becomes far more tangible and positive when we look to the spirit of its doctrines and precepts, than when we look to the letter merely; and far better is it when we attempt from the New Testament to realize those first living conceptions of Christianity which came fresh from the divine life and spirit of the Saviour, than when we are weighing definitions, reconciling clauses, and building our views upon syntactical constructions." (p. 159.)

This sounds somewhat more dignified and intelligible than "Murray's Guide-book to Italy," and the "Neither do I believe in religion as it is the letter," of Mr. Beecher; but it is plain that both preacher and philosopher fetch water from the same fountain, and equally plain, that in neither case is it from

"Siloa's brook that flow'd

Fast by the oracle of God."

Let us hear Mr. Morell still further:

it is a life in stone, they can The most pre

"And what, after all, need we in the Scriptures more than this? Why should we be perpetually craving after a stiff, literal, verbal infallibility? Christianity consists not in propositions the soul; its laws and precepts are not engraven on only be engraven on fleshy tables of the heart. cise words could never convey a clear religious conception to an unawakened mind; no logical precision of language and definition, on the other hand, is needed in order to waken up intuitions which convey more by a single flash of the inward eye, than a whole body of divinity of most approved order and arrangement could ever teach.”

The similarity is remarkable, both in sentiment and style. The difference is that of the orator and the philosopher. The aim of both is precisely the same, which is to get rid of the oldfashioned notion of the Bible as an every-way perfect, infallible, and absolutely indispensable standard of appeal in doctrinal belief and practical religious life. Up to this point the meaning of the entire school of philosophers and preachers of which Mr. Morell and Mr. Beecher are samples, is plain and unmistakable; but a single hair's-breadth beyond this point we confess our utter inability to follow them. They give us nothing intelligible to take hold of or to stand upon, in exchange for that which they take away. To our apprehension their philosophy is as dreamy and superficial as their theology. It defines nothing, settles

nothing, binds nothing. Its inevitable tendency is to unsettle and confuse. It breaks up, as in very wantonness, the old ship that has weathered so many a storm, and sets all afloat on the turbulent billows, leaving each bewildered castaway to sink in the unfathomed waters, or be carried whithersoever the disjointed fragment to which he clings may chance to drift. Newman, in his Phases of Faith," has described to us how, setting out from the ancient landmarks of Christian doctrine, his first step was disgust at orthodox formalism and assumption, from which he passed on through successive periods, such as "strivings after a more primitive Christianity," "the religion of the letter renounced," &c., until, at last, he reached the dreary waste of a religion of sentiment, with no creed at all,— another name for blank infidelity. Far be it from us to affirm that every man who sets himself to impair our "profound veneration" for the Bible, or to overturn our faith in its fundamental doctrines is sure to follow such a first false step through all its legitimate consequences to the fatal result. But we do wish to be understood to affirm, as the profound and sorrowful conviction of our heart, that these men are moving all in the same direction, and working in their several spheres, and according to their several ability, the same work, the disciples and followers, not of Jesus and Paul, but of Hegel and Schleiermacher and Strauss. Judging them by one of their own pet canons, we find that the "letter" of their mutual criticisms and faint disclaimers is quite effaced by the irrepressible "spirit" of their acknowledged sympathies. The work which these men, and many more their coadjutors, are diligently accomplishing, is the subversion of the immemorial belief of the Church, and the building up of a pure rationalism upon the ruins of Christianity.

If, to any such, a conclusion shall seem harsh toward Mr. Beecher, we answer, that it is a conclusion forced upon us by all the clearest laws of evidence. We are not to be put off with the popular cant about superior intelligence, and the privilege of genius, and a generous confidence among brethren, and a right sense under words whose honest interpretation makes them the vehicle of fatal error. It is miserable twaddle and impertinence. If a man has a right meaning, and understands it himself, in the name of Paul and our mother-tongue, let him give

correct.

it to us. If he fails in this, the Bible holds him accountable; and if his meaning is better than his words, let him look to it. We would set the most unlearned man in the church, being converted, to judge in this matter, and his judgment would be Paul makes the Galatian converts, recently recovered from heathenism and nakedness, preeminently debased and foolish, the "Gallos indociles" of Hilary, judges of Christian doctrine, and thinks them competent; and John gives to the whole Christian brotherhood tests by which to distinguish the false prophets that had gone out into the world in his day. We have no disposition to charge Mr. Beecher with a conscious breach of good faith in retaining the position of an orthodox preacher of the Gospel. In his own estimation he is- we can easily believe the very soul and centre of the last and divinest illumination the incarnation of human progress heaven-appointed icono

