"There is not, I believe, any form of our religion in which the wise and good will not fasten their hearts on its wisdom and goodness, and will not, though often by very illogical modifications, bring the follies which have been connected with it within moderate bounds."

At the same time Alexis confesses that this "let-alone policy" will throw power into the hands of the preachers or priests. We must be pardoned one other extract:

"Preachership or priesthood is a profession; and the members of every profession always have or have had-may we not say, must have ?-some classprejudice, some church theory for instance, some dogma, some politics, or some corporate interest."

The wise counsel is then given to abstain from all dictation to those who think or pretend to think for themselves; and while the present condition of the country is alluded to in a reference to the increase of a pauper population with its aggravated wretchedness, pious and philanthropic exhortations are added, which testify to the genuineness of the author's Christianity, but need not here be adverted to. He concludes: "Much was done, and there was hope of more a hope which the real Alexis does not banish, although he ventures to write it only in the clouds.”* There is no exhibition of Unitarian views, unless we may consider the religion of the islanders to be an approximation to them. But the editors make the following reference to them (pp. 140, 141, &c.): "We think it necessary here to say for ourselves, that though we hold the doctrine of the Unitarians to be clearly erroneous, yet we do not think that it ought, any more than the errors of the Roman Catholic or of the Methodist, to exclude from the comprehensive pale of our common religion." We are then told, that if Unitarians "will but surrender one false principle, which is obvious, there actually is not any real difference between their creed and that which is generally received." One looks with some curiosity to find what is this one false principle, which, being renounced, we are identified with the great Christian republic. It is very loosely described as "attempting to define a case which, from its very nature, cannot be defined; as of assuming that the communications made to us by God through Christ, are made by a process altogether identical with the communications made through other prophets of the Old or of the New Testament, or with the ordinary communications of the divine to the human spirit in common times." We had to read this over twice or thrice before we could seize the meaning, and now we guess it to be, that the error of the Unitarians consists in regarding Christ's inspiration or mental illumination to be different indeed from the ordinary inspiration of prophets, and higher in measure, but to have come to him by the same process as their inspiration came

In the above-quoted extract there is either a grammatical inaccuracy or an error of the printer-probably the latter. The editors write and print that "a process is identical with communications made;" but this is impossible. The process or manner is one thing, the communications themselves are another thing. These two cannot be identical. The editors meant to say that "the communications made through Christ are made by a process identical with [that of] the communications made through other prophets." Thus rectified, the meaning seems to be, that the error of the Unitarians consists in holding that the inspiration of Jesus and of other prophets came to them by the same process. This is the head and front of our offending.

to them. If this one principle were put away, we might enter the general assembly of Christians, and our belief would be substantially the same with theirs. It may probably surprise some of our Trinitarian brethren, or even some of our Unitarian, to hear the difference between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism reduced to this-one false principle, a single assumption. The two systems are commonly reputed wide as the poles asunder. The divergence of the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds is counted as nothing to the antagonism of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, differing in their whole genius and spirit. Yet the editors distinctly aver (pp. 140, 141), "Get rid of this assumption, and there then exists not any real difference whatever between the creed of the Unitarians and, so far as it is intelligible, that of the Trinitarians themselves. . . . . . When Unitarians allow that God gave Christ the spirit without measure, or in a measure which we cannot limit or define, they at any rate allow as much as we contend for."

* Now we have no anxiety to set ourselves right in answer to these suggestions, assured as we are that they will be more offensive to our adversaries than to us; yet we must briefly reply, that it is not we who define; our crime, in the eyes of the orthodox, is, that we refuse to adopt their defining creeds as of equal authority with the Scriptures ;that if the process through Christ be so entirely different from all others known in other manifestations of God's will, it is they who ought to prove the diversity; otherwise the identity will be taken for granted; and if, as our author insinuates, there is no real difference between our and their doctrine, and that at any rate we allow as much as they contend for (we should have said, as they ought to contend for; the Athanasian Creed affirms infinitely more),-why, if all this be true, then why are we placed under a ban of proscription, and refused a tolerance granted to all others?

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He then proceeds to maintain that the several relations of God towards man, as Creator, Saviour and Sanctifier, are all that is meant by the three Persons of the Trinitarians." Meant! and by whom? Individuals certainly have laboured to relieve themselves from the imputation of being tritheists, which the Prayer-book makes the illiterate to be unconsciously; but what have they got for their pains? Any one may see it who will read Dr. Hook's libellous insinuation against Archbishop Whately under the word Sabellian in his Church Dictionary.

