sentially one heart and mind can the many find themselves represented by the breath. ings of a single spirit. We do not look, therefore, for the presence of various creeds together; we simply offer no hindrance to their appearing successively. And as we possess, not our own acquisitions only, but a heritage from predecessors; as we build, not for ourselves alone, but for descendants; as our society runs through generations, constant indeed in their religion, but variable (may I say, progressive?) in their theology; we presume not to impress our own peculiarities on this church. We own the partnership of other ages in the baptism and character of this place, and will not forfeit our affinity with the ancient and the unborn to gratify the egotism of a sect. Let it not be said that we want a refuge for vagueness of conviction, an excuse for cowardice of profession. We know what we believe; we love what we believe; we plainly tell what we believe. I am a Unitarian; you, who will meet here from week to week, are doubtless Unitarian too; but the Society of worshipers, of which we are only the living members, and the Church erected here, of which we shall be but transient tenants, these are not to be defined as Unitarian. To stamp them with such doctrinal name, would be to perform an act of posthu mous expulsion against many noble dead whom it is an honour to revere; and perhaps to provoke against ourselves, from a future age, the retribution of a like excommunication. In refusing to commit our churches to a determinate system, we protest against the imputation of the least indifference to truth. We simply carry out, in affairs of religion, the rule which is followed in all wise endowments for the advancement of knowledge, and provisions for the administration of states. Institutes of Science and halls of learning are created, not to sustain the theories of their day, however earnestly adopted by the first founders; but in the assurance that Nature and the human intellect will ever seek to converse together, and that a place which aids their meeting will be a welcome heritage to any age. The structure of Government is raised, not to preserve irrevocably the political doctrines, or even the constitutional traditions, which makes a nation's momentary faith; but in simple reliance on the permanent need of human weakness for control, and the demand of human conscience for Law. And why may not our Churches rise, not in blind expectation of perpetuity for the present types and classifications of theology, but in pure faith that God and the human soul will ever seek each other;

and that, so long as Heavenly Mercy shall stoop and earthly aspiration rise, a court of audience for trust and prayer cannot be obsolete?

Do you ask me, then, to desist from the negative language of disclaimer, and to say positively what is the ground and principle of our undertaking? I reply-A church is set up to embody and preserve a perfect image or ideal of human life. It is ultimately based upon the fact, that in each man there is a strife between his reality and his conception-between his temptations and his resolves-between the actual to which he descends, and the possible to which he climbs. The theatre of the one we call "the world;" the refuge of the other we call "the church." Were we surrendered without reserve to the crush of labour and the weariness of care; did the voice of our kind never speak but in the cries of the market and the greetings of the street; were our days unmarked by any purer chalk than the scores of business, and our towns unrelieved by loftier structures than the dwelling, the office, and the shop,-the truest, deepest, most authoritative part of our nature would be without expression, would become faint and latent in many, and would live but for sorrow in the few with whom it could not die. We stand here this day to forbid that sad issue. We create bere a centre and shrine for our highest sentiments. This is to be a converging point for the scattered lights of love and hope and faith, that come athwart us in the path of our cares or the darkness of our griefs. Here is the focus of our worship-without passage through whose atmosphere, without refraction through whose tears, no tint of glory, no painted bow of promise, would ever touch the leaden clouds of our experience. In whatever way men own the authority, and find the aliment, of these devout convictions and aspirations, and associate for the expression of them, there is a Church.

And that is specifically a Christian church which accepts Jesus of Nazareth as (under the limitations of humanity) the realization of this ideal, the blending point of historical fact and divine perfection. For those who thus accept him, the eye of reverence becomes fixed in content. The craving imagination, roving over the universe for constituent atoms of moral truth and heavenly beauty, is restrained: veneration and love can stay at home, and sit at the feet of the domestic prophet of this dear world. Not that we need, as Christians, blind our hearts to any fresh admirations, read history or life with a critic's superciliousness, and shut up the Pantheon of our natural ho

mage. On the contrary, he who has most discernment of supreme perfection, will have the quickest sense of all other good. But still there will be no passionate quest of objects to satiate the fever of the heart; no straining of the eye, as across a desertworld, to detect the cooling spring; no mistake of the mocking mirage for the pure lake. He that hath drank of the living water shall never thirst again. This, and no servile self-surrender, is the true and only "rest in the church."

In a word, then, we unite for advancement of the Christian Life. The whole sphere of our thought we would bring into harmony with the image of Christ's mind: in our worship, looking up through it to God; in our efforts of will, lifting ever nearer to it both onrselves and the world. The scope of a church, like the sweep of conscience, is all-comprehensive:—to perfect the life personal, domestic, industrial, political, social, I claim it all as the aim of the heavenly law, which seeks expression here. And in the mere fact of association for this end, there is an acknowledgment by each member that others can aid him to perfect the highest relations of his life. He owns that they are not wholly at the disposal of his private self-will. He renounces the freedom to do as he likes, and asks at once liberty and help to do as he ought; not liberty for himself against others, but help from others against himself. Here, then, that truth may keep its health,-may there ever be free teaching and free learning! Here, that duty may hold its gentleness,-may internal provision be made that the strong shall help the weak; and,—that it may not lose its courage,-may hearty protests be uttered against external wrongs, and a welcome to the birth of every good! Here, that piety may resume its divine ascendancy, may only guileless worship be paid, and true interpreters be found of the sorrows and aspirations of good hearts! In such an attempt to organize the Christian life, there is nothing exclusive; and in the cluster of neighbouring churches that look down upon us here, we discern only a fraternity of coadjutors whose work,-a part of the same husbandry of God,-lies in a field our tillage cannot reach. In such attempt, moreover, there is nothing temporary and perishable. It is insured by the laws of our nature and the providence of God. Amid the imposing growth of material wealth and pride, it is not unseasonable to remember that temple-architecture is the oldest in the world, and to ask, after so impressive a vindication of its longevity, whether, having been the

earliest, it may not prove the latest term of human civilization. I am persuaded that so it will be. For there is in the soul of man "a temple not made with hands," which demands and shapes forth the visible structure as its shell of life; which is ever fresh amid the change and wreck of ages, and can build again from the ruins of the past; indeed, the hidden cloister of whose worship will remain still open, and thrill with higher strains, when time and its structures shall be no more.

Mr. J. B. Yates, on behalf of the congregation of the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth-park,-Mr. Wm. Rathbone, on behalf of the congregation of Renshawstreet chapel,-the Rev. Lewis Lewis, on behalf of the congregation of Gateacre chapel, and the Rev. J. J. Tayler, of Manchester, made brief addresses of sympathy and congratulation. The last-named gentleman said,

I am happy, my friends, that circumstances permit me to appear among you this day, and to express in a few words how deep an interest I take, as a friend and a neighbour, in the impressive ceremony which has now been performed. In whatever light we view it, the foundation of a church is a solemn act: it is the commencement of a work which interests not you alone who immediately engage in it, but the thousands scattered through society far and near, who may be affected by the silent and wide-spreading influences of spiritual power hereafter to be diffused from this centre-a work whose stages we must reckon, not by years, but by generatious, it may be, by centuries. These are grand and awful thoughts, in presence of which we feel ourselves but transient shadows on the earth. The towers that are destined to rise from this hallowed ground, will long survive the frail hands that rear them, and generations hence, will look down on our graves and those of our children as though they were but of yester day; generations hence, they will greet the pilgrim as he comes over the waters from the Western world, with a brow unwrinkled by time, while of us the very memories will perchance have perished, or at most remain, in the case of a few, as a subject of dim inquiry to some curious antiquary exploring the obscurely recorded ceremonies of this day.

Individuals pass away, but the truths which are expressed and asserted by them do not perish. The changes of which we are the subject or the occasion, attest the more strikingly, by the very contrasts which they present, the identity of prin ciples which are eternal. The outward

garb and visible manifestation of the religious life alter with the condition of society, but through all time the living heart of faith and duty endures unchanged. Look back on the course which your society has run, from its origin in the fervid earnestness of your Nonconformist forefathers. They met for the worship of the conscience in the plain, substantial house of prayer, which was a fitting expression of their simplicity of purpose and strength of principle. Ideas and manners became more refined; the ethical theology of the 18th century gradually expelled the spiritual enthusiasm of the 17th; and you discarded the unadorned sanctuary of your ancestors, for a temple whose chaste elegance was intended to symbolize your calmer piety and more philosophical belief. Another change has come on. Exclusion has thrown down its barriers, and persecution has cast away its rod; and you feel yourselves at liberty to go back into the broad highway of traditional association, and adopt those venerable forms which the devout feeling of centuries has consecrated to the service of God. On the broad ground of equal liberty, and in the clear light of legal recognition, you can lift up your front unabashed to heaven, and clothe the truth that you love, in the reverend comeliness which is her proper attire. Your faith has thus subsisted in various outward forms. As it has outgrown one, it has put on another.-Allow me to express one wish for you, my friends: it is this that all which was noble and generous and true in the principles of your brave forefathers, their high trust in God, their zeal for liberty, their unswerving adhesion to principle those great and glorious qualities which have made their age the martyr and heroic age of our country's history-may subsist in you and your descendants unimpaired, unchanged, through that new period of congregational existence on which you are about to enter,-not relaxed into compromise with fashionable error, nor weak ened into indifference towards unpopular truth, but drawn out into a largeness of application, and sublimed into a spirituality of conception, which their narrower intelligence could not grasp, and their love, genuine though not expansive, hemmed in as it was by the prejudices of their age, did not allow them to embrace.

I have a deeper reason for satisfaction at being present on this occasion. I rejoice thus publicly to express my affectionate regard for my friend and brother, your excellent minister-my sympathy with his spirit, my interest in his labours. It is not for me at this time or in this

place to speak of my friend in the way which my own feelings would prompt, and to which your hearts would respond. If I know him aright, he honours most in others, what he would desire others should most honour in him- not the accidental pre-eminence of great natural powers, but that consecration of them to the service of truth and virtue in which every earnest and faithful soul is admitted to an honourable competition. My belief is, that such will be the consecration of all his powers-that such is the single purpose to which he has inwardly dedicated the remnant of his days-that the endowments which God has entrusted to him, will be devoted with a religious fidelity and reverence to the assertion of great principles, to the patient investigation of truth, to the fearless enforcement of duty, and to the diffusion over every sphere of human affection and endeavour of the pure and loving spirit of Christ. With such objects, the ministry of far inferior men must be blessed in its final result. With him, I cannot doubt that the harvest will be abundant. Will he accept my fervent prayers and best wishes for his future success and happiness? May he long be spared to carry on the noble and arduous work which he has taken on him! And when, in God's ap pointed time, his active intellect must pause for a brief interval of rest, ere it take up its career anew in heaven, may he quit this scene of earthly labour, followed into his retirement by the grateful reverence of many sympathizing hearts, and leave behind him other minds, quickened by his words into fruitfulness and power, to work with God through coming generations for the advancement and perfection of humanity!

dren of Manesty-lane schools; the conA hymn was then sung by the chilcluding benediction was pronounced by Mr. Martineau; and the committee, ministers and gentlemen officiating, adjourned to the house of Mr. Bolton, Great George Square, to partake of refreshment which he had provided for

them,

Opening of the New Unitarian Chapel, Sheffield.

The ancient Presbyterian chapel of this town, built in the year 1700, has for some time been unsuitable in appearance and arrangement to the wants of the congregation and the general style of ecclesiastical buildings in the neighbourhood. Last year a plan was agreed to for the renewal of the chapel

on the same site, retaining a portion of the ancient walls. It has now been completed. The following is a description of what has been done. The style of architecture is Italian, simple and plain in its details. The principal front, which is built of cleansed stone, is divided into three compartments, the centre one being composed of an Ionic portico, of four columns, over which there is a group of circular-headed windows, finished with composite pilasters and moulded archivolts. This compartment has a slight projection, and, at the altitude of the building, is surmounted by a pediment. The wings on each side of the centre compartment have two windows, finished with dress ings, corresponding with the centre, and in size and form in unison with the windows in the flanks, of the chapel. The flanks of the chapel have been raised eight feet higher than those of the former edifice, and are surmounted or crowned with a bold architrave moulding, frieze and dentilled cornice, which runs on one level around all the outer walls of the building, with the exception of the pediment in the principal front. The entrance to the interior is by two doors from the portico, which open into a vestibule extending the length of the chapel front, and having at each extremity stone staircases leading to the gallery. The body of the chapel is divided into three compartments by two aisles, commencing at the entrances and terminating on each side of the pulpit and communiontable. The columns supporting the gallery are of a light composite order, and are set five feet back from the line of the gallery front, by which arrangement the outer part of the ceiling under the gallery is coned upwards, and, being finished in moulded panels, gives lightness to the interior, and affords a view of the minister from every part of the body of the chapel. The gallery is elliptical on the plan, with radiating pews. The space over the vestibule is fitted up for the children of the schools connected with the chapel. The pulpit stands in the elliptical well, formed by the gallery front at the opposite end of the chapel. In the elipse, on each side of the pulpit there are two chequered glass windows, with stained glass margins, finished with ornamental pilasters, and an enriched arch, which forms the front of the organ loft and orchestra. The ceiling of the chapel is divided by mouldings into parallelograms, having three sunk panels ornamented with va

rious cornices; in addition to which there is placed in each principal compartment a centre piece of ornamental plaster work.

The new chapel was opened on Sunday, May 21st. An overflowing congregation attended the service, which was conducted by Rev. Dr. Montgomery, of Belfast, who preached a masterly exposition of Unitarian opinions. In the evening, the service, which was again crowded, was conducted by Rev. Dr. Beard, who delivered an interesting and beautiful discourse; his subject being, the Practical Beneficence of Jesus Christ a Proof of the Divinity of his Mission. Collections were made which amounted to £90. On the following Sunday, the services were to be conducted by Rev. Charles Wicksteed and Rev. George Harris. The cost of the rebuilding has been nearly £2000, of which sum about £1250 has been raised, and a plan has been agreed to by which it is hoped that the debt will be paid off by 1852. There is, we are pleased to learn, a prospect that the substance of Dr. Montgomery's sermon (which was delivered extempore) will be given to the public through the press.

On Monday, May 22nd, the opening was celebrated by a splendid Soirée in that beautiful apartment, the Cutlers' Hall. About 400 ladies and gentlemen met on the occasion, under the very able and eloquent presidency of Rev. B. T. Stannus, the minister of the congregation. Additional interest and importance were given to the meeting by the presence of the ministers constituting the Midland Counties, &c. Unitarian Association, viz., Revds. Benjamin Carpenter, of Nottingham; A. Jones, of Derby; R. L. Lloyd, of Belper; J. Hunter, of Chesterfield; T. C. Holland, of Loughborough; P. Wright, of Stannington; J. Brettell, of Rotherham, &c. There were also present, Rev. Drs. Montgomery and Beard, E. Higginson, J. Malcolm, of Boston, R. B. Aspland, &c. The proceedings lasted from five till eleven o'clock, and were of a deeply interesting character. Again and again was the sentiment uttered, and received with the approbation of the meeting, that Unitarianism was chiefly valuable as it was an exposition of Christianity, and that its office was to protect the pure and simple, but miraculously attested, religion of Christ equally from the corruptions of superstition and the assaults of infidelity.

On the following morning, the Mid

land Counties Association held its anniversary. The devotional service was conducted by Rev. Noah Jones, and the sermon was preached by Rev. Dr. Montgomery. It was a fine specimen of his bold, outspeaking style. His text was Luke xiv. 28-33, and his subject was an estimate of the hindrances to the progress of pure, liberal views of Christian Truth. There was again a fine congregation assembled, and it included persons of various religious opinions.

We may offer our best congratulations to our friends in Sheffield on the very happy prospects of their congregation.

Manchester District Sunday-School Asso

ciation.

The third annual meeting of the Manchester District Sunday-School Association was held at Bury, on Easter Monday, April 24th, Samuel Robinson, Esq., in the chair. The meeting com. menced at three o'clock in the afternoon, when the report of the Committee was read and other business transacted. It appeared from the report that six schools, containing 928 scholars and 210 teachers, had connected themselves with the Association during the year, and that in the twenty schools which belonged to the Association previously, there were 4379 scholars and 643 teachers, being an increase, during the year, of 75 scholars, and a decrease of 19 teachers. The report of the Committee referred to the establishment of the Sunday - School Penny Magazine, and dwelt at considerable length on the advantages which would result from a systematic plan of visiting the schools in the neighbourhood. In accordance with the suggestion of the Committee, several Visitors were appointed, who are willing, as far as they are able, to visit any school to which they may be invited. It is hoped that, in connection with their visits, separate meetings of teachers and parents may occasionally be held.

Shortly after five o'clock, tea was provided in the school-room under the chapel, after which the meeting was resumed. Mr. Robinson, on again taking the chair, alluded to the formation of the Society and the purposes for which it was established. He referred to some of the defects of Sundayschools, and particularly pointed out the advantages that would accrue to them from the establishment of day

schools. He concluded by calling on Mr. Wright to introduce the subject of the evening discussion, viz., "What means will be found most useful for raising up an efficient body of Teachers in our schools?" An interesting discussion ensued, which was unfortunately interrupted at an early hour by the departure of the trains. Various plans were suggested, such as teachers' meetings, adult classes, mutual-improvement classes, temperance societies, &c., by means of which the elder scholars might be led to feel an increasing interest in the schools, and ultimately become teachers. Many of those who spoke dwelt on the need of cultivating a devotional spirit amongst teachers and elder scholars, and holding meetings for this purpose. Frequent mention was made, with great regret, of the fact that so few of the bettereducated members of our congregations took any part in the schools.

He

The Chairman, in some concluding observations, bore testimony to the great delight and personal improvement which he had derived from his connection with Sunday - schools. urged the necessity of limiting the number of pupils in proportion to the number of teachers, and dwelt on the importance of the ministers of the various congregations paying particular attention to the adult classes, and thus helping to train up a number of wellqualified teachers.

Mr. Howorth having taken the chair, Dr. Beard gave an account of a class which he holds in connection with his congregation and Sunday-school, and concluded by proposing a vote of thanks to Mr. Robinson. The proposition having been seconded by Mr. Thornley, and warmly responded to by all present, the meeting was closed with prayer.

The next annual meeting of the Association will be held at Strangeways, when Dr. Beard will read a paper on the following subject: "The best way to make the Bible useful in Sundayschool education." In conformity with the strong desire which has been expressed, the Committee intend to make arrangements for the holding of religious services in connection with the future meetings of the Association.

Southern Unitarian Fund Society. The annual meeting of the Southern Unitarian Fund Society was held at Portsmouth on Good Friday, April 21.