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the slave; and in this, all reminds you of Christ. There, you behold institutions for the aid of the wretched, the healing of the sick, the reformation of the vicious; and in this, all reminds you of Christ. In another place, the ignorance and wretchedness of distant lands are painted, appeals made on benevolence to send them light and virtue; and in this, all reminds you of Christ. And what other voice is that which comes from every village school, and every towering spire, and every lowly meeting-house? Even hypocrisy renders an evidence as well as a homage to the Christian verity, by declaring that the bad find it their interest to wear the badge of Christianity in order to seem good. The impress of Christ is full upon us, for Christianity is seen on all sides. And whence did we get the form we wear? In its essential features, from our predecessors. And whence they? From theirs. And where can we stop till we arrive at the last link of the chain? Christianity leads to Christ, in a historical as well as a spiritual sense.

Of the existence and exploits of the great men of antiquity, you neither feel nor express a doubt. The learned and unlearned would unite to laugh him to scorn, who should pretend to deny that there was such a person as Julius Cæsar, or Alexander, misnamed the Great. Yet you have never seen them, you know of them only by the hearing of the ear. Their name is entered on the rolls of time, and their exploits emblazoned by the trump of fame. This satisfies you they once were, and once did as the record bears. Why cannot evidence the same in kind, but stronger in degree, satisfy you of the existence and teachings of Jesus Christ? In corroboration of the story of these warriors, no, or but few, monuments now present themselves. The impression they made on society perished within a few ages after their own demise. They founded no lasting faith, no lasting institutions. They lived not indeed without an influence on following ages, but the influence was of a nature to lose itself in the midst of the agitations of this active world. It has not survived in an individual and prominent form. We cannot point to it and say, this bears the impress of the Macedonian, and that of the Roman warrior. No visible and tangible link is now to be found to lead the mind from us to them. To us they live merely in a name, which we have received from our predecessors, and in the pages of the historian.

I do not say that this evidence is insufficient. On the contrary, it satisfies my mind. But I do wonder that greater evidence should be less conclusive with some, when applied in attestation of Christianity. The existence and story of Jesus are evidenced to us, by testimony of a historical nature far stronger than any that affirms the existence of Alexander, nay, or of any other great name of antiquity. Jesus has his witnesses yet on earth, and still will he have them while his institutions last. He indeed, as are all the great of past ages, is hidden from the eye of flesh and blood by the mists in which time envelopes all things; but while they send down to futurity no voice, or but faint and dying accents, he swells the crowd of those who attest the truth of his history, in proportion to the augmentation of his kingdom and the lapse of ages. Where now are the trophies of the victorious Cæsar? The bones with which he whitened the soil of France, are crumbled into their kindred dust, and the captives that he led bound and bent at the wheels of his triumphal car, have sunk into that grave where the conqueror and the conquered rest tranquilly side by side. Where are now the tokens of his achievements, who found the reward of his wide-spreading conquests, in the tears which were extorted from him by the thought that the world offered him nothing more to conquer? Scarcely were his ashes cold in his tomb, before the multiform image he had erected to ambition and cruelty, fell to pieces of its own weight; and soon the mighty power of the conqueror of the east and west, was changed into the empty breath of a name. But the achievements of Christ have survived the dissolution of kingdoms, the revolutions of society, the shock of conflicting armies, the malice of enemies, the folly of friends, and what indeed is all, and more than all combined, the wear and tear of eighteen centuries. Here they are still-if not uncorrupted, yet undestroyed-still full of vital power, still swaying myriads-making their way throughout the world, and changing men, manners, and institutions. Do you ask for the trophies of Jesus? We answer, Look around. Do you ask for proofs that God spake by him? We answer-from these monuments let your mind ascend to their author. You see a noble river conveying into the sea vessels loaded with the produce of agriculture, the master-pieces of art, the eloquence of the orator, the imaginings of the poet, and the labours of enterprise and me

chanical skill. You have never ascended to its sourceyou see only its termination-but do you doubt that somewhere on its banks rises a city, the abode of the arts of civilization, where minds are ripened as well as fields, and where laws protect the poor and give security to the rich? What else do we behold around us, but the burden which the stream of time has brought down into the sea of active life, that expands and swells wherever we turn our eyes? More rich are the freights, more lasting the productions, more noble the barks that meet our eyes, than any which mere civilization can transmit. You see them on every side. Follow up the course they have come, in their passage down to you. Go along the banks of the stream, and see how, as they have passed the vehicles in which Christianity has come down to us, have left every where remembrances. Follow its leading till you come to the fountain-head, and there will you behold Him who poured forth these waters from the hollow of his hand.

(Letter III. to be concluded in our next.)

Knowledge the herald of Christian Unitarianism, and Christian Unitarianism the harbinger of universal intelligence, peace, liberty, and benevolence.

[IN the "Unitarian Chronicle and Companion to the Monthly Repository" for June, an outline of the address of Mr. Harris, illustrative of this sentiment, appeared in a report of the proceedings of the Irish Unitarian Christian Society. A wish having been expressed, that it should be inserted on our pages, it is now given as nearly as possible as delivered.-EDIT.]

AFTER a few introductory remarks, Mr. Harris said, "Whenever I look round on such an assembly as this, I feel impelled to thank God and take courage. I regard this assembly as a proof of the progress of the times, the progress of Christian inquiry, the progress of Christian benevolence. I regard this meeting as a pledge and a prelude of brighter days to come. It is a testimony to the free and philanthropic spirit of the religion of the Saviour that spirit which tells of privilege, not to the few but the many-that spirit of adoption, not of bondage, which discloses God as a Father, and man as his beloved child-that spirit of emancipation from earth's thraldom and superstition's terrors, which, whilst it snaps in sunder the fetters which in by-gone ages bound man's mind as

well as body in direst debasement, ushered humanity into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

"It is well to adapt our plans to the circumstances of the times we live in, for in so doing, are we not humbly imitating the methods of the all-wise administration of Heaven? are we not striving to be co-workers with Almighty beneficence, in the moral education and reformation and happiness of the world? The dispensations with which the Deity has favoured the race of man, are dispensations of wisdom, of faithfulness, and of mercy; dispensations equally suited to the various stages of human progress towards perfection. In the infancy of humanity, the plan by which the All-wise saw fit that his creatures should be governed, was analagous to that authority which the parent exercises over his offspring. It was the government of mortals divided into tribes, placed under the direction of patriarchal legislation. The Almighty was the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. As man advanced to the youth of intellect, and mental and moral acquirements became his portion, temptations to criminality also the more abounded, tyranny came in to crush human rights and to stay human improvement, and superstition aided the unrighteous warfare. It then seemed good to Omnipotence, that one people should be separated from among the nations of earth, to whom should be committed the oracles of truth, and who should be the depositaries of heaven's wisdom, the practisers of the worship which ascendeth with acceptance to Him on high. Prone as man, even in the maturity of his powers, is to ceremony and show, much more inclined was he in his youth; and He who knoweth the heart, judged it to be agreeable to man's then condition, that ritual observances should constitute a principal feature of the religion at that period promulgated, in order, especially, that by those observances, the peculiar people might be saved from mingling the abominations of earth with the adorations of heaven. The law came by Moses, and the Maker of all things was recognised as Jehovah, the Governor and the Monarch, whose voice was in the thunder, and whose arm was made bare before the embattled host. As the human understanding opened, the buddings of intellect may be discovered in the visions of the Prophets, in their anticipation of brighter days and more extensive knowledge; and still more and more approaching maturity and vigour, in their

vivid descriptions of the glory of the Messiah's kingdom, the reign of wisdom, of benevolence, and peace. God spake unto our fathers by the Prophets. The manhood of human nature at length arrived, the fulness of time was disclosed, and with it came the Messenger of grace and truth, the message of mercy and salvation to all the sons of earth, without respect of clime, or distinction of rank, or difference of complexion. Broken down was that middle wall of partition, which had for ages stood between the nations, and the banner borne before the triumphant conqueror, was thus inscribed, Peace on earth, good will to men.' Peace on earth-not merely to one country or to one tribe, but to all the vast generations whom God has made of one blood-peace. And good will, not solely to the Pharisee or the Publican, the Jew or the Gentile, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free; but to man as man, as the image of God, as forming part of one large and wide spread family, of which Jesus Christ is the honoured and venerated elder brother, of which God is the common and all-bounteous Parent.

"Though, therefore, the system of the Patriarchs, and the ceremonials of Judaism, would be inapplicable to the present state of the human race, it does not follow that they were not admirably adapted to the limited and imperfect views which the children of error and of dust, at the respective periods of the promulgation of these dispensations, entertained. In fact, they were most admirably adapted. Man as a race, strikingly resembles man as an individual. At first weak and feeble, gradually acquiring strength and wisdom, and then bursting forth in glory. That which would be his sustenance at one period, would be his destruction at another. Milk is the food of babes, strong meat that of men. To a race just entering on existence, and fresh with the joy of life, the revelation of another and a better world, would probably have passed unheeded. To the votary of rituals and penances, and fastings and processions, pure and spiritual worship would have seemed an airy fiction; whilst to enlightened and regenerated man, man enlightened and regenerated by the truths of the everlasting Gospel, their oblations and clouds of sacrifice, appear but as the beggarly elements of childhood. It is a proof then of the Creator's wisdom, it is a manifestation that He doeth all things well, that whilst his revelations have been various, they have all been in harmony; and

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