the unspeakable value of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, and not desire that others should participate in the joy, and yet be benevolent? How can he believe that the first and great commandment is, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is ONE Lord," and deem it a matter of trifling moment, whether professed followers of Christ keep it or break it? How can he acknowledge and reverence the words of the Saviour, "The true worshippers shall worship the FATHER in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him," and yet be careless whether the worship. offered be true or false, idolatrous or Christian, to the Father only, or to associated and imaginary divinities? There can, there ought to be no halting between two opinions here. There can, there ought to be no dovetailing of opinion on so solemn and all important a subject. Worship is mockery if not offered "in spirit and in truth." "The true worshippers shall worship the FATHER." Compromise, abnegation, putting out of sight the hallowed and hallowing truth, is treason against the Majesty of heaven and earth. The knowledge of that truth is life eternal. "This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." To act as if that knowledge had not been communicated, is perversely to divest ourselves of Christian privilege, and for the sake of an imaginary good to deprive ourselves and others. of an invaluable truth. The names which fitly and accurately designate the peculiarities of Christian belief, should not be abandoned. Wherefore the sacrifice? That we may have nick-names thrust upon us, whether we will or no? That we may entice the unwary to our fold, through feigned words which signify any thing or nothing? So did not Christ, so ought not we. It is his declaration, "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth." To him who thinks he has attained that "truth as it is in Jesus," the duty is equally binding. Unitarian aptly and truly describes the believer in One God in One Person; but as this belief is in one sense shared by the Jew and the Mahometan, Christian is added or prefixed, to show that on the authority, and as a disciple of Christ, the belief is held, and that Unity and Paternity on the same divine authority, are blended in the faith of the Unitarian Christian. The conception that men can associate for religious worship without belief, that is, without a creed, would be ludicrous, if it were not melan

choly. The attempts already professedly made with this purpose, are signal failures. Creeds are propounded in their very commencement, in the very fact of association. How should it be otherwise? How shall two act together, unless they be agreed? And two or three associated together for any definite purpose, as much constitute a Sect, as do any of the largest communities into which the world is divided. And why all this dread of manfully upholding what each conceives to be Christian Principle? What hinders the most strenuous advocate for the purity and enlightenment of Unitarian Christianity, blending with his maintenance and diffusion of his Christian principles, efforts for the education of the people, and every species of social reform? Are those labours incompatible? We trow not. They illustrate and enforce each other. The men most respected and honoured in the community, are not the shirkers of principle, the all things to all men, the wooers of popularity, but those who standing fast in adherence to Christian principle, and zealous in its propagation, are ever ready to uphold the rights of the people, to advocate civil and religious liberty for all mankind, to diminish by every means the sum of ignorance, wretchedness and misery, and herald the true, healthful, Christian enlightenment, peace, freedom, and salvation of the world.

We gladly transfer to our pages from The Inquirer of October 13, a Newspaper, which, under the guidance of its present enlightened Editor, is doing good service to Christian truth, and human freedom and happiness, a Letter on "Christian Churches," in the spirit of which we heartily coincide.

SIR,-It is impossible to read the letters of your correspondent, Mr. Solly, without feeling his heart is in what he writes, and that he sincerely wishes the spiritual welfare of his fellow-creatures. But while I sympathize with him in his wish to see more zeal among Unitarians, and more external evidence of the power of their faith to "evangelize society," I think the plan he proposes for the accomplishment of his object, while totally inadequate for the purpose, calculated to do great injury to the cause of pure Unitarianism.

Educated in the Church of England, which, being still the faith of those nearest and dearest to me, has peculiar claims on my affection, I have not hesitated to quit her communion from a profound conviction of the truth of Unitarianism; and as I have made some sacrifice for the adoption of that name, and as to me it is associated with all that is pure and lovely in the Christian religion, and sug

gestive of the calm happiness and peace of soul I have acquired under its influence, I may be pardoned if I fain would say a word or two in defence of the distinctive appellation of my adopted church, before she is robbed of it by Mr. Solly, and his fellow-advocates of non-sectarianism.

Nobody dislikes "sectarianism" more than I do, when it degenerates into bigotry, and begets intolerance in our conduct towards the opinions of others. Unitarians, I say, be unsectarian in your acts of charity, be unsectarian in your schools, be unsectarian in your politics; let no consideration of sect or creed influence you in your deeds of love and mercy towards your fellow creatures, but sectarian in your worship of God; let no man beguile you to part with a name hallowed by the piety and adorned with the learning of your ancestors, who won for you, through every species of sorrow and persecution, the liberty to bear it openly, and without fear. Let no one tear from the mast the sacred colours nailed there by Priestley, Lindsey, and a host of saints, who now cry to you from their graves to continue the good fight, and not to sink into a nameless no-sect-at-all, heterogeneous mass of worshippers, without fixed opinions, or a definite purpose.

