been, a place called the Slough of Despond and a cave of Giant Despair." This was the Happy Ignorance which forms the subject of the book. We are not informed how such consequences could follow; but so it was, that the colony flourished; they had a government whose President is a chief interlocutor,-in short, a Utopia was formed.*

In the year of our Lord, 1846, there arrived a cargo of books, tracts, treatises on metaphysics and controversial divinity, histories, Bibles, with about half-a-dozen English ecclesiastics of various persuasions. The peace of the colony was disturbed some time after the arrival of these missionaries, and by the introduction of a course of sectarian disputes, from which the islanders had been hitherto exempted. Three ecclesiastics are introduced, each defending his own denominational views,—namely, a Roman Catholic priest, a Methodist minister, and a Church-of-England clergyman. The exhibition of those different views is neither very elaborately nor very strikingly presented: but the tone of the work is admirable; it is throughout an appeal on behalf of candour, moderation, an enlightened liberality, and a Christianity rational, simple and practical. It is quite a sign of the times to receive such a work as this from hands evidently Episcopalian and attached to the Church of England. Such works as the present and Archdeacon Hare's Sermons on Faith, we accept and regard as indications of that progress toward sounder and more liberal opinion which we believe to exist in almost all sects, and not least in the Church of England at this moment. Such doctrine as the following well contrasts with much of our popular orthodoxy. One of the unclerical islanders is delivering his humble exhortation to his brethren soon after their landing.

"God would not demand from them more than he gave, or any knowledge which they had not means to attain; and it was their evident duty rather to study to profit by what they had, than to be anxious for more. He also called on them to reflect that even to their comparative ignorance God had given much; that he had given to all of them the almost inborn conviction of his own goodness and power; that he is the one, the invisible, the eternal, the original Author of all things, and will call all men to account for all their works. They had also in that one Gospel which had been preserved to them, the knowledge that this one God had revealed himself miraculously in the person of Christ; had taught by him, and, both in his life and in his death, to a sinful world the need of repentance, and had made him our rock, our model, our safety, the perfect object and centre of every truly religious affection which we can conceive. And they had, moreover, he added, the assurance and security that this same one God who thus shewed himself in Christ was present with them still, both to urge them to good and to check them in evil; and it was therefore their plain duty both to set the Saviour's example before them, and to entreat daily the help of that Divine Spirit who leads, to follow it.”— Pp. 10, 11.

A very good homily this, and perfectly appropriate to the circumstances in which it was delivered. There is an entire absence of orthodox peculiarities. It is not such an address as would have been uttered by any well-drilled disciple of the Church of England, or by any missionary whom this country delights to send to the South Seas; but it is something much better, and moulded upon the pattern of Matthew's Gospel rather than on that of any Church formularies. It is this plain, sensible, useful kind of religion that the editors recommend throughout, and in contrast to the fanatical opinions that are called orthodoxy.

Though we must accord praise for the general execution of this work, we can yet conceive that the editors, who have done so well, might, by a little more care and condensation, have done better. There is a good deal of inferior and needless matter admitted in different places, which does not help forward the main object. The diction is often cumbrous and diffuse; and even the dialogue, though always sensible and sound, is yet deficient in that vivacity, clearness, point and compression, which it is more easy to conceive than to execute. Tolerable justice is done to the Roman Catholic priest and the Episcopalian clergyman; but the Methodist minister is presented in an attitude needlessly repulsive. For instance,

"What most annoyed and indeed most puzzled him about this Methodist, was his great and very extraordinary solemnity, and this on all occasions, both important and trivial. The Roman Catholic could now and then be gay, and so could Mr. Herbert [the Episcopalian], and even the metaphysical Alexis would sometimes smile in sober sort, when roused from the abstractions in which he was too apt to indulge. But the Methodist did not at any time relax any thing of his habitual gravity; or, at any rate, he appeared to scorn his spirit if at any time tempted to do so. And yet he had quite as great an appetency as either of the other two for all the material good things of this world. He ate and drank twice as much as either of them. When they ate mutton, he ate pork; and there was a twinkle, as was said before, in his eye, which shewed plainly that if he did not or would not enjoy a joke, it was rather because he thought it inconsistent with his duty, than because nature had denied him the faculty," &c.-P. 67.

This is beneath the dignity of fair argument, and contributes nothing at all toward elucidating the points of the Methodist faith. Satire of personal infirmities is not the likeliest way to procure a fair hearing. These imputed faults of the Methodist are surely not peculiar to this body nor characteristic of them; they are therefore improperly selected. In the 13th Chapter there is actually a love-episode, which somewhat enlivens the argument.

