ministers of Montauban. In piety and practical religion, Mr. Goodier greatly resembled Henry Ware; and, taking into view the manner in which the former of these two equally faithful servants of God broke through all the difficulties of poverty and imperfect early education, we may well believe that, had his life been protracted, his career would not have been less distinguished nor less abundant in the fruits of religion and righteousness than that of Mr. Ware.

In connection with Mr. Goodier's history, room must be found for two letters.

Rev. William Johns to Rev. Robert Aspland.

"Manchester, Aug. 8, 1818. "Dear Sir,-On Wednesday last, Mr. Goodier, of Hollinwood, near this town, received a letter, written the 25th of July, communicating the intelligence of the death of his son, which took place on the 23rd of the same month. He died at Montauban, where he had resided a few months. Mr. Goodier, the father, has desired me to write to you and suggest the propriety of your drawing up a memoir, to be inserted in the Repository. I certainly know no person so proper for the task as yourself, if you will undertake it. What you may know concerning the last year or two of his life I am ignorant; but Mr. Freme and myself will cheerfully communicate what we know, if you desire it. Mr. Freme has received several letters from him from France, and I have seen several to his father. In all these there is a complete unity and consistency of character to the end. The last letter to his father (written July 12) is admirable. He wrote to Mr. Freme on the 15th; but that letter I have not seen. Of these interesting letters we can furnish you with copies, if you think that it will facilitate the undertaking. They can be easily sent. The liberality of Mr. Freme and Mr. James Freme has been very great. His friends in this neighbourhood, upon being informed of the contents of his last letter to his father, immediately subscribed above £20, and more would have been done in a few days, if the report of his death had not arrived. We shall have no difficulty, in concert with Mr. Freme, in making proper arrangements in regard to his concerns. One thing, however, the voice of humanity and a correct national feeling loudly calls for-the liberal remuneration of those strangers whose conduct towards our deceased friend during a most trying and painful affliction, requiring the most unremitted, patient and even servile attention, has in a very exemplary degree been kind, humane and affectionate.

"I hope your own health is restored, and that Mrs. Aspland and every branch of your family is well. I shall be glad to hear from you as soon as convenient on the subject of this letter. I have been very much engaged, or else I should have written immediately upon hearing of poor Goodier's death, and likewise more fully.

"I am, dear Sir, yours most truly,

WILLIAM JOHNS."

Rev. Robert Aspland to Rev. William Johns.

66

Hackney Road, Sept. 3, 1818. "Dear Sir, I am but just returned from a journey into the West of England, or your kind favour of the 8th ultimo would not have remained so long unanswered.

"The death of our excellent young friend was announced to me on the road; and though I heard of the event without surprise, I could not fail of being deeply affected by it. He was upon the whole the best young man I ever knew. Had his life been spared, with restored health, he would have been of great importance to our connection: and until very lately I often pleased myself with reckoning upon the services which he seemed raised up to render to the cause of truth and righteousness. It has, however, pleased

VOL. IV.

4 R

the Infinite Wisdom to close his probationary account, and we must console ourselves with reflecting that few mortals have ever been called to the eternal world at once so young in years and so ripe in virtues.

"I cannot decline any labour that would perpetuate our departed friend's memory or do honour to his name, but I do not think that I am the fittest person to draw up his memoir. Of his short history previous to his coming to the Academy, I have little or no knowledge, and I have few, if any, documents to illustrate his character in reference to the period between his removal from my house and his death. There must be many of his Lancashire friends who in point of information are much better qualified than myself to undertake his biography, and none of them, I presume, who cannot command more leisure for the purpose. My long illness, from which I can be only said to be recovering, has thrown upon me a weight of neglected business which every addition renders truly formidable.

"You will quite understand, therefore, that my wish is that you or some other friend of Goodier's in the neighbourhood of his native place should draw up the account for the Mon. Repos., but that at the same time I will not refuse the work, if it be declined by those that are more conveniently circumstanced. Should it be imposed upon me, I must be supplied with all the documents that are judged necessary or useful by his family and friends.

"You can perhaps inform me whether the funds in the hands of his friends be sufficient to liquidate all the claims upon him, and to remunerate his kind attendants in France. If further help be wanting, I will cheerfully endeavour to raise something in this neighbourhood.

"Believe me, dear Sir, yours very truly, ROBERT ÁSPLAND."

In consequence of Mr. Aspland's severe and protracted indisposition, the memoir in the Monthly Repository was written by Mrs. Middleton, the authoress of The Widow and other Christian Tracts.*

Thomas Walker Horsfield was the other pupil at the Academy whose useful but too short career claims a brief record in this Memoir. He was born at Sheffield, November 6, 1792. Of his early years it is only recorded that he was connected in business with Mr. James Montgomery, the poet, who entertained great regard for him, though he deplored his Unitarianism and his devoting himself to its ministry. He entered the Academy in 1814, where, according to the testimony of a friend who knew him well,† he "availed himself in the most creditable manner of the great advantages which he enjoyed at this time, especially of the highly valuable instructions of his Tutor, Mr. Aspland, in divinity and pulpit eloquence, of whom and of whose family he always spoke in terms of the warmest gratitude." At the conclusion of his academical course, he settled, in 1817, as minister of the Presbyterian congregation of Lewes. His services were continued here with ability and acceptance upwards of ten years. His Sunday-evening lectures, delivered in several successive winters, were remarkably attractive and useful. He found leisure for many public and some literary pursuits. Of the former kind may be mentioned the Mechanics' Institution,-said to be one of the best conducted in the kingdom,‡-which he established and assisted by delivering scientific lectures. His contributions to

* In the year 1825, a much fuller Memoir was published by Miss Roscoe. The late Rev. Henry Acton. See Christian Reformer (8vo), V. 66.

See Rev. W. James's Memoir of Rev. H. Acton, p. xvii, where it is stated that the Institution grew out of a small literary society, of which Mr. Acton was an early and zealous upholder.

topographical literature (The History and Antiquities of Lewes, 2 vols. 4to, 1824; and History and Antiquities of the County of Sussex, 2 vols. 4to, 1835) procured for him a Fellowship from the Antiquarian Society. He had married soon after his settlement at Lewes, and to maintain an increasing family he added a boarding-school to his other labours.

He removed, in 1827, to Taunton, and again, in 1835, to Chowbent. Here his prospects of usefulness and comfort were such as to promise a satisfactory field for the exercise of all his matured powers; but in the summer of 1837, he was attacked by dangerous sickness, which in little more than a fortnight terminated his life. He expired August 26, in the forty-sixth year of his age. As a preacher he was vigorous and effective. The style of his compositions and his method of delivery sometimes reminded a hearer of those of his former Tutor in theology. During the latter years of his life, he devoted a portion of his leisure to landscape painting. He was possessed of considerable versatility of talent, but it was as a preacher and a writer that he chiefly excelled, and his early death was a serious loss to the Unitarian body.

ART AND THEOLOGY.

"MERE Art perverts taste, just as mere Theology depraves religion."Guesses at Truth.

It may be doubted whether this form of words expresses what the author meant. Nothing can be perverted or depraved that does not actually exist. But if taste, that is a just sense of the beautiful, be in a mind, mere art, that is art alone, cannot pervert it, though false art might. So if genuine religion have penetrated the soul, the formal science concerning God, that is theology, cannot deprave it, though false doctrines might. But the truth intended is of infinite value; and it matters little whether a writer utters a truth expressly, or suggests it to his reader. H. C. R.

LE BON DIEU.

MANY make their own God; and he is much what the French may mean when they talk of le bon Dieu,-very indulgent, rather weak, near at hand when we want any thing, but far away out of sight when we have a mind to do wrong. Such a God is as much an idol as if he were an image of stone.Guesses at Truth.

PRAISE.

THE praises of others may be of use, in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be.-Guesses at Truth.

THERE'S NOTHING IN IT.

WHEN a man says he sees nothing in a book, he very often means that he does not see himself in it, which, if it is not a comedy or a satire, is likely enough.-Guesses at Truth.

FALLOWS OF THE MIND.

FIELDS of thought seem to need lying fallow. After some powerful mind has brought a new one into cultivation, the same seed is sown in it over and over again, until the crop degenerates, and the land is worn out. Hereupon it is left alone, and gains time to recruit, before a subsequent generation is led, by the exhaustion of the country round, to till it afresh.--Guesses at Truth.

"THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE."*

OUR notice of this volume will be limited to Mr. Crompton's Introduction; as the History of the Octagon Chapel is a mere reprint, by permission, from the pages of the Christian Reformer, though (by an oversight) no acknowledgment to that effect appears either on the titlepage or in the "Introduction." Neither is the title-page itself correct in ascribing the History simply to the late Mr. John Taylor and his son, Edward Taylor, Esq., as it must be evident to any reader of the Memoir of Dr. John Taylor that this Memoir at least is by another hand, as is also that of Mr. Dixon.

Mr. Crompton's "Introduction" challenges the attention of the Unitarian denomination, especially when taken in connection with his subsequent public withdrawal from the Eastern Unitarian Christian Association. His letter of withdrawal being evidently a very hasty composition, we shall be more likely to do justice to his real views by taking the "Introduction" to the History of the Octagon Chapel as designed to be the distinct and official avowal of those views.

We wish they were more distinctly expressed (if they really are distinctive in themselves) than we find them even in this "Introduction.” The Christian Reformer has on various occasions taken notice of various symptoms which have betokened the desire, if not the effort, for some change or other in the institutions or organization, or, more vaguely, in the spirit of the Presbyterian or Unitarian denomination. And our complaint has hitherto been, that those who find fault with the denomination as it is, and wish to change it for the better, are utterly vague, if not visionary, in their exposition of their own views; or, so far as they are not vague and visionary, that they are not in fact demanding change of any kind, but simply describing the denomination as it is in its best existing developments, and as it is tending to become every where, more or less evidently.

Mr. Crompton's Introduction is another of these manifestos in behalf of something different from, and superior to, what he assumes to be the ordinary action and influence of Unitarian ministers and churches. So far as we can understand him, he seems to think that the "spiritual" administration of Christianity required by the present day, can only be found by the preacher's abstaining altogether from advocating, implying or explaining the express doctrines or principles of Christianity. He must never preach dogmatically, nor controversially, nor textually; but still he must " unfold the inner deep sources of spiritual life lying in the Scripture and the human soul." "I believe the time is coming (says Mr. C.) and already overshadowing us, for a fresh and vivid utterance of the old Presbyterian freedom, in forms and spiritual application required by the age; I believe the time is coming when Christianity will free itself both from ecclesiastical and also dogmatic fetters." The very vague use of the term "spiritual" by Mr. Crompton, cannot fail to strike those who endeavour to find in his appeal any practical sug

History of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich. By the late Mr. John Taylor, of Norwich. Continued by his Son, Edward Taylor, Esq., Gres. Prof. Mus. With an Introduction by the Rev. J. Crompton, M. A. 8vo. Pp. 61. C. Green, Hackney. 1848.

gestions for an improved religious action on the part of our churches. If it means (as it seems to do) something quite distinct from, and even opposed to, the intellectual element in religion, in no terms sufficiently strong can we deprecate the proposal to relinquish that "spirit of a sound mind" which distinguishes our denomination from all "orthodox" churches, and which, in apostolic experience, preceding our own, was associated with "the spirit of power and of love." But if “spiritual" means the practical in religion, as distinguished from the theoretical (and yet founded upon the convictions of the understanding as its sure basis), then we say the implied charge against the Presbyterian and Unitarian churches and their ministers, of foregoing the practical aspects of the gospel for its merely doctrinal and dogmatic ones, is a charge which one of these very ministers ought to have known to be unfair.* If in his own soul he loves the practical or "spiritual" far above the doctrinal or the ecclesiastical,-if his own experience tells him that the true use of his own laborious and learned acquaintance with the criticism and interpretation of scripture and the history of religious opinion, is to bring out in clearer light and beauty the claims of religion upon his heart's love and his life's devotion,-then let him ask himself whether, in all fairness, he ought not to suppose that these same genuine results of an untrammelled theological position have been experienced by his Presbyterian or Unitarian brethren in general? Shall he assume that all but himself are mere doctrinists and dogmatists, hard controversialists and anti-trinitarian bigots, because they not only love their spiritual freedom and devote themselves to practical religion, but also feel grateful to the intellectual process by which they are exempted from the heart-withering doubts and bigotries of high orthodox and high ecclesiastical systems? It is unbecoming in any Unitarian thus to disparage his own charter of spiritual liberty, and to insinuate that those who value it more, value it for the sake of dogmatism and not of "spiritualism," in the only intelligible use of that mysticising word; that is, for the sake of the free minds and loving hearts of religious beings.

Perhaps it may be said we have not understood Mr. Crompton's meaning. But if we have not, then we declare that he means nothing distinctive, as between himself and the denomination to which he ministers; and that it is an ungracious thing to attempt a disparaging contrast between what their free principles have wrought for other people under his own ministry and other similar ministries, and what the same principles have done in himself individually. He attempts a distinction without a difference, or else he proposes to erect a difference which would be fatal to the intellectual pretensions of Christianity in a scientific age.

Mr. Crompton appeals to the history of the Presbyterian denomination in support of his views, and seems to think his plan of merging Unitarian opinions would be a virtual restoration of old Presbyterian principles. We doubt whether the evidence bears out the inference; but if it does, "the Church of the Future," which he seems to suggest

The "orthodox" accusation against us, of preaching mere morality, is at least our vindication against this "accuser of his brethren" and his accusation of preaching mere dogmatics.