The editors conclude their note by a rather off-hand notice of some friends of ours, who at all events in America bear our name :-" We have omitted all mention of the Arians for two reasons: the one of these reasons is, that we are not sure that they any longer exist; the other, because, if they exist, they have at least two Gods, and those unequal, and are therefore, beyond all doubt, as little Unitarian as possible."*

A NARROW-MINDED RELIGIONIST.

MR. T. sees religion not as a sphere, but as a line; and it is the identical line in which he is moving. He is like an African buffalo-sees right forward, but nothing on the right hand or the left. He would not perceive a legion of angels or of devils at the distance of ten yards, on the one side or the other. JOHN FOSTER.

IMPRESSIONS RELATIVE TO THE STATE OF PROTESTANTISM IN FRANCE.*

Two subjects of consideration are suggested by this account of the political rights and relations of the French Protestant Church and of its history since the year 1802:-first, the positive results and working of the system, or its internal development under purely French influences and tendencies; and, secondly, the extent, character and effect of the movements and spirit kept alive chiefly by English activity and zeal. The former we shall find to be highly satisfactory; the latter of very doubtful and dangerous quality. There are now, M. Coquerel tells us, upwards of 500 ministers in the Reformed Church of France of various shades of orthodoxy; but he is confident that not one of them can be justly called a Rationalist in the genuine German sense; there is not one who does not consider the Scriptures as a positive revelation; not one who does not consider the Sacraments with a deep religious awe; not one, from whose pulpit do not continually descend into the minds of the congregation the doctrines that God is the Father of all; Jesus Christ, the only Redeemer; man, the prodigal son, incapable by his own merits of working out his way home to his Creator; judgment an inevitable account, and immortality our real existence. Is not this unity enough for all, he asks, except for those who will not allow room, in the church of the Lord, for any other theology but their own? We confess that to our eyes it is a most pleasing and satisfactory picture-perhaps a little too glowing in colour-the partial representation of a friend, like the landscape of home in the memory of love, as it appeared in the bright, sunny hour of the morning. Mrs. Butler's account of the sad state of things at Marseilles, given in the first volume of her Year of Consolation, has not escaped us :

"At a few steps from the hotel, Madame pointed out to me the French Protestant Church. Upon asking her husband some questions respecting the service and congregation here, he informed me that it was the same as the Church of the Oratoire, the French Calvinistic service; that there were not above twenty seats permanently retained for the year, and that of these twenty it was extremely rare that half should be occupied; that the elders, whose presence was in some sort expected as a matter of decorum, appeared only as a pure ceremony, and one which for the most part they were glad to escape as often as possible; that the service and preaching were utterly uninteresting to the people, and the congregation meagre and indifferent in the extreme. This was a sad account; and yet what is to be done when the mere empty form of religion, a dead corpse, stands up alone, beckoning with languid hands to a people whose hearts are dead to a dead worship? Who can wonder that living men who think, and women who feel, should find but little within them to answer to such a call? Good God! how wonderful is it that that religion whose very essence is immortal, the element of incessant activity, of endless progress, strength, vitality, spirituality, should become such a thing as, for the most part, throughout Christendom it is! Nevertheless, it cannot perish; and doubtless these people will in good time reject these stones that are given them for the bread of life, and these stagnant waters so different from the well of living waters that Christ has promised to those who believe in him."

There may be similar instances in Protestant France of decaying,

Continued from Vol. III. p. 707.