The following description would suit another community as well as the happy islanders:

"It does not appear that either the Roman Catholic or the Church-ofEnglander or the Methodist actually excepted against any one of the doctrines taught, although each in his turn missed something which he regarded as more or less essential, and which he himself had had the happiness of discerning by that bright light of sound theology in which he had been brought up. All these their respective essentials they severally professed themselves ready and zealous to impart to this most amiable and docile flock—a flock, however, still benighted, though in a happy wilderness.”—P. 25.

The President of the island holds conversation with the newly-imported divines, but will not suffer them to commence teaching their special views among the population. First we have the Roman Catholic claims. The priest admits that the colonists are a wonderfully decent and moral people, considering that they do not belong to the True Church. He allows that they had all the great facts of Christianity,the life and death of the Saviour, the doctrine of a future state, the principle of the love of God and the rule of moral life. One would think that here was enough for a safe and true religion. The President naturally asks, What lack we yet? The Priest answers,

"In the first place, then, I think you want an authoritative exposition of

that same holy doctrine which you have received. Our blessed Saviour confided the teaching of his religion to a body of disciples whom he chose for that particular service, and to whom he promised a special illumination and protection in teaching it. These, and I am one of them, have alone the privilege or the ability-though an ability, as we humbly confess, not our own, but given from above-to keep it clear of those errors into which human weakness undirected by the Divine Spirit always betrays. . . . . Be assured that I acknowledge feelingly my own personal unworthiness of it, and rest my claim only on its transmission by an uninterrupted descent from the apostles themselves."-P. 27.

After some interposed matters, the President asks in reply,

"Does this your uninterrupted descent, whatever it may be, keep you really clear of that actual error, for the sake of your protection from which you say that it was given? If it keep you clear of error, it must of course keep you clear of all contraries; and it must also keep you clear of making indifferent matters, or matters, as I think I have seen that you express it, not of faith, yet matters of contest. Yet few contests, as you have yourself taught me, have ever been greater or more exasperated than the contests between the advocates for images and the image-breakers; few contests have ever raged with a more doubtful result than that between the Athanasians and Arians, and this on a point which you consider as a most vital point of the true belief; and almost all Christendom was divided for generations in its allegiance to this Pope or that Pope-the Pope whose see was at Rome and the Pope of Avignon. .... Alas! my good friend, of what imaginable use or significance is this your protection, if still it be often impossible for the honestest mind to discover which persuasion (I am afraid party) is that of the true Church and which the heretical? If not only doctors disagree, but bishops and emperors also, who shall decide? If of two good men, men equally impartial and equally desirous to make God's law the law of their lives,-if of these two men the one is led either by his education or his studies to one opinion and the other to another, who shall say that there either is or can be an infallible guide in any of those cases in which such men differ? As far, therefore, as I can yet see, you must allow me to think that you overshoot your own mark, and that I had much better let my friend Renatus keep himself closely to those easy and quiet texts with which he is in the habit of dealing, than put you in his place. The weekly discourses which he gives us retrace, I allow, only the simplest truths of Christianity. But these simple truths press not the less on the heart because they are equally comprehensible to the learned and the ignorant, and are clear of all those points of controversy on which you and your rivals do not agree. Neither yet is there any impressible portion of the mind which these truths fail to touch. Every motive, every sentiment, every thing which leads us either to love or to hope or to fear, has always its nourishment in the plain, the certain, the obvious-always evaporates in the controversial and the difficult."-Pp. 27, 29, 30, 32.

This witness is true. Without intending, or perhaps without being aware of it, the authors have here set forth the principles for which Christian Unitarians have long pleaded. They have always attached more importance to the great principles of our common Christianity than to any denominational peculiarities. They have always exalted the plain above the mysterious, and the practical above the controversial. They have contended that the spiritual efficacy of Christ's religion does not lie in any of those abstruse speculations about which divines have quarrelled, but rather in its great practical teachings of love to God and man, the doctrine of repentance, the necessity of holiness, Christ our example, and such like. How barren and unsatisfactory are all disputes about divine decrees and tri-personalities, compared with the

sublime and simple faith of God our Father! When we behold in Jesus the great possibilities of human nature, and regard him as a pledge from heaven of God's interest in man, how trifling in comparison are all discussions respecting two natures in one person, co-equality, consubstantiality, homoousian and homoiousian! Such things are less than nothing and vanity.

