system to the text; it leads the mind to inquire, not, What says the Scripture? What is the precise meaning of these terms? What is the scope of this argument? What is the object of this series of observation? What should I think had I never heard of systems or isms or wonderful keys? But how can this passage be reconciled with the hypothesis? How can it be made to support the system? How may the key be introduced so as to move among the wards of this intricate lock without a touch of interruption? And accordingly this hypothesis is so dear to the persons who assume it, that they always value it far above the Scriptures: the real feeling of their mind is-Whatever the Scriptures teach, it must be something consistent with this hypothesis; and many, very many of them say, if it be not so, the Scripture must be false: it is full of contradiction and absurdity; it will not do; we will give it up; we will burn our Bibles. There is nothing for which Unitarians have been visited with more obloquy; nothing which has excited against them more horror; nothing which has tended more to represent them in the view of the multitude, as "contemners of God and enemies of the cross of Christ," and to make even the more candid orthodox believer say, without doubt they must perish everlastingly, than their rejection of the doctrine of Atonement-and certainly there is no impression which the modern advocates of this doctrine have laboured with more earnestness and more success to keep up and to strengthen. And yet these very advocates themselves totally abandon the doctrine: they no more believe it than they believe the doctrine of purgatory; they deprive Unitarians of the Christian name and consign them to unutterable torments in hell-fire for ever, for not admitting the truth of what they themselves expressly deny. Every one who has read with care the modern defences of this dogma must have been struck with this fact; but Mr. Wardlaw has afforded such demonstration of it, that we cannot help directing the attention of the reader particularly to it, and offering this gentleman our sincere congratulations on the light which, on this subject, has beamed upon his mind. He has levelled with his own hand this middle wall of partition between us; he is no longer a stranger and an alien; with a safe conscience may he give the right hand of fellowship to his revered and beloved friend Mr. Belsham, for on this one point at least, they are agreed, that the doctrine of the atonement is " utterly inconsistent with vine administration." the grandeur and majesty of the Di What is the doctrine of atonement? Hear Luther," Christ became the greatest transgressor, murderer, thief, rebel and blasphemer that ever was or could be in all the world; for he being made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, is not now an innocent person and without sin, is not now Mary, but a sinner. the Son of God, born of the Virgin fore, the law found him among thieves, When, thereit condemned and killed him as a thief"! Hear Calvin,-" Christ makes the Father favourable and merciful unto blood of the cross. us-God appeases himself through the satisfaction by which God being disThere is no other pleased may be made favourable and appeased."-Hear the Confession of Faith," Christ, by his obedience did fully discharge the debt of all those who are thus justified, and did make Father's justice in their behalf." a proper, real and full satisfaction to his thodox faith may be presumed to If, then, these standards of the orknow what the doctrine of atonement is, and if there be any meaning in language, this doctrine teaches, that Christ did endure in the garden and on the cross all the misery which, on account of their transgressions, would have been inflicted upon those who in consequence of this suffering God are saved throughout eternity; that able and merciful," being pleased to was appeased, and became "favouraccept the sufferings of his Son, in the place of those due to the real offenders. atonement, Mr. Wardlaw proposes to In his discourse on the doctrine of illustrate and prove the five following propositions: "1. It is in consideration of the sacri fice of Christ, that God is propitious to 4. interest in the pardoning mercy of God, through Jesus Christ, is obtained by faith. 5. In resting our hope of forgiveness on the atoning sacritice of Christ, we build on a sure foundation." * "The proper idea of propitiation," he adds, "is, rendering the Divine Being propitious or favourable.