gious world derides it as unsafe, and proves by the unanimity of its derision that it is equally unpopular. But, unsafe for another world, unpopular in this, as it may be declared to be, it is yet the result of the reverent exercise of human powers upon God's various manifestation of Himself; and until corrected by more laborious investigation of man, or fresh light from God, must stand to those who hold it in precisely the same relation as the established truths of their respective sciences to the astronomer or the chemist. For its adherents have not laboured to discern the truth in any prescribed theology, but simply to frame a theology which shall be in accordance with the truth.

Those who have already grasped the idea that theology is a science in which truth is to be sought by the exercise of the same intellectual faculties, under the same conditions, as in any other department of possible knowledge, are at least completely delivered from any fear or misgiving as to the effect upon it of a deeper and more fruitful search into the secrets of the universe. If, after all, the line which separates man from the higher apes be invisible to the eye of the naturalist; if for the perpetual act of creation we have to substitute a gradual development of simpler into more complex forms of life; if it be proved that man has existed upon the earth through ages of which no chronology, secular or sacred, preserves the memory ;-what better thing can there be than the naked truth? Or must not every new truth, however at first sight perplexing and contradictory of former convictions, be an assured step towards that perfect knowledge in the light of which all perplexities will be unravelled? And the hearty sympathy with which the members of this church watch-not with reservation of their theological convictions, but with a distinct reference to their possible modification-the daily triumphs of science, is paralleled by the readiness with which they abandon themselves to the current of national life. They have no love of social or ecclesiastical isolation; they are ready for any church fellowship in which their theological truthfulness is not compromised; they are content to lack the vigour of sectarian zeal. Unlike other Dissenting bodies and a certain section of the Church of England, they take the worldly side in most of the practical controversies which separate the world from the church, and justify themselves in doing

so by the maxim, that nothing can be truly irreligious which the conscience pronounces to be innocent and right. So they strike hands of cordial fellowship with literature and art, as well as with science; and leaving the peculiar products of sectarian piety to be read in repeated editions by those whose minds require no manlier food, are content to find encouragement in the fact that the literary works by which this age is chiefly moulded, and which will hand down its memory to future generations, are not leavened with the characteristic principles of the popular theology. To men of taste it is at least pleasanter to err with Tennyson than to be led into safe paths of orthodoxy by Tupper; and Stanley preaches a more attractive gospel than Cumming to accomplished and fastidious intellects.

If this picture of a church were in no respect ideal; if, in addition to the full practical recognition of these great principles, such a church were animated by a deep religious life, so that within its walls men found a sufficient satisfaction for their varying spiritual instincts, and were filled by an all-sacrificing faithfulness to what they acknowledged to be true and good, no augury of its place and work in the coming Reformation could be too brilliant. The principles on which it is founded are so strangely accordant with those to which the whole religious thought of the time is tending, that there appears to be a certain ungraceful boastfulness in even the simplest statement of them, as if it were intended to be implied that the whole multiform church of the English people were about to adopt the doctrines, the traditions, the usages of a petty sect, which has long enjoyed no other distinction than that of being "everywhere spoken against." But though it might be boastful enough to assert that we had been absolutely faithful to great principles, merely to acknowledge that by the wisdom and patience of former generations such principles have been laid in our hands, may be the very reverse of boastfulness. Noblesse oblige the descendants of the confessors of 1662 should be above worldly temptation: they who sit in Lardner's seat, foremost in sacred learning; the successors of Priestley, full of unselfish allegiance to the truth; those who own the same fellowship as Lindsey, not ashamed of a deep manly piety; those who call Channing brother, of saintly heart and life. There is a noble boastfulness which is near

akin to self-humiliation, and the Christian church of any single generation never so fully acknowledges its weakness as when it contemplates the glories of the gospel, for a season delivered into its keeping, and numbers the bead-roll of the saints.