Mr. Solly says Unitarians "differ widely among themselves:' doubtless they do, on what are to them minor points; the right of private judgment is their undoubted privilege, and while they exercise that privilege, different minds will differently interpret some passages of the Gospel; but they have one rallying point, one bond of union, they are "Unitarians;" they worship One God, the Father, through our Lord, Jesus Christ; destroy this link, and the chain breaks; the fold, now small enough, would be still further scattered; the lukewarm find an excuse for desertion; and a door be opened for the admission of all sorts of infidelity and schism. Again, it would be a concession to the Orthodox; and why concede an inch? the concession should come from them. We have never refused to act with them in any undertaking for the welfare of our fellow-creatures; it is they who have refused to act with us. Have they not hunted us from the mountain to the plain, and from the plain to the mountain, till, like stags at bay, we have been obliged to turn, in self-defence, upon our pursuers? and then, forsooth, Mr. Solly complains of the "controversial attitude," necessitated by the adoption of the Unitarian name. Whose fault is it? Have not these so-called Orthodox ever persecuted, and do they not still persecute us? Do they not constantly hold us up to obloquy and scorn, misrepresent our doctrines, and revile at all we hold most dear and sacred? Would they not have robbed us of our chapels? But, happily, the despoiling host was routed, in one of the most brilliant debates that ever graced the British Senate.

But, are all these reasons for sinking the obnoxious name? No!

but rather reasons for loving it better and clinging to it more closely. Unitarianism now calls upon her children to defend her, attacked within the precincts of her sanctuary. Oh! may they hear her voice, and be up and doing; awake from their guilty slumbers, to a due sense of the noble warfare in which they are soldiers, and evince their love for the "faith once delivered to the saints," by ridding their public worship of the reproach of coldness, and by more apparent devotedness to the cause of their religion, rid themselves of charges, now with considerable truth cast in their teeth by these non-sectarians. Let the world see that to know "what Unitarianism is,"* is to know what "Christianity is," in all its pure and solemn beauty. I believe it to be the glorious privilege of the Unitarian church to rid "Christianity of a weight that sinks it," and so, although I consider the controversy to be exhausted as to arguments, I consider it still the duty of her ministers to reiterate those arguments, and to tear from the august face of Truth, every vestige of the veil of superstition and error that has hid, and still hides, from multitudes in Christendom, the light of her benign countenance. It is because I consider "Unitarianism" to be the refuge in which "the multitudes welling up from literature, philosophy, criticism," would find a haven of peace, a solution of all their difficulties, and an answer to all their doubts; because I believe it to be the "resting place" which Mr. Macaulay "wonders was never found by men on their way from superstition to infidelity, or on their way back from infidelity to superstition,"† that I would have her preserved in all her integrity. Feeling this, and feeling that the Unitarian church, in her sectarian character alone, can arrest the atheism Mr. Solly fears among the rising generation, I beg him to turn from the "wants of the age" to the "wants of the Unitarian church," from the "demands of the age upon the church," to the demands of Unitarianism upon her worshippers, to devote his energies and his talents to the development of her rich resources, to the kindling again into a bright blaze the zeal and enthusiasm of her followers, which does but slumber and is not dead. This is a practical, definite object, infinitely more calculated to forward Mr. Solly's object, the evangelizing society, than building up on paper theories for an ideal church, which, like De Lamartine's dreams of a social republic, would utterly fail when put in practice.

I must now conclude, Mr. Editor, lest I trespass too much on your space; but before I do so, let me call on all Unitarians who love their faith, who believe it to be the "truth as it is in Jesus," to rally round the standard of their church, to let no one rob them of a name that

* There is an infinite value in learning what Christianity is; but what are we the better for ascertaining the same of Unitarianism? Vide, Mr. Solly's letter in In quirer, September 15th.

† Essay on Ranke's History of the Popes.

links them together as the worshippers of One God the Father; and whether our banner float proudly from the Cathedral tower, or hang mournfully as the flag of Hungarian liberty, alas! does now, in some cave of the mountain, still let us be ready to defend her, a gallant, united, devoted band.

I am, Sir, yours respectfully,

September 22nd, 1849.

A CONVERTED UNITARIAN.

REVIEW.

A Popular Introduction to the Bible. By John Wright, B.A. pp. 144. London, E. T. Whitfield; Manchester, Johnson, Rawson, & Co. SUCH a Book as this we have long wished to see. Few things have been more talked about, and really less understood than the Bible. The popular triumph which wrested the Book of Books from the cloister of the Monk, and the sole custody of the Priesthood, and which vindicated its individual interpretation as a Christian right, led thousands, in their violent reaction from the biddings of usurped Church authority, to indiscriminate and irrational reliance on mere verbal Bible authority. Sufficient was it in their estimation, in justification of any deed, to quote the letter of Scripture, although the act itself might be in flagrant violation of the morality and spirit of Christ Jesus, Received and read implicitly as a Code of law, its every sentence believed to contain the enunciation of some separate and essential truth, gross and pernicious error necessarily resulted. History was confounded with prophecy, precept with narrative, errors stated to be confuted with truths recorded to be believed, examples to be shunned with those to be followed, bloodshed with peace, slavery with freedom, tyranny over conscience with the liberty with which Christ makes free. In all these assumptions the very nature of the Bible was misunderstood. Equally was it misunderstood when every sentence, every word, was considered to be imbued with infallible inspiration, when to compare Scripture with Scripture was thought treason to its authority, and to discriminate the history of the dispensations of Heaven for the moral educattion of the children of men, and narration of the bye past events of humanity from the obligations and duties, and spirit, and purpose of the disciple of Jesus, were deemed dispite to the Spirit of God. This worship of the mere letter of Scripture, this confounding of all time, Patriarchal, Jewish, Prophetical, Christian, this Babel confusion of the language