-We must beware, however, of understanding by this, any thing like the production of a change in the Divine character; as if the blessed God required a motive to pity, an induce ment to be merciful, a price for love and grace. Far be such a thought from our minds! We ought to conceive of Jehovah as eternally, infinitely, and immutably compassionate and merciful. That any transition is produced in his nature, by the mediation of Christ, from previous vindictive cruelty to benevolence and pity, (as the advocates of the doctrine of atonement are, either through ignorance or a worse principle, accustomed to speak) is a supposition full of blasphemous impiety. God has been from eternity, and to eternity must continue the same; without variableness or the shadow of turning.' Being absoIntely perfect, he cannot change to the better for perfection cannot be improved. The slightest alteration, therefore, of what he is, would deduct from that infinite excellence, without which he could not be God." This is still farther illustrated by the following important observation, which we could wish every reader to impress upon his mind, as the opinion of one of the most zealous and popular defenders of the orthodox faith. "The rendering the Divine Being propitious, in this view, refers, it is obvious, (and the distinction is one of great importance on this subject) not to the production of love in his character, or in the particular state of his mind towards fallen men, but simply to the mode of its expression. The inquiry is, how may the blessed God express his love, so as effectually to express, at the same time, his infinite and immutable abhorrence of sin; and thus, in making known the riches of his mercy, to display, in connexion with it, the inflexibility of his justice, and the unsullied perfection of his holiness."-P. 207. Now this is not the orthodox, but the Arian view of the doctrine of atonement, expressed too, in the very language of the Arian hypothesis. "By offering himself a sacrifice on the cross, he vindicated the honour of those laws which sinners had broken, *Discourses, p. 193. and rendered the exercise of favour to them consistent with the holiness and wisdom of God's government." Sermons on the Christian Doctrine. Richard Price, D. D. S. III. p. 85. By We would therefore earnestly appeal to the good sense and correct feeling of Mr. Wardlaw, whether it be ingenuous or just to judge so harshly of Unitarians, and to endeavour to exhibit them to that part of the Christian world whose ear he has, as objects of so much horror; as persons who are in the utmost danger of pedoctrine, respecting which a great rishing everlastingly, for rejecting a many of them think as he himself does; and the remaining number of whom depart much less widely from his own opinion than he does from the orthodox standards. the following singular passage :— "While it appears a most important Here Mr. Wardlaw distinctly affirms, that the language generally held on this subject is inconsistent with its grandeur and majesty, and derogatory to Christ; yet while he pleads for the term equivalent, he objects to the phrase exact equivalent. Jesus Christ paid an equivalent to the Divine jus tice, but he did not pay an exact equivalent; and while it is absolutely essential to salvation to believe that he paid an equivalent, it is derogatory to him to suppose that he paid an exact equivalent! Now this is a distinction, which, as coming from a grave polemic, one should think it impossible ever to forget. In precise language (and where eternal salvation is at stake, surely it ought to be precise) there cannot, in the nature of things, be an equivalent without its being exact: the addition of the term exact to that of equivalent is a tautology; for if I pay an equivalent for a thing, I pay precisely what that thing 1 is, upon the whole, deemed to be worth. Whatever objections therefore lie against the application of the phrase "an exact equivalent," to this subject, must in the nature of things apply to the term "equivalent;" for the first is nothing more than a redundant expression of the last. If it be said that a person may receive as an equivalent what is not really so, it must be admitted that he may; but then it is a palpable inaccuracy to say, that he receives an equivalent. If it be argued that the case is similar with regard to the subject we are considering; that Jesus Christ does not pay to God an equivalent, but something which he is pleased to accept as an equivalent, this is a proof that the original doctrine of satisfaction is abandoned and ought to be distinctly marked. Mr. Wardlaw adds, p. 239:"It is common to speak of the blessings of salvation as purchased by the death of Christ for his people; nor is there any heresy, or material error, in such modes of expression. In the New Testament, however, I think it is almost invariably the case that when the idea of purchase is introduced, it is the purchase of the persons themselves. For them the price is paid. They are the redeemed of the Lord;'-his purchased possession' -his peculiar property :-redeemed from the bondage of sin and Satan, into the glorious liberty of the children of God; redeemed from death and hell, to the possession and hope of spiritual and eternal life. YE are not your own; for are bought with a price.” rian view of the subject, and that view This again is precisely the Unitacan scarcely be stated in more exact language. If theologians deemed it au imperative duty to affix a precise meaning to the terms they employ, and were anxious to ascertain the exact sense in which they are used by each other, how much less would the differences How which divide them appear! many uncharitable feelings would be checked! How many angry invectives would be suppressed! How much true glory would be shed on our