For the principles of belief which we have enumerated both as characteristic of the Unitarian church, and as those which are surely winning their way to general acceptance, are after all no more than a means to an end higher and better than themselves. True thought blossoms into faithful life; theology finds its consummation in religion. Not what a man thinks he can clearly discern of the mysterious nature of God, but the nearness of his conscious relation with the Living Father of his spirit; not the correctness of his theory as to the incarnate Word, but his possession of the "mind that was in Christ Jesus;" not the completeness of his thought as to the foundations of morality, but the keenness of his conscience, the purity of his heart, the righteous firmness of his will;-these are the essential things. It may to some extent be characteristic of Unitarian theologians that they have clearly grasped the idea, that, apart from the scientific accuracy of this or that belief, the main point is, that every man should derive from his belief whatever moral strength, whatever spiritual inspiration, are in it. And no thought could afford a deeper insight into Providence or produce richer fruits of Christian charity than this. For while it provides for men divided by differences of intellectual method and result an ultimate ground of brotherhood, and beyond diversity of faith reveals a possible unity of the spirit, it shews how, by a wonderful alchemy of God, the most varying beliefs seem to issue in the same moral and spiritual effects. We may well believe that such effects are more directly and more richly produced by some theological systems than by others; we may remark in some a logical connection between force and result, which in others is wanting. But, according to this view, every form of Christian error is discerned, in its peculiar adaptability to some conditions of minds, to be only a phase of imperfection in the development of Christian truth; from every church there is a ladder reaching to heaven, with messengers of God ascending and descending; and the whole Christian church is one in the various oneness of the

Christian life. Men have often laboured to draw up creeds which should contain the "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus" of human faith, and no more. But the true solution of the problem was grasped by a great Frenchwoman when, turning from belief to life in search of the point of union, she said, "I am of the church of all the saints, and all the saints are of my church."

Thus, then, in attempting to forecast the part which the Unitarian theology and the free churches which hold it are destined to perform in the coming shock and change of religious thought, a more important point even than the abstract correctness of these principles, is the clearness with which they are discerned and the faithfulness with which they are carried to a practical issue. It is not always the servant to whom are entrusted the ten talents, who deserves that to the original trust should be added ten talents more. The Hebrew history is full of a strange warning:-a people who, having preserved through long ages a treasure of truth such as all the world beside did not possess, were forced to abandon to alien hands the work of its development, to alien hearts the consciousness of its triumph. But, in truth, it is not for us to select at our own will any part in the coming conflict, and to set ourselves consciously to enact it. God chooses His servants, and finds them fit work to do: chooses them often where men least expect, and appoints them to strange labours. All that is possible to any church is to live its life, and to make that life as rich and full as may be. To live its own life, and not another's; to be at once true to ancestral principle and faithful to daily duty; to draw from the springs of its own thought the living waters of piety; frankly and unostentatiously to contribute to the religious consciousness of its generation whatever light and force it may have to give; and yet, in accordance with all this, to seek to make its peculiar vitality nobler and more multiform, not only by the natural growth of a spirit fed with heavenly food by the Spirit of God, but by constant contact and fellowship with all that is true and right and beautiful in other churches, or beyond the pale of any church; this is the secret of strength to a religious organization. So living, growing, working, it adds its largest measure of force to the cause of true thought and righteous life; and whether or not the peculiar phase of development

through which these pass be due to its shaping impress, the amount and direction of its influence is precisely that which, in the operation of Infinite Justice, it deserves. The moment that, even in desire, it assumes the bearing of the magician who can raise and direct the storm, the simplicity, and with the simplicity the strength, of its action is lost. The government of religious revolutions is in the hands of God only.

There is indeed no misconception which, to those who stand outside the Unitarian pale, appears more ludicrousto those who, within, thoughtfully watch the signs of the times, more sad—than the idea that the new theological movement is but a gravitation to the place where we have long stood, and that we have no more to do than to wait patiently till all English Christians adopt our principles and swell our communion. The long isolation in which we have stood to the religious thought and life of more than one generation, might itself suggest some mistrust as to the possibility of a sudden reconciliation with them to be effected now. But there are other more decisive indications of the same kind. Even now we do not emerge from the cloud of mistrust in which we have been long hidden; we cannot gain an audience beyond our own limits for truths which are eagerly heard from less tainted lips; and exiles from other churches pass by with suspicion our protestations of freedom, to erect free churches for themselves. The moving power which is now felt by English Christianity proceeds (it is useless to deny the fact) from the heart of the Established Church; nor, when we learn how little our most cherished principles are known and understood, is it easy to persuade ourselves that we have had much to do with its original production. Were it right to count the chances of success, we might find in these things an augury of the time when it will become impossible for us to maintain a separate existence, and we shall meet at once our triumph and our death in absorption into a truly National Church, embracing, in a wise and generous comprehensiveness, the Christianity of the English people all over the world. But with success or failure we have nothing to do: to live our life and make it nobler-to speak our truth and make it rounder this is ours, and the issue with God. If, forgetting the petty aims of sectarian triumph, we throw our