ages, and gives the history of the ideas and powers that rule the destiny of men and constitute the kingdom of God. We at first were a little impatient of the practical, little speculative turn of the author, and desired more light on the standpoint, training, and mental affinities of the men treated of; but, on second thought, we acquiesced in the author's policy, and commended him for his wisdom in giving such truths as readers could at once understand and accept, and in leaving further philosophizing to thinkers and writers favored with more leisure and a more open arena.

We confess, that it seems strange to us not to see some names on this list which we have usually ranked among the Unitarian fathers, and which are generally ranked among our liberal leaders, such as Colman and other early ministers of Brattle-street Church, who virtually founded Boston liberalism in 1698, and the famous Dr. Osgood, of Medford, whose fame is in all our churches. But these men did not call themselves Unitarians or Arians, and accepted the doctrine of the Trinity in the form thought orthodox by their contemporaries. We do not surrender these, however, from the ranks of the liberal clergy; and, so far as they contended for religious liberty against the old Puritan exclusiveness, we hold them in equal affection with those who came out in name from the old Puritan discipline and creed. Nay, so far as they manifested a generous catholicity, and resisted the disposition to preserve Christian character by a harsh dogmatic standard, we like them better than the class of nominal liberals who have held the so-called liberal views in an illiberal temper, and brought to the new theology the intolerant spirit of the old confession.

Considering the historical position and influence of the Unitarian clergy in America, we cannot but notice, first of all, their peculiar civic and social relations. The Unitarian denomination has appeared in America, especially in its early stages, more as a social class or congenial community than as a theological sect or definite Church. It consisted mainly of the liberal minds within the Congregational churches of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, who could not sub

mit to the rigid discipline and exacting creeds of the old Puritans, and who, at the same time, had strong Christian principles and a very high sense of their personal responsibility. They meant to stay within the Church: but they were determined to keep their liberty of thought and action; and, long before they were designated by any denominational name, they were a marked and powerful body of liberals, who possessed a large share of the wealth, culture, civic influence, and social distinction of the community. Nominally, they are usually regarded as having had their first marked triumph in the election of Henry Ware to the Professorship of Theology in Harvard College; but, virtually, they carried the day more than a century before in the defeat of the Mathers, and the ascendency of the Brattles, Willard, and Leverett, in the administration of Harvard College. We do not say that the founders of Brattle-street Church, who led the protest against the old Puritan exclusiveness, and so powerfully controlled the Cambridge school, were Unitarians; but they headed the social and intellectual tendency that developed itself in Unitarianism. Their first move was towards liberty of conscience as against the prescription of severe doctrinal tests and relations of experience in order to admission to the Lord's Supper. That such assertion of liberty usually goes with Arminian views of moral agency, no student of ecclesiastical history will need to be told. It is clear that, as soon as every serious believer in the Christian religion is free to approach the Lord's table upon making his desire known, the view will prevail that he has freedom of will enough to come within the means of divine grace, and need not wait for any startling experience or irresistible call. The sensitive point among the liberal Christians in the eighteenth century seems to have been more in practical liberty than in speculative doctrine. Their Arminianism was a practical protest, before it was a metaphysical theory. The coming of Whitefield intensified the protest by making the demand for striking conversions and obtrusions of personal experience more aggressive; and stout old Dr. Gay, who heads Dr. Sprague's "Annals of the Unitarian Clergy," was apparently more vehemently

exercised by that great revivalist's disturbance of the decent quietude of the regular church methods, and the preference of strange emotions over calm obedience, than by any of the speculative tenets of the new experimental theology.

Clearly, the liberalism of Massachusetts, in the eighteenth century, was more the calm, independent spirit and practical habit of a cultivated and influential class of society than a sharply defined doctrine. We make a great mistake if we put out of sight the characteristic life of the liberal community, and judge of its power by theological opinions alone. The lay and clerical leaders did not wish to go out of the old churches, or to have any peculiar mark set upon them. They wished to do their work, and educate their children, and worship God after the way of their fathers, in the institutions that had come down to them, with the least possible interference from spiritual dictators. Their leaders, indeed, did not lack polemic ability, and struck heavy blows at the old and the new champions of Calvinism; yet the polemic aspect of the body is its least conspicuous aspect. The leading secular and intellectual power of the community was in the liberal ranks. When we read the notices of such men as Chauncy, Mayhew, Eliot, Lathrop, and other leaders of the Boston liberal churches, we must remember that they were the mouth-pieces of the ruling social orders, and their controversial labors were a small part of their influence. Very probable it is, that secular dignity preponderated over doctrinal zeal, and especially over church caste, in many of the magnates of the liberal Arminian and Arian body. In that transition period in which the body passed from its first stage of mild Orthodoxy into the second stage of avowed liberal Christianity, it evidently carried with it the aristocracy of the community, and especially of Boston and the leading towns of the neighborhood.