The discussion with the Roman Catholic is resumed in the following Chapter. To the allegation that "the doctrines of Christianity rest on authority; we must, therefore, of necessity look to authorized teachers to instruct us in these,"-the reply is by Alexis, the small metaphysical man of the grey coat:

"I should rather say that the doctrines of Christianity rest on facts-on the facts that Christ lived and died as he is said to have done, and that he taught as he did teach. These facts we certainly learn chiefly from the disciples whom Christ himself commissioned to teach them, and we may also learn from them, better than we could otherwise know, what doctrines he taught. They have also so far, which is the argument you allege, a particular authority, in that you must go to them only for the verification of the history. You cannot go into the wide field of nature to look for the facts to which they only are the witnesses. And yet, not the less on this account, their whole authority, like that of the Jennerian, rests entirely on the moral evidence which we possess of either their greater or better opportunities, or of their trustworthiness and accuracy. These, as it seems to me, are the grounds on which only we can hold to the authority of even the personal disciples of Christ himself. On these grounds we do hold, with you, to their authority. But the disciples of the disciples have not in strictness any authority at all. You cannot prove them to have had any even in the first ages, except what their opportunities gave them; and since the period when all the evidence became documentary, we of the laity have had as good opportunities as you have had of making out the whole of a case which is as much ours as yours. Also, after the first age, nothing but documents could possibly be trusted. If, therefore, the student of the Christian doctrine has now as much evidence of our ability and integrity as he has of yours, I know not why we should be less confided in."-Pp. 40, 41.

The representative of the Church of England is next brought on the stage. Here is a very honest admission:

"There are points, indeed, on which I do not think that our Church itself has pronounced any thing definitely; but still I imagine that we hold in general, quite as much as the Roman Catholics do, to the doctrine, authority, and even to the existence of a mystical virtue in Church institutions and sacraments. But then those amongst us who hold this, hold also, and I think with some reason, that the authority is with us, and not with the Romanists. Our Church, therefore, not theirs, is properly now the Church.”—P. 43.

Of course, the Church of Rome alleges she never can err; the Church of England says she never does err; and thus we have two unerring Churches unchurching each other. The Episcopalian argument does not escape the castigation of the keen-eyed knight of the grey coat.

*It is in this portion of the work that the editors, who protest in a sort of Preface that they do not concur always with the writer, add some notes of their own, in which they declare that the famous controversy on justification by faith between the Romanists and Protestants is a mere verbal dispute; and instead of protesting against the suggestion that the people do not on the whole advance in real improvement, they come to the author's aid by an odd illustration: "As

for instance-to compare a pretty English girl with an Esquimauxtight lacing is assuredly much more irrational and mischievous and deforming, though, as we think, not more ugly, than it is to bore the cartilage of the nose and put a ring in the hole."

To illustrate the author's favourite notion of the insignificance of doctrinal diversities, he relates a tragic incident, and that the President requested his three clerical friends to draw up for him each two letters of condolence and admonition to the innocent sufferer and guilty doer of the wrong. The six letters were absolutely identical, and the editors so far forget their character as to say that they could not have believed this fact but for the parallel case of the translators of the Septuagint.

The result of this investigation was, that the President felt it to be his duty to lock up his four friends, that he might prevent their injuring his people by the diffusion of doubts and the introduction of controversy. His successor in the government thought otherwise, and set them at liberty. The consequence is announced in the well-known passage in Milton, describing the opening of the gates of hell by Sin after Satan had passed:

"She opened; but to shut

Excelled her power: the gates wide open stood."

The author imagines the rest of his book to be written in 1876, and in the anticipated change he of necessity assimilates his imagined colony to our actual condition, so that the application of his sarcasm is very easy. For instance, about 1860, a scheme of general education was introduced, which even the intelligent few who "sat on a hill retired," apart from the superstitious and the fanatical, alike supported; but their wisdom in so doing is called in question; at least there were many persons who were somehow led to think that the degree of biblical and other knowledge thus produced "only fitted its recipients to become the easier prey of the great number of itinerant orators and mendicant orders of Protestantism by whom they were of course always surrounded." In the same spirit, and with a truth which we would gladly call in question were it in our power, he remarks on the necessity of controversial impulse to give energy to religious investigations:

"The tie of common wants and of a common Saviour was not felt as giving a common interest in the message which he had brought, unless the Pope also, or some mystification of the doctrine of faith, or some adhesion to a particular form of church government, added another strand or two to the cord which formed it."

The powerful effect of the spirit of party in matters of religion is further pointed out by the aged Alexis, who alone survives; and this being probably a favourite notion, the editors add a note, shewing that it is impossible to extinguish a controversy once raised. The vain attempts of Melancthon, Grotius and Leibnitz, to produce peace; the result of the recent Scottish separation of the Free from the Established Church; and the irritation produced by the forced union of the Churches in Prussia, the work of a strong government aided by the ablest divines, are all adduced as illustrations of this sad experience. Alexis is the oracle applied to by the government, which wishes to restore the good old Church of St. Matthew's Gospel and the Psalms. He advises forbearance towards all the three bodies. We rejoice in giving our assent to this charitable conclusion: