[May, Christian pastor is, to minister to minds in such a state. But what aid or consolation can he bring whose own faith has been previously shaken or perverted? How can he offer or counsel prayer, who does not believe in its efficacy, or thinks that its power is exhausted upon the mind of the utterer, and that it is not heard and answered in heaven? How can he urge resignation under calamity as a duty of submission to God, when he believes in the fatalistic succession of all events under physical laws, and consequently rejects, as essentially incredible, the doctrine of Divine interposition? How can he aid in robbing death of its terrors, who does not believe in immortality, except in some incomprehensible phase of the reunion of the finite with the infinite, or who maintains that eternity hereafter means only eternity here and now? Yet such are the cold and vague speculations which the clerical writers of this book would substitute for the vital doctrines of Christianity. Among the other criteria of theological opinions, why did they never think of applying this practical test How will my version of the dogma work as a means of elevating the faith and purifying the lives of the people of my own parish?"

It may be said that the selections we have made and arranged from these esssayists will naturally convey a stronger impression as to their errors than is warranted by the entire article or the whole book. To which we reply that, although these may be strong passages, and much ranker than the average, still there is not one paragraph in the whole book that contradicts any one of these. There is not one positive qualification, much less one explicit disclaimer of them, in all those five hundred pages. We should suppose that this perfect harmony of seven orthodox men in pushing forward a very heterodox doctrine, implied a careful "concert and comparison" of views beforehand; but as they explicitly deny this, we must admit them to be docile children of a special Providence, writing under the "inspiration of direction!"

Besides, these are their precise and carefully studied statements, which no amount of attendant qualifications could essentially alter without a childish trifling with language of which such scholars could not be guilty. They knew what they wrote, and wrote what they meant. Moreover, might we not reverse the terms of the objection and say that these compact and pregnant passages are better representatives of their belief,

that is, of what is characteristic in it, than any amount of more wordy, and therefore looser qualifications that might follow, could be; even as in assigning to the creature its proper name and place, the naturalist considers its fang and rattles, and not what it holds in common with other reptiles. No matter how many smooth and tortuous qualifications may occur between these ugly extremes, they do nothing but hold them together. It is these extreme statements that best describe this latest development in the course of creation - the remorseless critic of the Bible!

While this book is interesting as dividing the religious public of staid old England, and showing each where he stands, it is hardly less interesting as a specimen of the tendencies of modern thought upon religious subjects. Active thought begets criticism, and criticism unrestrained leads to scepticism; and scepticism is already close upon deism and infidelity; and if combined with the self-confidence of science, is soon atheism. The popular criticism of this day—not the profoundest criticism - is sceptical and destructive. It would analyze miracles out of the Bible, in order that then, by a loftier analysis, it may sublimate God out of his creation. In the physical world it admits nothing higher than cool Mr. Powell's "self-evolving powers of nature," and in the mental world nothing above good Mr. Temple's "verifying faculty" or bluff Mr. Parker's "instincts." Its ultimate conclusion is-man is divine; and therefore God is only man. Thus acutely and perseveringly does the uneasy mind of fallen man labor to rid itself of the great thought of a living, personal God, governing the world in the interest of holiness and justice. Well, therefore, has one of the rising Christian metaphysicians of England given his rare powers to the delicate work of defining the proper limits of religious thought; a work which is a powerful brake upon the burning wheels of the popular free-thinking, although it has laid down some principles which can be pressed to the damaging of his own conclusions.

But let it be also noted that there is nothing new in the scepticism of these English essayists and reviewers. They have not raised one questionable point which had not often been pressed with a terrific energy by "our own Theodore." His

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language is as much more forcible than theirs as his spirit is more irreverent. They reason long and smoothly about the improbability of miracles ; — "God's gift to us" blurts it out thus-"A miracle is as impossible as a round triangle!" But in orthodox circles he was not considered respectable, and so his rank statements are, for the most part, left to rot. He died mournfully confessing to the great sin of — failure. His great blunder was in vaulting at once clear out of the pale of Christian respectability. He should have taken it more patiently and quietly and piously, as these essayists have done. Henceforth, therefore, let him who would move the staid religious world from their old foundations be careful first to secure his own respectability, as a mov or. Let him seek first the highest pulpit or the oldest chair of instruction. Then will the nobility with their whole pack be after him.