common Christianity! rians of Scotland with giving an exagMr. Wardlaw charges the Unitagerated account of their number, and being very boastful of their day of accusation with a pious prayer, that small things; and accompanies his it may long continue a day of small it shall long continue such. things and a confident prediction that "It is not of their doctrine," he says, (Unit. Incap. of Vind. p. 396), “that God hath said, It shall accomplish that which I please, and prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. It is not to their planting,' or to their 'watering,' that he has promised to give an increase.' They have sown their handful,' not of corn,' but of tares ; and they are looking for a plentiful erop. But, the Lord of the harvest,' we trust, will disappoint their expectations. Their seed want the showers of the Divine blessing; and never, either on the mountains or in the valleys of Caledonia, shall it shake with prosperous fruit.' It shall be 'as the grass on the house-tops, which withereth before it groweth up; wherewith the mower sheaves, his bosom.'" filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth Notwithstanding the bold presumption of infallibility and the self-complacent spiritual pride which this language implies, and even notwithstanding the fearful prediction it contains, we hope and believe the Unitarians of Scotland will persevere undismayed in the unreserved and intrepid avowal of what they conceive to be the truth as it is in Jesus. They may not be numerous; the applause of listening and admiring multitudes, the reward of the cherisher of deep-rooted preju dices and favourite passions may not be their's; and for their fidelity, they are resolved not to expose themselves to the peril of his disapprobation, because the multitude clamour against them, and because they are reproached with being few from fear or from shame. To meet together for public worship, and to conduct that worship according to their own views of scriptural truth, is a duty from the obliga tion of which nothing can release them : and where circumstances will not allow them to form a society, or to join in public worship, their own dwellings ought to become their temples and themselves the ministers, offering to the Great Father of their spirits, the only God, the sincere adoration of their hearts, according to the simplicity of the uncorrupted gospel, and through their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is not to gain converts that they hold their public mectiugs; it is to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience: it is not the zeal of proselytism which animates them; it is the wish to discharge their duty. And if they do avail themselves of these public occasions to state their opinions; if, while there is a combination of all classes against them; while the churchmau and the seceder, the minister and the people, the pulpit and the press all join in one general shout may be visited with all sort of obloquy, misrepresentation and abuse. Mr. Wardlaw, and such men as Mr. Wardlaw, may do every thing in their power to increase the popular odium against them, and to make the whole religious community, of Scotland regard them with horror. They will not be moved. They have duties to perform to their conscience and their God, which make them look with comparative indifference on the good and the ill opinion of their fellow-men, With calm and steady attention to the evidence before them, to form their own judgment on the great concerns of religion and obedience; boldly to avow the conclusions to which their investigations may conduct them; and to worship their Creator according to the dictates of their conscience, are rights of which, thank God, they cannot be deprived; and which they know how to value and how to exercise. They may suffer in their reputation; they may even suffer in their property, and they may suffer from the importunities and resentments of their families and friends: but their duty to the truth they know is paramount to every earthly consideration, and will not allow them to hesitate a moment respecting the course they must adopt. The time, they reflect, is short; an awful responsibility, they feel, attaches to them; and when their last earthly hour shall arrive (as soon it must arrive) and the mind shall involuntarily look back upon the conduct of life, they are well aware, they will be unable to endure the consciousness that they have countenanced what they conceived to be error on the most momentous subjects, because it was countenanced by the multitude; that they have suffered the ignorant and bigoted cry of heresy and blasphemy to frighten them from their adherence to the simplicity of the gospel; that they have sacrificed their integrity to their ease, and purchased a false peace at the expense of a blameless conscience. No, they tremble at the thought of standing before the bar of him who is appointed to be their judge, and who died a martyr to the truth, with the inward conviction that they have shrunk from the few inconveniences to which an adherence to it may now subject them; and they "Heresy, blasphemy, the contemners of Scripture, the enemies of the cross of Christ are come hither;" if, while all thus condemn them, and all condemn them unheard, they do associate together, to endeavour in some degree to check the torrent, to silence the calumniator, to expose the malignant reviling of the bigot, to supply the deficiencies of the half-informed, to remove the misconceptions of the illinformed, to answer the sophist, to reprove the scorner, to reason, to expostulate, to instruct and to defend, who will censure them?-With intrepidity and perseverance, with meekness and charity, with hearts glowing with benevolence and devotion, and with a conduct, wholly and uniformly consistent with the genuine spirit of Christianity, let them go on. And then if "the Lord of the harvest" should not give an increase to their planting and to their watering; if, on the contrary, it should please him to make the heart of this people fat, and to make their ears heavy and to shut their eyes, so that they see not with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor understand with their heart, nor be converted and healed: if the seed they sow shall indeed be as the grass on the house-tops which withereth before it groweth up, the disadvantage will not be to them, they will have discharged their duty; and He who rewards the conduct of his creatures, not according to its success but its virtue, will fill them with a more ele-vated and lasting joy than those have ever experienced, who are "in great power, and who spread like a green bay-tree!" S. S. A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, viewed in Connexion with the Modern Astronomy. By Thomas Chalmers, D. D. Minister of the Tron 'Church, Glasgow. Fifth Edition. Glasgow and London. Pp. 275. 1817. F popularity were an unerring test before us might safely defy criticism. It has not only exceeded in speedy circulation any collection of sermons within our memory, but has fairly surpassed the most popular poems of the day, and rivalled the newest and most fashionable novels. Nor has the success of its author, in his personal ministrations, been less splendid. He has drawn together, by the fame of his eloquence, all ranks and classes and characters; senators and artizans, peers and mechanics, patriots and pensioners, ladies of every rank and of every age, persons of all religions and persons of no religion, who have eagerly pressed to catch even the most distant accents of this Northern Prodigy. Never perhaps were heat, and crowd, and want of accommodation represented in the newspapers with such attractive force since the days of the "Critic"-and never were these charming announcements more successful. And if we are to believe the same faithful and disinterested authorities, the auditors felt that their highest expectations had been more than exceeded. "A wave of delighted sensibility," such as Dr. Chalmers sent through the "mighty throng" of in numerable angels, seems to have un See p. 169. dulated over all the benches;—and, if we are rightly informed, the more de. cisive and apparent wave of handkerchiefs was only restrained by a timely recollection, that the place of worship was not a theatre. To crown the whole, the newspaper admirers of thre orator called on the nation to award to him the palm of modern genius, and to place him next to Milton in the British temple of fame! All this, however, goes but a little way towards proving his intrinsic excellence. Those who are carried away by eloquence of popular preachers are not precisely the parties who confer that permanent renown, which is the decisive proof and the true reward of genius. The voice of the people may be very potent in political discussions, but it is feeble in all abstract questions and matters which relate to imagination and taste. The majority of those who occasionally read or hear might, indeed, confer a certain duration on things in themselves worthless if they But this they cannot be. Having no fixed principles of taste; no real perception of intellectual excellence; no nice and fine discrimination of beauty or truth; no lasting sympathy with sublimity or grandeur; they love a perpetual variety, and are ever transferring their applause to new favourites. Those, on the other hand, who are gifted with a true sensibility to the works of genius, judge from feelings which are uniform and deeply interwoven with the whole tenour of their existence. They love works of imagitation, not merely for their brilliant and effective passages, but for those retiring beauties which escape all'eyes, ungifted by something of "the vision and the faculty divine." These too do not lose their attraction, by frequent observance; for they are calculated to awaken delicious trains of meditation, "ever charming, ever new.” They become more dear to the tan of taste the more he observes them. He'recurs to them as to recollections of infancy, which time and frequent contemplation only render more sacred. His admiration, therefore, is calculated to endure. And as the sentiments by which his love and veneration are excited are common to minds of a similar temperament—to all, in fact, who have 'a real and genuine sympathy with the |