the cottages of the poorest and most outlying peasantry. This, no doubt, should largely be referred to the exertions of the Scottish Unitarian Society;-but the relish with which they were read, and the depth of sentiment they had excited, proceeded from themselves.

It is currently reported, that Dr. Channing's writings are found in the Palace as well as in the Cottage. Worthy are they to connect, by a common sentiment of humanity, the highest and the lowest in the land. There are other Palaces, more inaccessible, where we should be glad to hear of this Discourse being found, the Palace of Lambeth, and all kindred Ecclesiastical residences.

We respectfully express our gratitude for these inestimable gifts, which Dr. Channing has of late, with such welcome frequency, been presenting to the Church Universal.

VI. The Principles of Non-conformity considered in Relation to the Progress of Truth. A Sermon, preached before the Members of the Devon and Cornwall Unitarian Association, in George's Meeting, Exeter, on Tuesday, July 27th, 1841. By John James Tayler, B.A. London: John Green.

This is a very valuable Sermon. It gives in a brief compass the results of much reading and reflection. It contains, for literature of this description, a rare union of historical knowledge, sound principles, and Christian sentiment. The progress of religious Truth in our most intimate connections with it, is presented, in a masterly manner, in a few pregnant pages.

"Let us reflect on the conditions under which truth must be communicated to mankind. Entire truth exists only in the mind of God; and the Universe of being, as it gradually unfolds itself to the expanding intelligence of man, is its sublime expression. We cannot doubt, that in the eye of God the Universe is a complete and consistent unity; but it is revealed to the human mind as a progressive development. Even in the physical world, fixed and uniform as we regard its laws, the most recent researches seem to have discovered the traces of growth and progress; and in the history of human society the same phenomenon is still more strikingly exhibited. Throughout the providence of God, whether we survey it in the material or in the spiritual creation, one vast idea of wisdom and beneficence presents itself in a process of continual evolution. The mode in which this development takes place deserves notice. It is rarely that we discern a steady and continuous

progress; but rather successive periods of tranquil uniformity, in which certain principles fix and consolidate themselves, interrupted by crises of violent convulsion, which break up the old order of things, and prepare the scene for new forms of organic life. To confine our attention to the moral world and the history of religion-we may remark, that critical epochs from time to time occur, when a spiritual energy seems to descend immediately from a source above the world into the affairs of men-when the truths and principles, on which the future progress of humanity is destined to depend, come forth inexplicably from the hidden depths of providence-actuating, as with the force of a resistless instinct, the thoughts, the actions and the enterprizes of man, sweeping away all the institutions and beliefs of a former world, and depositing the broad foundations of a new and higher civilization. On a smaller scale we might illustrate this law of providence from various periods of social development; but we find it most impressively exemplified in the history of Christianity.

"It will be instructive to observe what ordinarily follows these seasons of spiritual awakening. The same fresh and vigorous spirit of primitive truth, which burst through the forms of an earlier time, and brought home to men's hearts and consciences in their native power the great fundamental principles of their present and eternal well-being-as the original fervour subsides-undergoes itself a sort of petrifaction, and becomes as it were encrusted with new forms, which confine its life and prevent its expansion. The Christianity of the first century was a living power and influence, borne into men's hearts on the swelling tide of the spirit, propagated with intense enthusiasm, and embraced with grateful fervour. But by degrees the power of the spirit was superseded by the colder authority of Scripture; a priesthood arose to preserve and interpret Scripture; and the vast idea of a Catholic Church, visibly embodying the Kingdom of God on earth, was sought to be realized. In the long interval of stationary formalism which then ensued, new energies were infused by the uncorrupted races of the North into the worn out elements of the ancient civilization, which prepared the mind of Europe for more vigorous efforts and a higher destiny. The soul was in a trance, not dead. Beneath the sacerdotal pall, which seemed to rest on a lifeless corpse, heavings from time to time occurred, which bespoke a returning life, and which increased in vehemence and frequency as the hour of the great resurrection drew nigh. Christianity rose from its sepulchre, bound like Lazarus hand and foot; and there were not wanting voices to exclaim, Loose it, and let it go.' But these were the dim presages of a distant time. The scholastic habits of the middle ages prevented a recurrence to the simple moral power of the Gospel. Creeds were devised as rules and measures of the popular faith. The mind fastened on an outward form, and missed the indwelling spirit, or saw it only, as through a glass, darkly. Protestant theologians, though they professedly cast aside the pretensions of the priesthood, still took on themselves the office of authorized interpreters of Scripture, and surrounded with flaming anathemas the integrity of the creed which they had sworn to defend. Hence the new life that had been awakened,