We are reminded by this "divisive movement," originating in the most established of orthodox churches, that, in battles for the truth, help may arise from unexpected quarters. The unscrupulous rationalism of "our Theodore" has awakened much uneasiness among friends of the primitive New England faith, and they have uttered many sensible and weighty words touching it. But after all, this plague may receive its best treatment from the conservative part of the Unitarian church. Mr. Sears has already spoken much to the purpose, in his "Religious Magazine;" we should welcome another similar utterance from Mr. Bowen. But what we have already seen in this direction guards us against uncharitableness, or at least, against such sweeping denunciations of a denomination as have no mercy for one who may have been carried off with the main body quite against his will, or who may willingly remain there a true prophet in exile, waiting to lead back the captiv

ity.

As we have already said, the few survivors of the old school of Unitarianism are interesting as way-marks to define the course and progress of that denomination. Mr. Bowen, in the article from which we have quoted, stands where all Unitarians stood at first. But the majority of them have drifted so far as to leave him, relatively, quite in our own neighborhood. He remains a bold headland, still in sight of kindred Alps, while

the mass of his denomination, like that cold, semi-fluid serpent, the glacier- has been slowly but steadily gliding downward towards its melting-point. So far have they gravitated from their first estate and from us, that when their elders speak, their language seems like the sweet pathos of an almost forgotten mother-tongue. In this fast age, it is not often that one of their old-school is called out from the retreat into which a disgust with the popular unbelief of his denomination had driven him. But when he does appear, our right hand flies forth with a welcome. In regard to the supernaturalness of Revelation, its authority as a rule of religious faith and practice, the genuineness and significance of the Bible miracles, and a serious respect for the Christian church and ministry, men of this type are one with us as against the common enemy — Rationalism; one with us as against the popular majority in their own fellowship; and we devoutly pray for their success in efforts to stay, and then turn back the melancholy lapse of the denomination. Mournful prophets are they, but still prophets of a better day; in their captivity, singing sweet Psalms of a Restoration. Towards these, we have only feelings of utmost kindness. Still, as they do admit principles of interpretation in reference to the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, which logically involve, or to say the least, admit of the destructive conclusions of extreme Rationalists as to other parts of the Bible, and as the great majority of the speakers and actors in that denomination have confessedly so little sympathy with them that any visible or formal association with them must belie their own deepest and holiest convictions, they seem to us, as Dr. Huntington has said, to occupy a position peculiarly fit to be left.'

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ARTICLE V.

THE REPOSE OF FAITH.

WITHIN a few years past our theological literature has been increased by a succession of treatises bearing the names of the

Nemesis of Faith, the Phases of Faith, the Eclipse of Faith, the Suspense of Faith. These volumes, with other similar discussions in recent discourses and quarterlies, written with varied ability in the interests of divergent religious theories, show at least this fact that the thoughtful mind of the age is strongly arrested by the issues involved in this evangelical doctrine. It is a curious and commanding proof of the real life which is in it, that, while for a generation or more a school of religionists has been at much pains to persuade us that faith with or without works was alike dead, having abdicated its throne to the logical understanding and the intuitive reason; the sturdy old champion has again challenged the world to meet it in a severer passage-at-arms than ever before, to try the questions pending between itself and the rampant spirit of unbelief and misbelief now abroad. From the powerful article on "Reason and Faith" in the Edinburgh Review of 1849, by Henry Rogers, to the criticisms not yet finished of Mansel's "Bampton Lectures on the Limits of Religious Thought," the grand debate has gone on most satisfactorily to the defence of the Christian claims of this controversy. In an unpretending and practical way, we purpose to add another contribution to the topic thus introduced, under the title of the Repose of Faith.

We have sometimes tried to conceive of the mental state of an universal doubter. He has no faith in God. He sees no evidence of creative, controlling spiritual power in the well-adjusted complications of a surrounding universe. To him, things always have been and will be as they are, without a cause, a motive, an end—intelligently, benevolently defined. No presiding will has the government, no skilful hand has the leadership, of the forces of nature. From nowhere they came and to an everlasting nowhere they are going. He has no faith in himself. "What," or "for what am I?"—are questions which find no answer from within or without. A riddle without a clue, an absurdity without a decent apology, is the most which his self-analysis can discover an unaccountable compound of contradictions, antagonisms, unsupplied wants, aimless energies, beginnings with no endings, hopes with no fulfilments. He has no faith in society. This is but the indefinite multiplication of his own abortive life. No reorganizing laws of moral attraction,