authority on account of the magnitude of the treason, or the name it may bear. Looking at the general course of protestant ecclesiastical history, we can have no hesitation in believing that those ministers have exhibited a mournful laxity of conscience in regard to political sin. They seem hardly to have been aware that these two words could be united. The obstacles to a lofty independent course, in which they should have a single eye to their Master's honour and his full supremacy, have indeed been tremendous. Still we have nothing to do with obstacles in the cause of Christ, except to overcome them. Did God deliver up His Son for us all, that we should deliver up His kingdom to the servants of Mammon, through fear that He will not, with him, freely give us all the assistance we need? The great error into which the Ministers of the Gospel fall, when they wrestle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,' is not that of testing all proceedings by the words of Christ-this is their bounden and solemn duty. Their error has been that of descending from the lofty platform of God's judgments, to strive and jostle in the crowded arena of fallible human passions and opinions. They are elevated by the disciples who instal them as their spiritual teachers and reprovers, to a position from which their counsels, judgments, and rebukes, as the expounders of God's truth, will always be listened to by many with deference and respect, and from which they may put forth a moral power over society that can be limited only by their own character and strength. But when they leave that position by contending for measures or rules that rest only upon fallible human opinions, or by assuming in any way the character of a partizan, identifying themselves with a party instead of simply with principles, they abdicate the grandest and mightiest functions which man can discharge. They lose that respect which is essential to their influence. Their work is to bring their jealous, sensitive, worldly-minded fellow-creatures in all their concerns under the sovereign sway of Religion. Pride, passion, indolence, all the infirmities of human nature, oppose that sway, and how can they possibly establish it, if they themselves appear in ever so slight a degree to seek any other object, to acknowledge any other authority? Like Cæsar's wife they must be above suspicion, or their power withers away as the early blossom before a frosty gale. Few indeed can realize the perfect ideal of a Gospel minister, but all should aim at it. And when the clergy of modern time labour as strenuously but more consistently to bring temporal authorities into subjection to practical and pure Religion as the Roman

Catholic clergy of former ages strove to subject them to the Papal See, we may anticipate a great and hallowed change in the temporal welfare of nations, as well as in the spiritual condition of the individuals which compose them.

Leaving then the question of the political duties of the clergy in reference to Evangelical Reform, we must glance at the wide field in which they are called to labour by the Philanthropic movements of the day. If the establishment of genuine, Christian, Civil, and Religious Liberty, especially of Peace principles under all circumstances, form prominent features in the political reforms required by Religion, the duty to abstain from the drink which floods our country with pestilence and death, with ruin to body and soul, must be admitted to a foremost rank in the social reforms which she demands. Close in connection with these objects stands the deeply important one of Education in its highest as well as lowest sense.

It is not our purpose to enlarge upon these topics; simply to express an opinion as to the direction in which we believe good men and true will find the most efficient and permanent influences for effecting the object we suppose them to have deeply at heart. The Peace and Total Abstinence movements we regard as two great lines of railway, whereon the car of Religious Reform will travel safely and swiftly forward to those other spheres of Improvement and Change, at which, though more distant, it is most needful to arrive, with all speed.

We now return to what we described as the first division of the problem whereof we treat; viz., how to establish the influence of Religion permanent and supreme over our speculative, didactic, and imaginative modes and expressions of Thought.

Here is a large undertaking; its mere suggestion would seem to many to stamp it at once with the mark of extravagance and fanaticism. Or if it be understood in the sense in which it is proposed, the reply to the question, How is it to be accomplished? would probably be simply this,-Imbue all literary men, all philosophers and poets, with a vital spirit of Religion. True. This is very needful, but it is not exactly the solution, we think, which the problem requires. If Religion mean anything at all, it means everything. As time is to Eternity, so are all other interests to Preparation for another Life. That is, nothing at all; zero. Finite things can bear no proportion to those that are Infinite. The inference we draw is, that everything is just of no importance, absolutely without value, except according to the manner in which it affects our eternal existence, if such existence is to be ours. The believers in the so-called Orthodox scheme of Salvation have been deeply impressed

with this truth, from the clear unmistakeable manner in which their leaders have drawn the line between heaven and hell. Unitarian Christians have often mourned over the greater coolness and indifference manifested by their own body, resulting partly from the unconscious influence of their doctrine of Universal Restoration, from an "it-will-all-be-right-in-the-end" sort of feeling, partly from the difficulty of bringing forcibly home to the Belief and Conscience that exactly-retributive hell, of reaping whatsoever we have sown, by which the word 'damnation' is interpreted in Unitarian Churches. But if every thought and action, nay every idle word, by their inevitable influence upon our character, as well as by their eternally indestructible nature, will most assuredly exert an eternal influence upon our destiny, we have a far more stringent claim upon the human race than our orthodox brethren with all their terrors. We cannot yield to them one jot in the urgency, in the solemn call, of the claims of Religion. But while under a sense of the infinite worthlessness of all mere earthly interests, they, when sincere, have generally flung far from them those interests, and endeavoured to concentrate the attention of mankind upon another world, our work is of a very different nature. If the great problem which we have referred to is to be solved at all, it must be done, not by contracting all forms of Thought and Action to fit a solitary Truth, however important, far less a puny shrivelled creed, but by giving the mighty Spirit of Religion free scope to issue from her prison-urn, and fill those forms to their utmost stretch. Every mode whereby the human mind has yet expressed its inward convictions and emotions— every means whereby the soul may be influenced, must, we do not say be made subservient to the extension and increase of the power of Religion but they must, exist for that purpose and for that alone. Philosophy, Science, Art, and Action, have one work to do in this world, and only one, to prepare men for another. Surely there is but one thing needful, if man shall live again. We would not say then that Evangelical Reform is to be carried forward by imbuing the thinking and writing minds of our country with vital Religion. This we take as a matter of course in relation to them, simply as men. We would rather say, endeavour to lead all men, whether they be authors or readers, to regard every separate means of influencing society as a holy vessel of the Lord, consecrated to His service, and to be used only to promote, directly or indirectly, His glory and the salvation of His children. We need not, we hope, stop to explain to readers who have been brought up in Westminster Assembly fashion (for we are not likely to have any), that we

