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

selves unreservedly into the fresh religious life of our age, at once giving and drawing from it what intellectual light, what spiritual strength, we may; if, still labouring with unwearied perseverance in the mine of sacred learning, we recreate our affections in abundant efforts of Christian love; we shall at once cease to be vain of great principles which were bequeathed to us by better men than ourselves, and shall enter into the harvest which, if we did not sow the seed, we have at least tended and watered. Perhaps, after all, we may learn that for a church, no less than for a single labourer, the true secret of success is self-forgetfulness. We need entertain no fear that the truths on which our hopes are stayed can suffer in any religious convulsion which attends upon scientific progress: only in revolutions of science does progress involve the abandonment of fundamental truths: the foundations, once duly laid, cannot be disturbed as stone is added to stone, till the topmost pinnacle divides the air. We expect no changes which shall shake our conviction of the absolute Unity of the Divine Essence; which shall shatter the link which unites Christ with humanity; which shall deny the access of the Spirit of God to every soul of man; which shall introduce into the relations between God and man an unjust justice and a loveless love. It may well be that our conceptions of these great truths may be enlarged and deepened as we discern more and more how they are the living principle even of theologies whose external form belies them, and learn, from long and reverent contemplation, how in infinite realities there is a manysidedness which mocks all attempt at definition, a glory which is "dark with excess of light." We may find reason to modify the minor results of scriptural interpretation, or even our prepossessions as to the relation of religious truths to the human intellect; the same kind of evidence is not convincing to every mind, and the honesty with which a man uses the materials of knowledge is at least as important as the reasonableness of his conviction. Of what importance are these things, if year by year a deeper certainty is added to the grounds of theological belief, a warmer glow of the religious life kindled in men's hearts, if the healing balm of Christian love is more richly poured upon the wounds and sores of our social state, and the righteous will of God is owned to be the rule of our political action!

They are the most careful guardians of Christianity who, loving it much, love Truth more. And to none can the interests of a church be so safely entrusted as to those who desire that it should broaden into a communion of all saints.

It is from the Unitarian position as defined in the foregoing pages that the THEOLOGICAL REVIEW desires to speak. For while both its Editor and those who are associated with him in its management disclaim any theological prepossessions which are inconsistent with a simple allegiance to truth, any sectarian motives irreconcilable with the most ardent desire of Christian union, they think it most honest, and in the long run most likely to be advantageous to the objects which they wish to promote, frankly to take their stand upon their natural ecclesiastical position. Whether, as the progress of theological science produces a larger agreement of religious opinion and feeling among thoughtful men, that position may not justifiably be modified, is a question which can be answered only by the course of events. In the mean time, the THEOLOGICAL REVIEW will endeavour to give distinct form and clear expression to the thought, the wants, the aspirations, of the free churches to which it makes its first and chief appeal. It will bestow a special attention upon their literature, and will treat the ecclesiastical and religious questions of the day with peculiar reference to their circumstances and needs. And if, on the one side, it is the means of laying before the members of Unitarian churches an accurate statement of the progress of religious thought and life in other churches at home and abroad, it may hope also to be able in some degree to contribute to that progress, by uttering the voice of an organized Christian communion in favour of a scientific investigation of theology, which is at present recommended and practised only by solitary scholars.

The THEOLOGICAL REVIEW will not attempt to effect a doctrinal representation of churches which suffer the imposition of no doctrinal tests. It will endeavour to quicken their intellectual life by the free admission to its pages of thoughtful and able theological essays, whatever the precise shade of opinion which they may display; and wherever a marked divergence of theory is known to exist, to secure a