clast great prophet and apostle of universal enfranchisement; while in the church whose pastor, in his simplicity, holds on to the old truths, and carefully shuts the doors and windows of the fold against the "every wind of doctrine," and the hurricane of political agitation, he sees, with honest eyes, only “a green mantling pool of what they call orthodoxy, with a minister croaking, like a frog solitary." (Sermon in the "Independent," Oct. 11, 1860.) Men who turn aside from the simple truth of the Gospel are always under a delusion, especially if they be men of genius and a stirring eloquence. Seeing indistinctly, and not afar, in the dust which they raise, the whole world appears to be moving with them; or, if any stay behind, they are like the forsaken ark on Mount Ararat, from which every living thing has made haste to escape forever. So have we seen little children sailing smoothly down a stream, and thinking, in their simplicity, that the heavens and the great mountains moved with them-never dreaming of the possibility of danger. Alas, neither childish simplicity, nor force of illusion, can save them from the bitter end. The heavens above, and the great mountains on their everlasting foundations, will still remain, when they shall plunge down the fatal cataract, or disappear forever in the broad expanse of the dark and turbulent waters.

ARTICLE IV.

OLD UNITARIANISM AND NEW ORTHODOXY.

Ir anything is orthodox, it must be the theology of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the piety that is nurtured by those articles cordially received; for example, Old English Oxford and its numerous sons who had been, par excellence, illustrations and defenders of the faith for several centuries.

If anything is new in this orthodoxy, it is the phase which has recently been given to it by certain Oxford Professors and others in the Church of England in sympathy with them, most of whom hold their honorable positions and draw their rich livings only as they swear by the old faith, which in these recent writings they are laboring to destroy.

If anything can be called old in so recent a thing as American Unitarianism, it must be what the denomination held thirty or forty years since in distinction from their current notions; or that which some few of their elders now hold in distinction from what their juniors generally hold and preach.

The new orthodoxy of which we speak is set forth in a volume of some four hundred pages, written by seven Englishmen, and entitled Essays and Reviews a very neutral name for a very positive substance. While their ostensible object is, by a reverent yet fearless criticism, to strengthen the prevalent faith in Christianity by ridding it of some of its antiquated and rotten "evidential" supports, leaving its whole weight to fall upon, and thus strengthen the arch of its internal reasonableness or accordance with the "inner light" and "verifying faculty" of man, its covert intent is indicated by the fact that that irreverent freethinker, the "Westminster Review," immediately gave it an able and hearty, but withal satirical welcome, as having laid down principles which the inevitableness of logic would ultimately drive to their own destructive conclusions.

The "North British" and "London Quarterly Reviews " regard the book as an enemy sailing under false colors, and have accordingly opened their heaviest columbiads upon it; and their thunder has been reëchoed by lesser ordnance on both sides of

the Atlantic, down to a still running fire from our graceful, scholarly, but highly denominational neighbor, the "Church Monthly."

In a prefatory note, the writers solemnly affirm that "they have written in entire independence of each other, and without concert or comparison." Nevertheless, the reading public will be slow to believe that seven such essays from as many men in the Established Church could have fallen together thus in the form of a crystal, with its cutting point towards the very heart of the current religious faith in that church, without something equivalent to previous concert and comparison among the component particles. We have no faith whatever in such fortuitous generation. And this which we at first strongly suspected, is now distinctly affirmed by the " Church Monthly," professing to speak from personal knowledge.

It is not our purpose to add another to the numberless reviews of this work which have already appeared, but the rather to quote so many characteristic passages from it as will give our readers a clear idea of its main tenor, and then to notice particularly how it has been received and treated by the two extremes of Unitarianism in this neighborhood, which process will also show how much more orthodox on some cardinal points is old Unitarianism than this recent orthodoxy. Dr. Hedge, of Brookline, a leader on the extreme left, or rationalistic wing of Unitarianism, hastened forward an American edition of the " Essays and Reviews," under the new title of "Recent Inquiries in Theology;" and in a brief but significent Introduction to the same, gives it his hearty God-speed in such terms as these. Referring to the late Puseyite controversy, he says, (p. xiii.)

"The full development and thorough application of the principles involved in it necessitate, as recent defections from the national communion in favor of Romanism have shown, the entire abandonment of the Protestant ground. The future of the Church is committed to another interest, and a different order of minds. The life of Anglican theology is now represented by such men as Powell and Williams, and Maurice and Jowett and Stanley. Its strains and promise are apparent in these Essays."

Of this monument which he calls the "Broad Church," he testifies thus: