ever cunningly these may be hidden behind the mask of self-reliance; or has it within it such a faith in truth, distinct from any system, such a trust in God, independent of any theory of His operations, as enable it calmly to watch the procedure of scientific inquiry, and to abide firmly by the result? Perhaps it would be too much to say of any church that, as a whole, it stood in the latter attitude; if our hearts go with any reasonings which seem to lead others towards our own resting-place of faith, there is a hard struggle with old associations (not always to be stigmatized as prejudices) when the same logical process seems to conduct the inquirer into fresh fields of speculation. The convictions on behalf of which we put forth a bigoted zeal are not necessarily registered in creeds; in every man's thought is a point beyond which it is hard to discern, harder still to follow, the divine form of Truth. But if, on the one hand, there is no Protestant church which, however ice-bound in bigotry, is not stirred by some half-conscious instinct of theological progress,-if, on the other, there is none which, however sincere its allegiance to truth, is not secretly swayed by strong attachment to a system, these two elements may be found mingled in very various proportions. To say that any existing church had already adopted the principles of the new Reformation, would be almost equivalent to denying that a Reformation was necessary. But while there are some of whom it may be surely predicted that they will struggle bitterly and despairingly against the new thought long after any effort has ceased to avail, and others which already shew signs of change and movement, there is at least one which, if it prove itself true to principles which have been slowly and obscurely matured within it, will hail the dawn of a braver and more truthful theology with unselfish triumph, and will encourage with the whole strength of its voice those who are still but "crying in the wilderness" of ignorance and prejudice.

This church, commonly known as Unitarian (or, when men wish to put a sting into the name, Socinian), is hardly at one with itself as to its fit and rightful title. The fact that it claims an ecclesiastical and, in the person of many of its members, a genealogical descent from the Presbyterian confessors of 1662, justified the use of the term Presbyterian, until it was rendered inapplicable by the entire decay of

Presbyterian organization. And another branch has been grafted upon the Presbyterian stock. As a gradual change of opinion had led the English Presbyterian churches to the profession of a Unitarian theology, of which Dr. Priestley was in his own day the representative, it was among them that Theophilus Lindsey, when, after his secession from the Established Church, he established Unitarian worship in London, found friendship and sympathy; among them, too, that Unitarian congregations of later birth have ranged themselves as in their natural place. And as, under these circumstances, the word Presbyterian, even in its expression of certain historical connections, has failed to embrace all the facts of the case, the term Unitarian, borne only half willingly by many, objected to not only as fastening a dogmatic name upon an ecclesiastical association, but as elevating to an undue pre-eminence a single article of belief, whatever its intrinsic importance, has yet come into general use. Names, after all, cannot possess the clear comprehensiveness of definitions; some name is needful if we would avoid the loose clumsiness of perpetual periphrasis; and this, like most other names of the same kind, has been rather put upon the church than consciously adopted by it. A more important thing than the designation of a church by a term which is really the name of a theology, is to note the existence, side by side, in the Unitarian church of the Presbyterian and the Unitarian elements. In virtue of the first, it is emphatically, by whatever dogmatic name it may be known, a free church. The Presbyterians, to whom the Act of Toleration allowed an unmolested worship, had so thoroughly learned the lesson of the mingled folly and wickedness of persecution, that they thenceforward left God's Truth to take care of herself. They encouraged by. every means in their power the propagation of sound learning; but that was all. They erected no barrier of creeds at the chapel porch. For the most part they were content to build and endow those chapels simply "for the worship of Almighty God." They did not even "fence" the Lord's table. And the result of this noble confidence in truth, as some would call it, of this perilous indifference to error, as it might be named by others, was the gradual adoption by all the churches, after about a century, of the theory of the Divine Nature known as Unitarian. But in becoming Uni

tarian in doctrine, these churches did not the less remain free in discipline, in ecclesiastical association, in theological aspiration. No confession of faith is imposed upon minister or layman, no creed is recited in public worship. A congregation asks of its elected teacher only such a general agreement with them in theological belief as is necessary to enable him to discharge his office; and no change of religious conviction, however great, is held to be a bar to the amplest Christian fellowship. The College at which the ministers of this church are trained is a school not of Unitarianism, but of scientific theology, where the materials of conviction are frankly laid before the student, and all that is required of him is to be "fully persuaded in his own mind." So that if we were asked, not for the name, but for a definition of the congregations known to English Christianity as Unitarian, our answer would be, that they were "free churches, adopting the congregational discipline, and holding a Unitarian theology."

One reason which has powerfully prevailed with these churches to the disuse of creeds, is the profound conviction that their necessarily hard and narrow language answers most imperfectly to the varying lights and shadows which characterize all human apprehension of infinite realities. Even of thinking men who repeat the same creed, no two read it in quite the same sense; while the deeper a man's search into divine mysteries, the greater is his unwillingness to put his thought into definite words at all. And thus it is characteristic even of the Unitarianism of Unitarians to vary in its type from man to man and from generation to generation. Channing is not in full accord with Priestley: there is a gulf of intellectual difference across which Martineau stretches out the hand of brotherhood to Parker. Opinions vary as to the form of truth which will ultimately prevail: the clash of argument is heard not seldom sometimes the groan which tells that old associations have been roughly disturbed, long-cherished feelings sorely wounded. But, except in the excitement of conflict or the first pang of disappointment, all agree that they could ill spare the sincere piety of any sincerely pious man, whatever the form in which it manifests itself; that this intellectual diversity, rightly looked upon and rightly used, is a source of moral strength, such as could not spring from

a less thoughtful identity of belief; and that it would be well for the church if the area of doctrinal conviction which it covered were wider even than it is. For although a certain similarity of belief (the extent of which we need not here define) is necessary in those who would honestly worship together, the wider organization of the church need not, if men would only think so, be based upon belief at all, and indeed would find its firmest foundation in that fellowship in a Christian spirit which transcends and includes all varieties of belief. The Unitarian church would at once vindicate its fundamental principle of ecclesiastical liberty, and master a valuable lesson which yet it has but half learned, did it include some congregations which could not be accurately described by its dogmatic name. The world has seen almost enough of churches framed upon expedient compromises, which an after age has denominated wise "comprehension;" churches in which rival parties, professing a clamorous allegiance to the same formularies, eagerly proclaim each other unfaithful to the common obligation. A comprehension without a creed, a church union based not upon an assumed sameness, but an acknowledged difference of belief, would be a novel and not altogether uninstructive spectacle.

Another noteworthy characteristic of the same church, is the relation in which it has, for the most part consistently, maintained towards theological and other scientific truth. We have already alluded to the case with which the Presbyterians of the first half of the 18th century, while excluded from the national Universities, provided for the thorough scholastic training of their ministers. A singular instance both of the high character of these Dissenting academies and of the freedom which was their distinguishing quality, may be found in the fact that in one of them, kept by Mr. Jones, of Tewkesbury, Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and that Bishop Butler, whose mind has exercised a wider and deeper influence over the English Church than that of any Primate, studied side by side. Nor can any contrast be more striking than that between the superficial theological instruction given only a few years ago to candidates for ordination, and the complete apparatus of secular and sacred learning, such as the age and the opportunity afforded, which was placed in the hands of

the student at such obscure provincial seminaries as, for instance, that at Hinckley, in Leicestershire, where Dr. Doddridge received his education. From the very first, the Presbyterians shewed that they were not afraid of knowledge, either in itself or in its application to theology. In Lardner, English Protestantism nobly took the lead in the scientific investigation of the original records of Christianity, which it was soon forced to surrender to the sister Church of Germany; while the very unpopularity of the Priestleyan theology among the generation to which it was first preached, is a sufficient evidence of the simple faithfulness to truth which led to its adoption. So down to the present day, the descendants of the Presbyterians have consistently upheld the cause of theological erudition in its best sense. It is true that they have no younger name to place beside that of Lardner. It is true that their learning has been rather a tradition of the schools, carefully handed down from generation to generation, than a living force in English theological literature. Perhaps the necessities of ministerial life under a system which provides neither opportunity nor reward for learned labour, may have had something to do with this; something more, the felt uselessness of uttering a voice never heard amid the clamour of theological prejudice. But they still believe that the Christian teacher should be furnished with all possible knowledge, and left free to make what use of it he will. They have grown indifferent to the cry of popular condemnation, when inquiry leads to unexpected results; and, seeking for truth with what powers God has given them, cannot fear the anger of the God of truth. From the pains and difficulties which attend all honest and reverent students of theology, they cannot indeed claim to be exempt: the pang with which a cherished conviction is first discerned as insecure; the unhappy restlessness, as one foothold of belief after another is taken away, and all certainty seems to vanish in blinding mist; the tug at the heart with which associations seen to be founded in mistake are torn from the life; the necessity, felt sometimes even here, of forfeiting old friendships, of striking a blow in self-defence against old friends. But whatever be the imperfectness or the error of the theology held by this church, it is assuredly held for no meaner reason than that it is honestly and devoutly believed to be true. The reli