though not defunct, societies; but these remarks, it must be observed, are not the result of personal inspection on the part of Mrs. Butler; and we have already given distinct evidence that there is an inherent vitality in the Protestantism of France-that there is nourished in its bosom a sweet spirit of thoughtfulness and charity, and we shall adduce still further evidence in the sequel of this paper that this spirit is active and influential. Within a few years-certainly since the Revolution of 1830-thirty new Protestant societies have been formed. There is a demand for pastors well instructed and liberal in sentiment. A preparatory academical institution has recently been established under good auspices at Nismes for the supply of such pastors, where youths to the number of twenty are preparing for the ministry under the care of M. Lavondès. It is proposed that they shall finish their theological studies at Geneva. The government, we understand, is favourable to the formation of new societies, and to the appointment and support of pastors. Montauban is well known to be the school of the most exclusive party-the Methodistes, as they are now generally called; an unfortunate name, adopted through a misapprehension of the connection or sect in England whose influence or whose principles were supposed to be paramount in the introduction of a new form of bigotry and pretension into France. Montauban, as a school of theology and education, is not by any means flourishing. The French pastors and families even of the immediate neighbourhood send their sons in preference to Geneva, which is now crowded with students. May they escape all evil consequences from the present unhappy troubles in Switzerland! When they have finished their studies in that school, some of them repair to Strasburg to be admitted into the fellowship of the pastors and ordained for the ministry. The Consistory at Strasburg is active, learned and liberal. We believe that M. Reuss, of Strasburg, is at this moment engaged in giving to the world a valuable introduction to the New Testament, with notes. On the borders of Germany it is natural to suppose that there may be participation in the activity and inquisitiveness of Germany, with a more philosophical attention to logical consistency and practical results. It should be remembered also that the prevalent eclectic philosophy of France, so far as it is represented by the school of Cousin, is far more favourable to the prevalence of a religious spirit, among thinking and sober-minded men, than was the philosophy of the age preceding the Law of Germinal and the Empire. It recognizes the worth of the religious element in man as an essential part of his frame, and eminently deserving care and culture. If to these considerations be added the fact, that whilst, a little before the daybreak of present liberty, the whole Protestant congregation of Paris might have assembled in a hall of the Dutch Embassy, or a parlour of the Rue d'Thionville, now there are three churches in Paris, the largest of which, the Oratoire, capable of holding two thousand hearers, is often overflowing, and that the Lord's Supper is never administered without new converts from Catholicism being admitted, it will be seen that French Protestantism is not without some treasures of Divine grace, some evidence of blessing from the Lord. Remembering the deep sorrows of the unhappy Hugonots in early days, and the blood of Francois Rochelle, shed at Toulouse so recently as 1762, for the crime of performing divine service for his brethren, we may take

up the language of the pious Psalmist and say of it, "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."

Turning to the sccond subject of consideration-English influence and interference-has this been exerted for good? Has England helped to foster a spirit of rational piety abroad? Has it ever done honour or justice to what was sincere and truthful and enlightened in the churches of its neighbour? Has it valued and respected, has it even understood, the liberty which they enjoyed in Christ? Did the agents of British liberality and zeal wait with patience to consider the character, the history, the wants of the people whom they volunteered to influence and guide? Did they study the nature of the soil on which they were intent to labour? Have they done any thing marked and effective to raise the religion of the New Testament, in the estimation of the French people, above the religion of Rome? Have they shewn the least sympathy with what was respectable in learning, liberal in sentiment, deep and earnest, because unpretending, in devotion, among French Protestants? Have they ever gone among their elders and pastors with a belief that they had something to learn as well as teach-that they were disciples in the same school, brethren of one household? We are constrained in sorrow to answer, No! But England, we suspect, has not been altogether fairly represented in France in this matter. The most zealous and forward are not always the most judicious or the most faithful representatives of a large and mixed community. Be this as it may, there was a time when England's earnest followers of Christ according to conscience and the Bible, sought and found a refuge in continental cities, to whose communion they were grateful for admission, and whence they brought back a deep devotedness to principles which they deemed godly and true. That time may come again, though with a change. In a later and more instructed age, they may seek and find in many respects a better thing; but the sufferers for liberty of conscience will be, as heretofore, the seekers, and they will find in the ample page of history a record of the will of Providence, that still through much tribulation the truthloving and humble must enter into the kingdom of God. At present a thick film of prejudice and interest hides the great lessons of that page from the eye of religious England. There was a time when England's Primate, the moderate and rational Tillotson,-entertained and cherished the learned Crellius, a visitor from Poland, and ventured to speak well of the writings of the Socinians, both for their learning and temper. Bishop Burnet brought from Holland, and from intercourse with the Protestants of France, when he returned to his country after the Revolution which placed William the Third upon the throne, some of those impressions in favour of liberal and practical religion which appear in all his writings, and he sent his sons to finish their education at Leyden. Locke kept up an intimate friendship and animated correspondence with Limborch, the learned and liberal Arminian minister of Amsterdam. Lardner drew some of his learning from the stores collected by Beausobre in the great work, "L'Histoire du Manicheisme," and strongly recommended it for translation into English, a work which yet remains to be accomplished. That naive and lively advocate of religious liberty, that admirable preacher, Robert Robinson, of Cambridge, illustrated his idea of preaching by the translation of Claude's