believe Religion to be as capable of filling the merriest heart and the merriest tale, as the soul of the martyr and the song of the saint. It can dwell as freely and as holily in a 'Christmas Carol' as in a 'Paradise Lost.' But all are its rightful inheritance. Away with the usurpation that has so mournfully narrowed its domains!

We can conceive of no higher work, nor of a more promising field of labour, than that into which Unitarian Christians are invited to enter, by their present position and views; one in which moreover, unhappily, so few of other denominations, or of no denomination at all, appear willing to toil. Therefore while we are striving to make Religion omnipotent to comfort, guide, restrain, in the humblest paths of Thought and Life, we have especially to enthrone it in the highest. Great and life-giving Principles have to be developed from the inexhaustible stores of our Saviour's history and doctrine. New and varied forms of bestowing interest, power, grace and beauty upon Goodness and Truth, must be presented to the world. Hidden bonds of Union between the things that are seen and those that are unseen, symbols of the Spiritual and Eternal in the outward temporal system of Nature, stern and striking signs amid the silent admonitions of the Universe, these and similar revelations from God have to be interpreted to man not less zealously, and as frequently as His holy Word.

Unitarians more than any other body of Christians are specially called upon by the position they hold in the Religious world, and by the various privileges for which they are responsible, to wed Philosophy to Religion, and thus indefinitely exalt the character and the power of both. The banns too often and too long have been forbidden. Unitarians are unfettered by narrow, dark and deadening views of Creation, and it is for them, in time to come as in time past, to make all men feel that the question of Salvation is not a matter which is afar off from them, in a local heaven or a sulphureous hell, in arbitrary judgments or vicarious merits;—that it is not moreover a question merely for Bible or Sermon reading, for consideration only in the pulpit or the pew;-that it is allied with all these, and with all that is highest, noblest, most beautiful in our own souls and the Universe; but that it is also around our daily paths, interwoven with our every-day existence; bound up with all we do, say, or think, and will be for ever. The celebrated sarcasm hurled at Unitarians under the title of "Every man his own Redeemer," pointed, like many other calumnies, in more ways than one to an important truth. Unitarians as individuals may often be too self-confident and presumptuous, but their views of Christianity have the surpassing merit of vindicating

almost alone, the essential doctrine of the Universe that Salvation "is within us" through Time and Eternity, and that by its indestructible constitution, the human soul in one deeply important sense is its own Saviour and its own Judge. In proportion as we faithfully work out these truths we shall promote Evangelical Reform and Everlasting Joy.

The little work whose title we have placed at the head of this article labours with zeal and success to display and enforce the connection which exists between the dictates of Religion and the system of the Universe, in reference specially to a practical point of vital interest. The author and his purpose therefore, we need not say, have our cordial sympathy. He is marching in the right direction. He has summoned Philosophy to a holy alliance with Religion, and though we differ from him in several of his conclusions, or rather perhaps in their mode of statement, we regard "Human Nature as a valuable contribution to a cause which we ardently desire to see prospering.

The work consists of an Introductory Essay containing the author's leading ideas; the principal Essay entitled an Exposition of the Divine Institution of Reward and Punishment, wherein they are more fully developed; and some concluding "Ethical Observations" written during the perusal of Mr. Martineau's recent work.

The author having commenced by a just condemnation of the limited and dogmatic spirit wherein the subject of Religion has generally been handled, proceeds to state his own views of its nature and object. He defines it as "the science of human culture and development," and urges its great purpose to be the progressive unfolding and development of our Entire Being. Its object, he says, is "the Eduction (or Education) of the Soul from Unconsciousness to Consciousness." We do not imagine that Religion is a Science at all. Theology is, or ought to be; but Religion is a Principle. It is that principle in the soul which leads it to bind up its own existence with the being of God, and with all that God loves,-which assimilates, unites it to the Deity. It is neither a sentiment, a thought, nor a desire, alone; it is all these and something more, which we have no single word to express. But passing on to the main idea running through the work, we find it thus explained :

"The greatest characteristic of a genuine comprehensive science of human nature, of TRUE RELIGION,-is the recognition that being is the greatest good, it is the one and only source whence happiness is derived, it is the designer and executor of every thing which exists."pp. 12, 13.