his grey hairs and virtues in the grave, would leave with his people a memorial of his long and faithful services. The Bishops vindicate their subscription on the ground of long acquaintance, close affection, and a most respectful sense of the sincerity and virtues of the author of the sermons. They quote the precedent of other prelates and dignitaries having dared to subscribe to the noblest vindication of the truth of the Christian faith which has ever been made, though it came from the study and the pen of a heretic. But all will not do; their under clergy call them to account, and the prelates ask forgiveness and receive a rebuke, contrary to all our ideas of subordination, for we had thought that a Bishop was to give, not to receive, instruction. An aged and much honored father among the Unitarian clergy asks and receives permission to dedicate a learned, but not controversial, work on the New Testament, to a little girl who lives in a large palace and is called a Queen. He is boldly rebuked for his audacity, and the struggling faith receives another blow. The funds which former piety bequeathed for purposes of charity, charity in the wide apostolic sense, have come by legal and just succession into the hands of Unitarians. They distribute them in the same spirit which founded them, to some who are not included by literal construction, and to others who are not excluded either by the letter or the spirit of the trust, the greater part to those who differ alike from themselves and the donors, and a small part to their own brethren, who do the same. The cry of heresy is found sufficient to wrench the funds from the lawful administrators of them. A Chancellor decides questions of divinity, expounds a catechism, and locks and unlocks the doors of the kingdom of heaven. A Unitarian minister promises to his little flock, and to all who would not raise or credit unjust calumnies, a vindication of the faith which he believes and loves, and a Major of Artillery, in time of peace, and without orders from head quarters, tears down the placards, and calls the preacher to account. Thus are we met by all sorts of weapons, from simple child's toys to deep artillery. The workings of the subtle foe appear everywhere. The great battery which is already opened in England, and which will probably decide the question there, is the subject of National Education. The Established Church finds that it requires all its forces to uphold itself. It could not

set up another great idol of the people by its side, even if it might wish to do so, and perhaps it might not be willing thus to divide the gold of the temple and the hearts of the worshippers. But the people there are beginning to instruct the government. They presume to think they have a right to control what they pay for, and to have what they are willing to pay for, and to have what they want. National Education they will have; and when its blessings are widely spread abroad, we may hope that the foolish prejudices, now so easily excited about our belief, and the opportunities which are afforded to some to misrepresent and oppose it, will be done away. Then may we look for a vindication and a triumph. And as there is something like a taunt and a boast in these last words, we may as well qualify them by making a remark, which we intended to utter in the course of this article, and which has often risen to our lips in public. Very frequently an assertion is advanced in the public meetings and publications of our body, the spirit of which is, that believers all over Christendom need only to know and understand our opinions to be ready with their whole hearts to embrace them. We do not believe this assertion. We must grant the charity, the respectful opinion and construction of the abilities and views of others, which we ask for our own. Most undoubtedly there are Christian scholars all over the world, who thoroughly understand our views, and yet do not think them conformable to revelation, do not approve them, and cannot believe them. Why and how this is so, we will not undertake to explain here, but will leave our remark with the simple statement, that we do not wish it to apply to the great fundamental points of Christian belief, for here we maintain that there is now but little difference of opinion. The questions at issue between us and our opponents are more of degrees to which a doctrine is true, than of the truth of the doctrine itself. It is not whether the human heart has elements of sin, not whether there is a relation between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, not whether the decisions of reason have any place in the interpretation of Scripture, but whether the human heart is wholly depraved, whether there is more or less relation between the Father, Son, and Spirit, whether reason is to have a wide or a limited range in interpreting Scripture. All who are not Unitarians are not fools. Many of them are most thorough Biblical scholars and critics, calm and dispassionate inquirers, earnest disciples of truth, generous and dignified in the treatment of those who differ from them.

Meanwhile there are two problems, which, until explained, we must be allowed to advance as highly in our favor, and which have never been explained in any Unitarian controversy which has ever occurred in England. We speak of England, for among ourselves the first problem which we are about to state has not so much application. Why should they be called deceivers, perverters of the truth, infidels, sophists, and by other opprobrious titles, who, after having used all the means which others have in the search for Scripture truth, maintain what they honestly believe to be such, at their great worldly loss and discomfort ? The situation of a faithful clergyman of the Established Church in England is one of the most delightful and satisfying which this uncertain world offers to any one. Comfort, happiness, esteem, easy duty, a sense of usefulness, high rewards, all as pure and worthy as a pure heart can look to wait on it. Earth has no more lovely spots than the rural villages of England, no purer hearts than they educate and bless, no more opened hands than are there stretched out in kindness and hospitality. Now, if the incumbent of one of these villages sincerely believes the faith which he professes, if his heart and conscience are in his. work, he may thank God morning and night with the deepest gratitude for the path of duty and of joy which is his daily walk. His weekly ministrations are offered in a Church, every stone of whose walls, every tablet of whose pavement preaches with the venerable savor of centuries. The best examples of humanity for a score of generations, whose virtues are perpetuated along the aisles, preach with him. He reads a service which is ever as fresh and cheerful to the true worshipper, as the ivy which climbs the spire. Those, who need sound wisdom and will profit by it, wait on his lips. He is the teacher, adviser, and friend of his flock, the repository of every sorrow, the welcome counsellor and guest at every hearth. The highest honors, which the state can bestow in the noblest sphere, wait on his faithfulness. Neither monarch nor noble feels humbled in his companionship. He may leave behind him a widow and orphans secure from the fangs of poverty. But we might write page after page in describing the attractivenes of such a situation. Those who know through what a flowery and fruitful path Ken and Herbert and Crabbe have walked can imagine it all. Now, many of the brightest tints. in this picture are to be darkened, if you put in the place of a parish clergyman a dissenting minister, especially a Unitarian