round since the calling of the Westminster Assembly, several objects have been accomplished, of great value to the welfare of society.

In the first place, the truth of certain great principles has taken hold of the convictions of men, so that those principles now hold the throne, and are to work out their 'effect upon the world. Among these great principles, a prominent one is this, that every man has the right to choose his own religion, without exposure to punishment on account of it.

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This doctrine was never acknowledged to any extent, until after the days of the Westminster Assembly. Even the good Richard Baxter expressed his utter abhorrence of unlimited toleration in religion. "The Independents," according to Mr. Hume, were the first, who, alike in their adversity and in their prosperity, always adopted the principle of toleration." The testimony of Rev. Johnson Grant, an English Episcopalian and historian, is, that "all the world will allow, that in point of religious liberty, their conduct when in power, fulfilled the promises made when they were in obscurity." This doctrine was wrought out, if we may so speak, in the tortures of the martyrs; in the fires of Smithfield, and the jails of Newgate and of Bedford. But the human mind has at length firmly grasped it; and to question the right of any man now to choose his own form of religion, under his responsibility to God alone, would be to assume the very darkest scowl of bigotry. Freedom to worship God, belongs now among the first principles in the science of human rights.

Another great principle, which is taking fast hold of the convictions of men, is, that ecclesiastical organization may exist, disconnected from the control of the state. The great controversy for a long time was, whether ecclesiastical rulers should have preeminence above civil rulers.

That was the claim of the papists. After this came the question, whether civil rulers should control the doings of ecclesiastical officers and churches, as such, in the administration of their religious affairs. That principle made religion the creature of the civil government, and took its heart out of it. It is a vast advantage gained to the world, when religion is left to act free and unincumbered, in its own sphere; to convey life and salvation to men by its own divine energy.

Again, the question of the irresponsible divine right of kings, is now settled forever. Ten years after the dissolution of the Westminster Assembly, the Presbyterians of England tamely received to the throne Charles the Second, without the slightest guaranty for their civil or religious rights, although they well knew him to be a bigot and a tyrant, and many of them fully expected to be persecuted, and ground to the dust by his vindictive cruelty. And yet they thus received him, and laid their bleeding country under his heel, because they thought that the son of a king had a divine right to reign, whatev. er miseries might be endured by the oppressed people; and that to defend the rights of mankind against royal oppression, or the religion of Jesus Christ against royal persecution, would be rebellion against God. This puerile superstition the human mind has now generally thrown off. Such an event as the restoration of the Stuart family, in such circumstances; an event so disastrous beyond all computation to the interests of religion and human happiness, will never take place again while the world shall stand. Christians will be subject to the civil government under which they shall live, whatever may be the form of its administration; but never again will they feel bound in conscience, spontaneously to offer their own necks to the bloody sword, either of civil

or ecclesiastical despots. It is coming to be an axiom in the world, not that people exist for the sake of rulers, but that rulers exist for the sake of the people. It is a great triumph of human nature over its chains, when the principle is irrevocably established, that royal prerogative can never have the right to prevail against human happiness. The irresistible force of this great truth is moving steadily onward, to emancipate the nations.

And in connexion with the prevalence of these and kindred principles, we are to observe the fact, that power, both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs, has gone down, and is steadily going down, more and more, among the people. Either in form, or, at least, in effect, in every church, and in every state, that deserves a name in the civilized world; the voice of the people is consulted, and that with a more and more eager solicitude, in the decision of great questions. It is not hereafter to be determined in the palaces of Archbishops, and at the council tables of princes, what the millions shall believe, and how the millions shall worship; but it is to be determined by the recitations of the sabbath-school, and the reflections of the closet, and the dis cussions of the fireside, how the church shall be organized, and how the laws shall be administered. The millions are to be elevated in the scale of existence; and to have it in their power to provide for their own security, and social and moral welfare.

And to crown all these other advantages, the means of obtaining and spreading abroad useful knowledge, are vastly increased.

The tyrannous policy of using the press to spread abroad falsehood, and of silencing it when it would speak the. truth, will no more be endured in the Protestant world; nor will it long be endured any where. A man may reveal to the world the in

famous intrigues of courtiers, without having the hand that penned those revelations hewed off by the hangman, like that of John Stubs, in the days of Elizabeth; or he may discuss the doctrine of the apostolic succession, without being sentenced to death, and then left to perish with afoathsome dungeon, like John Ucar, the pastoral supervision of Archbish Whitgift. Human advancement can not now be kept back, by licensing error, and chaining the truth. And as surely as the art of printing can never be lost, so surely no revolu tion of human affairs can ever carry the world back again to the state it was in, before knowledge began, by this means, to be extensively increased.

These are some of the advantages, which the last revolution of the cycle, of which Mr. Hetherington speaks, has given us for the advancement of the social and religious well-being of mankind. The movement in future, may be much slower than we could wish; for the light of knowledge is not like the light of the rising sun, that breaks upon the wide world in an instant; but the causes exist, which make it absolutely certain, that the movements of the world will never bring it back again to the condition of past ages; nor is it in the power of the mighty, to arrest its onward progress. All princes, and all prelates, may take up the words of the wise king of Prussia and say," PROGRESS is stronger than I am." The generations to come, will behold vast and splendid revelations. Society will be disenthralled from the chains that have impeded its onward movement. Religion will strip itself of the deformities, which the man of sin has bound around it, and, in its native beauty, will become the admiration of the whole world. And then, when the way of the Lord is prepared, and the spirit of grace and supplication is poured

out, the world shall be found teeming with enlightened, and free, and pious, and happy millions, and

"Nature all glowing with Eden's first bloom." "The wolf also shall dwell with the East Hampton, Mass.

Thomps

lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them," saith the Lord. W. B.

WHO has not heard of the Hollis street church; of that protracted controversy between the pastor and a majority of the congregation on the one hand, and certain disaffected pew holders on the other, which Mr. Pierpont so aptly termed a case of souls versus pews; of the correspondence in which poetry, wit, and eloquence confronted grave resolutions and pertinacious denunciation;t of the complicated game, in which "Doric fireplaces," "improved razor-strops," and theatrical prologues, were staked against rum hogsheads and distilleries; of ecclesiastical councils, mutual and ex parte, and lawsuits, which for years kept Boston and the world around, in incessant commotion? This same Hollis street church has at length settled down under the ministrations of another pastor, with whom it has entered into a mutual recognizance to keep

* A Discourse delivered at the installation of Rev. David Fosdick, as pastor of the Hollis street church, Boston, March 3d, 1846. By Geo. Putnam. Together with the charge, right hand of fellowship, and address to the people. Published by request of the Hollis street Society.

The Society passed the following vote:"Resolved, that we no longer wish the services of Rev. John Pierpont as our pastor." Mr. Pierpont replied, that

the resolution reminded him of the familiar couplet,

"Not what we wish, but what we want,
O Lord, do thou in mercy grant."

Mr. P. was accused of wasting his time and secularizing his mind by such inventions. He replied, that these useful articles could be obtained at such and such stores in Boston.

the peace. Dr. Frothingham in his charge to the pastor, and Dr. Gannett in his address to the people, showed that they at least had profited by Mr. Pierpont's experience.

But while peace is restored in Hollis street, there is great and portentous commotion in the denomination at large; so that the otherwise joyful occasion of the installation of a pastor over a church which had passed through years of unprofitableness and destitution, was made sombre by the forebodings of evil from without. All the addresses at the installation service, alluded to the difficulties which encompass the Unitarian body; but the sermon grappled immediately with those difficulties in all their magnitude and extent, and labored to remove them. In so doing, it has come to be itself the greatest difficulty of all. We are glad that these several productions, all which are of a high intellectual character, have been collected and given to the public in a permanent form. To those who would

cast a horoscope" with regard to Unitarian affairs, there is here offered an observatory and an apparatus of the most recent construction. Dr. Putnam's discourse is as luminous as Lord Rosse's gigantic reflector; and since it was adjusted to respond to the inquiry" What of the night ?”* we may read in it, so far as they can be made legible, the signs of the times.

*The discourse is founded on Isaiah xxi, 11.

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What then is the present position of Unitarianism? The develop ments of this system have been watched of late in New England with even greater interest than those of Mr. Newman have been chronicled on the other side of the water; for it has been more difficult to predict their final issue. Nor can this now be foreseen with certainty. Streams from every quarter, and of almost every hue, have formed a confluence at the base of a huge mountain; what turn the accumulating and agitated waters will take, whether they will force a passage to the right or left or both, whether they will be suddenly poured into some subterranean channel or abyss, or whether dammed up perpetually they will set back upon their sources, overflow the adjacent fields, and stagnate at length for want of an outlet-we can not tell; and yet we can not be indifferent to the least indication of a decisive result.

In order to define the position of Unitarianism, we must first define Unitarianism itself. This is no easy task. No ism in the whole range of theological nomenclature, is so perplexing. Wherein does it differ from other isms? What is its characteristic feature? Is it a belief in the unity of the Godhead? But says Dr. Putnam, Unitarian is a name "which refers to a single doctrine, and one that has become less and less subject to a controversial interest; a doctrine, too, which all other denominations profess to hold, and which some do clearly hold, as positively as we do."* All Trinitarians hold to the unity of the divine essence that there is but one such BEING as we call God.

What then makes a man a Unitarian? the denial of the divinity and the atonement of Christ; the rejection of the doctrines of depravity, regeneration and justification by faith? But these ne

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gations are common to almost all unbelievers; they can not be made the peculiarities of any one denomination. Is a Unitarian one who rejects miracles, and the inspiration of the Scriptures? This appears to be the latest style of this indefinite character; but according to this standard, Hume was a Unitarian of the straitest sect. Besides, has not Mr. Norton denounced this "latest form of infidelity ;" and has not Mr. Peabody lectured to the students at Cambridge in defence of Supernaturalism ?

Is then a Unitarian, one who believes nothing for himself, but picks up only such scraps of faith as are left to him by others,-not so much an eclectic as a mendicant amid the profusion of divine truth which others enjoy? Does the denomination include all who agree in this-that they have no positive faith; all who can not or will not tell what they believe; all who reject the dogmas of "Orthodoxy ?" Is it a promiscuous gathering of those who can find no other local habitation in the Christian world? This might answer the purposes of description, but not of definition. It is the description which Dr. Putnam gives. "There is no other Christian body of which it is so impossible to say where it begins or where it ends. Something like a center may perhaps be found, but where is the circumference ? It is undefined and wavy. We have no recognized principles by which any man, who claims to be a Christian disciple, and desires to be numbered with us, whatever he believes or denies, can be excluded. We have no definite boundaries, defined by ourselves, put on record, and seen of all men,

none except such as have been incidentally furnished us by other denominations, for their own purposes, drawing their own boundaries, separately, on one side and the other, giving us thus a sort of virtual boundary, but a jagged one and full

After such a conces

of gaps. sion from a leading member of the body, we may well despair of defining Unitarianism.

But can we not somehow classify Unitarians themselves? They are, for the most part, Congregationalists, and we honor them for their warm attachment to the polity of our common fathers, though they have forsaken their faith. We are proud of Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims, and of his Dudleian Lecture; we are proud of the name of Channing -a more worthy apostle of liberty than Jefferson; we are proud of the cooperation of Unitarians in the great mission of New Englandthe promotion of religious freedom throughout the world. In them some breathings of the Puritan spirit have survived the Puritan faith; and yet we tremble for that spirit when it becomes traditionary, or imitative, by being separated from the faith which gave it birth. But if Unitarians are Congregationalists, so are we who differ from them vitally in doctrine. How then shall they be distinguished?

Of late they have styled themselves" liberal Christians." We do not concede the name; Dr. Putnam says, that "there is a tone of arrogance about it;" and Mr. W. H. Channing affirmed at the late anniversary of the Unitarian Association, that there is more bigotry at Cambridge than any where else in the land, and that Unitarians can not adopt with propriety, as their characteristic, a single term of their triune motto, "Liberty, Holiness, and Love." Besides, there are some among them who in the view of the denomination at large are far more "liberal" than Christian. In short, we can fully appreciate the perplexity of Dr. Putnam, when, in the opening of his discourse, he exclaims, "Our denomination-I know not by what name to call it,"

and also when, in subsequent remarks, he shows that he does not know any better where to find it.

What is Unitarianism? Who can say, when some of the ablest writers of that school admit that they can not tell, and others in order to define it are endeavoring to give it a shape and a consistency which it never had and to which it can never be brought?

We

Where is Unitarianism? can not ascertain from our knowl edge of its past position, nor from the confused and imperfect data, to be collected in a transition state when elements are brought together which may either consolidate or explode. We learn, however, from Dr. Putnam, who has investigated the subject thoroughly, that if the friends of Unitarianism do not soon agree to put it some where, it will be found no where.

We ought by the way, before this to have expressed our high admiration of Dr. Putnam's discourse. We admire it for its boldness, its candor, its courtesy, its easy and lucid style, and its logical consistency. The author has done a service to Unitarianism and to the whole Christian public, both by the spirit and the matter of his discourse; and whatever may be thought of his opinions, there can be but one mind as to the ability and liberality with which they are set forth. He concedes, as we have seen, all that has been affirmed of the vagueness of Unitarianism;-that it is a system of mere negations, without standards or principles,-hardly, in fact, a system at all;-he asserts that what there is of denominational in it will soon be swept away unless such standards are set up; and then maintains that it should be swept away rather than that tests should be instituted in face of "former ideas and professions," with inevitable disagreement and controversy, and with "an inconsistency that few could endure."