speedily relapsed into quiescence. The unfolding energies of a spiritual Christianity were paralysed by the stern hand of authority; and from the days of its early triumphs, Protestantism, in nearly all its forms, has remained as stationary as the Catholicism which preceded it. The law of progress, already alluded to, was not understood and respected by the first Reformers. It was supposed, the whole truth had been discovered at once, and must therefore be fixed. No provision was made for future advancement. The development was only partial; the emancipation was incomplete: and though many individuals in all parts of Europe perceived and exposed the mischief and absurdity of creeds, and by their own labours and examples helped forward the cause of free inquiry, yet in its general results, Protestantism has too often only substituted the tyranny of a sect for the despotism of a hierarchy.

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Our own country furnishes almost the only example that I am acquainted with, of a religious community seeking its bond of union in the simple acknowledgment of the authority of Scripture, to the total rejection of any human creed; and we may well be proud of claiming spiritual descent from a body of men who were among the first, if not the first, to teach the Christian world this instructive lesson of comprehension and charity. The religious liberties of England owe their preservation to the different classes of Protestant Dissenters, that branched out of the old Puritan stock, and obtained shortly after the Revolution, a legal existence under the Act of Toleration. Subsequent to that event, the two principal sections of the recognized Nonconformists-the Presbyterians and the Independents-have pursued a different course and acquired a distinct character; and this diversity may in part be traced to their opposite views of the nature of religious truth, and of the mode in which it must be sought and preserved.

During the confusion of the Commonwealth, the Independents, represented by such illustrious spirits as Milton and the younger Vane, had the honour of first proclaiming the broad principle of religious freedom, and of contending for the complete emancipation of the Church, as a spiritual institution, from the shackles of the State. At this period, the Presbyterians still cherished a hankering after political ascendancy; and even Baxter, their worthiest representative, had not then imbibed the large and Catholic spirit which the suffering and exclusion of later years led him to adopt, but attacked with bitterness the bolder doctrine of Vane. The origin however of the subsequent diversity between the Presbyterians and the Independents must probably be referred to a deeper source than the influence of outward events. Their religious and political bias was essentially distinct, and pointed from the first to opposite results. The Presbyterians were strongly attached to constitutional monarchy and the preservation of the three estates, and regarded religion, in its political relations, as a bond of social order and harmony, and a valuable auxiliary to the authority of government. The leaders of the Independents inclined to republicanism; and, carrying the same principle into religion, were disposed to leave every form of worship and belief uncontrolled and free, and acknowledged no basis of ecclesiastical association but voluntary union independent of the State. The days of

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suffering which followed the Restoration, kept the different sections of the Puritan party united, and taught them some valuable lessons of charity and mutual toleration. The fortunes of the Episcopalians and Puritans were now reversed; and the same perception of the evil and misery of exclusion, which had led some of the best men of the former class to embrace Latitudinarian principles, exerted its mellowing and enlightening influence on the most eminent minds among the Nonconformists. A new era in their existence commenced with the passing of the Toleration Act; and now it was, that the different principles, which actuated the Presbyterian and Independent bodies, began to manifest themselves. Though the Presbyterians soon abandoned all hopes of sharing in the patronage of the State from incorporation with the Established Church, and very early adopted in practice the Independent principle of Church government-yet the point of view from which they set out in their religious inquiries, and their still clinging to the idea of a Comprehension, as right and desirable in itself-could not fail to effect their conception of the differences of doctrinal belief to direct their attention chiefly to the practical and the universal in religion-to the points in which Churches and individuals agreed, rather than to those on which they were at variance. Baxter's latter views on this subject were most enlarged and liberal; he considered it a great recommendation of a plan of Comprehension, which had been suggested, that it would embrace both Roman Catholics and Socinians. On the other hand, the Independents thought it a decided advantage in their scheme, that it allowed each religious community, in its public assemblies, to express its peculiar opinions and feelings, in all their freshness and individuality, without any compromise or abatement; and as the position and sympathies of the Presbyterians inspired them with a deep reverence for practical religion, so the more enthusiastic tendencies of the early Independents caused them to attach supreme importance to right apprehensions of doctrinal truth and the spiritual influence which was believed to accompany them."

The causes of weakness in the Unitarian Churches are truly and instructively traced.

"The source of vigour and progress in a religious body depends on three causes: 1.-the clear consciousness of a distinguishing principle, in other words, a strong spiritual individuality; 2.-profound conviction of the truth of that principle; and 3.—a fearless and consistent working of it out into its practical consequences. The principle itself may even be mixed with error; but, so long as it subsists under the three conditions here specified, and its imperfection is not suspected by those who profess it-outward prosperity-zeal, numbers and unitywill attach to it. In our own denomination, the want of this clear consciousness of a governing principle seems to me one cause of our present feebleness. Conflicting elements are in operation amongst us, which have not yet found the point of reciprocal adjustment. For the ultimate source of this conflict, we must go back to the time when our forefathers combined the philosophy of Locke with a scriptural theology—

when, on every disputed point in morals and religion, they made their final appeal, on one hand, to revelation, and, on the other, to right reason and the nature of things-without, however, clearly defining the mutual relation of these two standards of truth, or the precise amount of authority which is due to each: we must go back a step further—to the original movement of the Reformation itself—when the struggle between authority and the rights of private judgment began, and Scripture was ostensibly recognized as the final standard of truth,—though a little reflection must have shown that both in determining the claims of the whole, or of any part of Scripture to be received as a divine authority, and also in fixing the sense of it when received-the very same battle would have to be fought over again.

The vague state in which this vital question has been left, constitutes the weakness of Protestantism. We are halting between an illdefined reverence for an authoritative religion, founded on the letter of Scripture, and an unshackled development of the great principles which the spirit of Christianity has deposited in our hearts. The question is undoubtedly embarrassed with difficulties, amidst which it is more easy to perceive what is wrong, than to pronounce with confidence what is right. It is, perhaps, only to be solved by the full admission of the principle which I endeavoured to establish in the opening of this discourse, that the operations of divine Providence are in all things progressive, and by the acceptance of Scripture, not as a literal rule of faith, but as at once the product and the record of those great spiritual agencies, through which God has infused a higher influence into human nature, and of which we, by the aid of Scripture, inherit the transmitted impulses, and must evolve in practice the legitimate results. The altered state of knowledge and opinion requires a corresponding modification of the old Presbyterian principle of the sufficiency of the Scriptures. In place of the form we must take the spirit ;-for the books of the Old and New Testament we must substitute the historical realities to which these books conduct us, and especially the great and crowning reality-in which their various elements of fact and poetry, of instruction and prophecy, culminate the person and agency of Jesus Christ. Communion in heart and life with Jesus Christ-the faultless exemplar of human principle and duty-the manifestation of divine benevolence on earth-is a firmer and holier bond of religious association than the outward tie of subscription to the Bible. In favour of this view we may quote the language of even Baxter himself. "Tis too much,' says he, to require of a man a subscription that he implicitly believes all that is in the Bible which you show to him, because there may be errors in that copy: nay, such subscription should not, as necessary, be required of him to all the real word of God; for if by error he doubt whether Job, Chronicles, or Esther, be canonical, I would not be he that should therefore forbid him to preach the Gospel. I am sure the ancient church imposed no such terms on their pastors, when Ignatius was chosen bishop, before he believed the resurrection.'*

* "Baxter's Love and Knowledge, p. 78, quoted in the Historical Proofs and Illustrations of the Hewley Case, p. 35."