Buckminster is to be regarded as the conspicuous representative of this transition stage in the history of the Unitarian body. He was less conspicuous as an Arminian or Arian, or Unitarian, than as a liberal Christian, his favorite phrase. We look in vain for any sharply defined ideas to account for

this great influence. He did not claim to belong to or to found any sect; and there is little if any thing in his sermons that might not have been preached by Paley or Sidney Smith, or any mild theologian of the Church of England. He was master, indeed, of a charming style, and of a learning quite affluent after the standard of the day; but he was not so. rich in philosophical ideas and spiritual insight as in evangelical fervor and rhetorical grace. His sermons charm, but do not so much impress or instruct us. In their estimate of the nature and work of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the office of the Church, they would fail to satisfy many of the earnest and pious Unitarians of our day. His wonderful power over the people is to be accounted for by his personal piety, his rare eloquence, rich culture, and not least by his being the mouth-piece of a refined and dominant class, who led public opinion, and rejoiced in the classic tastes and learning that were rising into sway. It was the day of the "Renaissance" of New England. Buckminster, Everett, and their gifted peers and followers, inaugurated the new age of classicism that seemed destined to displace the hard old Puritan scholasticism. It would be a great mistake to esti mate their significance merely or mainly by their doctrines, when they were little desirous of assuming any polemic name, and thought more of winning honors from universities at home and abroad than of building up a new sect or revolutionizing the creeds and churches of the land. A poor idea would be given of their position and influence by separating their speculative teaching or characteristic doctrine from their personal talents and culture and social relations. Think of a man of common gifts, without social fellowship, depending mainly upon the doctrinal views of Buckminster's excellent sermons to produce, in a strange and perhaps hostile community, any thing like the effect produced by that pure and devoted spirit among a people prepared by the habits and culture, and even the pride, of nearly two centuries of historical antecedents, and by all the charming enthusiasm of the rising school of letters, to appreciate and believe them! Yet this is precisely the mistake that has often been committed. More

than one earnest young man has been amazed and heartbroken to find, that the mild liberalism of early Unitarianism does not take root in new and strange soil at the West or South, or even in the Middle States, as it did in its own native ground, under such continuous tillage in such wellguarded enclosures. Even in the New-England States, out of Massachusetts, the social conditions did not favor the Unitarian cause. In Connecticut, for example, the views that were so early set forth by Sherman and Abbot have found little response, perhaps partly from the rise of a more liberal type of Congregational Orthodoxy there, and partly from the early adhesion of the Arminian party and a large part of the conservative wealth and culture to the Episcopal Church.

Channing, although belonging to the same favored class as Buckminster, marks a new era in the popular position of Unitarians. He was the leader of the more democratic and ideal school of Unitarians. Much as he inclined to aristocracy, by taste, position, and training, he is virtually the head of the party of progress and reform; implicitly, though not explicitly, the father of Unitarian rationalism in America. It requires the observation and insight of a contemporary to understand and state fully the relation of Channing to the elder Boston clergy, and especially to the classic school and conservative caste of Buckminster and his admirers. We have seen proofs of a certain difference (we will not say hostility) between the two classes, even before Channing offended the old conservatives by his antislavery movement. But it is evident, from the whole nature and culture of the two noble leaders, that their tendencies were widely different. Buckminster was the conservative liberal churchman of the old régime, and as little prone to radicalism as any bishop in the parliament of England. No English churchman could have berated Milton's radicalism more stoutly than he did in his famous Phi-BetaKappa oration. Here is a specimen of this onslaught on the blind old patriot whom Channing eulogizes:

"The life of Milton, however, is a memorable instance of the temporary degradation of learning. For notwithstanding the sublime