christian profession; it will bring its requirements and its motives more and more into view; it will assist, in short, to make our doctrines practical principles. In proportion as this is done, will they flourish. Our efforts will aid and encourage those of others; and our opponents will perceive, what they sometimes doubt, that we think our Unitarianism of real value. While, on the

other hand, in proportion as it is regarded as a matter of speculation, and the progress of it viewed with indifference, must its cause decay.

To draw to a conclusion.-The delightful picture of the Christian church which is presented by the words of the Apostle with which I began my discourse, (Eph. iv. 16,)*

* This passage, with its context, may be represented as follows: Eph. iv. 11. And he appointed some to be Apostles; and some, Prophets; and some, Evangelists-persons whose peculiar office it was to assist the apostles in preaching the gospel among foreign na. tions, and in planting churches; and some, Pastors and Teachersto discharge the ordinary duties of the Ministry in particular churches, and to instruct the young and ignorant in the principles of the Christian religion. And all these he appointed (12) with a view to the perfect union of the Saints, (i. e. professing Christians,) in order to make all classes (comp. 1 Cor. xii. 12-17) both Jewish and Gentile believers, high and low, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, male and female, bond and free,-one well-compacted, united body; for the work of the ministry; for the edification of the body of Christ (i. e. the Christian church); (13) till we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to perfect manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, (that is, perhaps, to that complete stature, that just extent, or perfection, which the church of Christ ought to attain; (14) so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine by the cunning artifice of men, by their craftiness employed for an artful system of deception; (15) but that, maintaining the truth in love, we may in all things grow up

and which was in some measure realized in the first and best age, will no doubt be realized, in a far more extensive degree, when the knowledge of the one Jehovah, and of his Messiah, shall be diffused throughout the world. And what will then constitute its glorious excellences, should be the present aim of every community of professing Christians, and of every individual society; what the Apostle laid down as the objects or the various appointments of the great and only Head of the Christian church, should be made our objects. In proportion as they are, will the "law of love" be fulfilled.-Happy indeed will be the state of that Christian community in which the apostolic principles are carried into full effect; and however difficult and remote the complete attainment of it, still it is worthy to be our aim; and by proper ef forts some approximation may be made to it. The principles at least should influence us in all our societies for the promotion of the great purposes of Christian love. For this which has brought us together, I can form no better desire than that it may itself exhibit their efficacy, and may promote it among our body at large. Whatever disappointments and discouragements may attend its operation, in particular departments, yet if it make us more "of one heart and one soul," the best results may be hoped for. Well will it be for us all, in our wider and narrower

unto him, to the moral likeness of him who is the Head, even Christ; (16) from whom, as from the head conveying influence and nourishment to every member, the whole body, (being harmoniously united and firmly connected, by means of the mutual aid of every organ, according to the proportionate operation of each part, thriveth την αυξησιν του σώματος ποιείται unto the edification of itself in love.

bodies of Christian connexion, to keep these steadily in view, as our guide and aim; they are blessed in their immediate effects; and blessed indeed will they be if they gradually bring about such a state of things among us, that those who share in the faith and worship of one God, even the Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, shall form one community, harmoniously united, and firmly compacted, by influences derived from the spirit of their great Head; all-without envy, or jealousy, or servility, or arrogance, or intemperate zeal, or frigid indifference contributing mutual aid, according to their several talents and means of Christian usefulness, to the religious edification and welfare of the whole, individually and collectively, and to the diffusion of Christian truth and duty among others; each looking upon every other as equally a part of the body with himself, however differently Providence may have placed him in the honors and interests of the world, and ever having the eye of faith directed to the final union of all who "fear God and work righteousness."-Even so, come Lord Jesus.

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

"It is, I think," says a late correspondent in the Monthly Repository, "the essence of the new dispensation that it is a revelation of God in the person of his Son; hence the importance which the Scripture attaches to the just knowledge of the Son, inasmuch as it is only in a knowledge of the Son that we can have a true and saving knowledge of the Father, and receive the pecu

The remark may

liar blessings of the new covenant." startle some readers, and lead them to infer otherwise of the writer's views than he perhaps intended; but it will be read with pleasure and interest by many, as a symptom of more deep and more profitable reflection upon a grand scripture truth than the controversialist has often time to make. It seems to shew, too, that the time for the extreme dread of terms which have once been used by the Orthodox, is passing away, and that even an Unitarian dares to talk of the divinity of Christ without fear of misinterpretation. And surely among the truths that gain ground upon us every time we allow them to be fairly put before us, none is more capable of practical proof than this, that the REAL believers in the divinity of Christ are those who see, in all he did and said, the Father's presence; who trace a complete unison between God and Jesus; who can scarcely think of the one without thinking of the other;-they have no idea of separate views, separate minds, separate feelings. Christ is, indeed, the effect-God the cause.— -Circumscribed by the limits in which he moved on his earthly course, our views of the Son are finite and limited. There is exactly that proportion of dependence, of reference to a higher will, which is inseparable from our conception of a derived being; but, this allowed, and I see no bounds which can be assigned to his moral perfections. As the express image of God, there must have been a loveliness and majesty of which our minds can form no full conception; and, more beautiful as it doubtless appears the more we contemplate it, we have no reason to suppose that our highest views can reach it. Hence it is, that to him who has been accustomed so to view it, it is al

ways painful to hear the question of our Lord's humanity handled in the dry and barren way it often is. The consequence of our rejection of the common ideas respecting his divinity is, in many minds, the practical rejection of his divinity altogether. We seem unable to correct one error without falling into another; but, of the two, I confess the error of the mere Humanitarian appears to me the greatest. I can forgive the mistake and account him no gross idolater, as he is too often called, who, beholding the "glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus," departs a step from the severe simplicity of the letter of the commandment, and gives a portion of his religious homage to the divinity in Christ; it is a noble impulse, and the error, if an error, may surely be pardoned; but I cannot sympathize with him who has received the facts of the Christian religion, without feeling in his inmost heart the divine character of its Founder. And why should he dread to acknowledge, in this sense, the divinity of Christ? If he had fixed upon a character differing essentially from that of the Great Supreme,-if vengeance were the characteristic of the Father, and mercy of the Son, and holiness of the Spirit, and yet "there were not three Gods but one God" in his creed, we might rightly object to the inconsistency, to the idolatry; but, under the present view, there is no room for this objection. The Father reveals himself in the Son. For the comfort and the exaltation of humanity, all that is perfect in virtue and holiness is invested with a mortal form, and the same voice which says, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," says also, "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me."