those views of the gospel which put forth most mightily this power over the heart, and we openly confess, that it is because we believe it possesses an unrivalled efficacy to save the soul, by bringing it into a holy and trustful union with God and Christ, that we value unspeakably, and adhere to through all temptation and scorn, the faith that is in us. To us it is the light, as it is the gift of God, and we will not abandon it, so long as it points Conscience to the things that are before; leads us up to God through the love and imitation of his Christ; speaks with heavenly serenity of grand and tranquillizing truths in moments of trial: and true to our spiritual connexions with Heaven, suffers our sins to have no peace, and our virtues no fears.

I shall endeavour, briefly but distinctly, to bring out the prominent points of difference between Unitarian and Trinitarian Christianity, in their moral aspects.

And, first, Unitarianism alone puts forth the great view that the moral and spiritual character of the mind itself is its own recompense, its own glory, its own heaven; and that this harmony with God and with his Christ is not the means of salvation only, but salvation itself. Unitarianism alone receives the spiritual view of Christ that the kingdom of Heaven is within us; and works not for outward wages, but to make the inward soul a holy temple for the Spirit of God; that through its purified affections Jesus, our best type of Heaven, may shed his own peace, and that he and his Father may be able to love us, and come unto us, and make their abode with us. Now you are aware that this qualifying of ourselves for Heaven through heavenly frames of mind, is so prominent a part of our faith, that it is actually converted into a charge against us. I heard the Unitarians charged with a want of gospel humility for regarding holy affections and a Christ-like life as the substance of the hope of Heaven; and I thought on the words of the Apostle-" The kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy

Spirit."* This is not the salvation so loudly vaunted by Trinitarianism. It assigns another office to Christ than that of leading men to God through a resemblance to himself. Jesus stands to Trinitarians not principally as the Inspirer of virtue, the quickener of holiest affections, the guide of the heavenbound spirit; but as bearing on his own person the punishment due to their sins, and as performing in his own person the righteousness that is imputed to them, and being transferred, by an act of faith, makes good their claim to Heaven. Now these notions of Heaven regard it as so much property, which one person may purchase and transfer to another. Christ, by an act of self-sacrifice, becomes the purchaser of Heaven, and gives a right of settlement in the blessed land to every one who consents to regard his death as a substitution for his own punishment, and his righteousness as a substitution for his own virtues. There is no flattering unction that could be laid to the. soul, no drug to stupify its life, that could more thoroughly turn it away from the spiritual purposes of Jesus. He lived that men might know their own nature, and work out its glory for themselves. He lived that he might rescue that nature from low views of its duties and its powers, by showing humanity in the image of God. He bore his cross that men might look to Calvary and behold the moral heroism of the meekest heart when it trusts in God; with what serenity a filial faith can pass through the vicissitudes of severest trial, and take the cup from the hand of a Father, though he presents it from out the darkest cloud of his providence. He died, because Death crossed his path of Duty, and not to turn aside was part of his loyalty to the Spirit of Truth, "for this cause was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth," he died that earth and heaven might unite their influences on the human soul treading an uninterrupted path to God, that its light might come from beyond the

grave, and its hope from the peace of a world that is never troubled; and yet, alas! for the perversion-men are found to stand beneath the cross, and so far to mistake the spirit of the celestial sufferer, as to appropriate, to transfer to themselves, by an act of faith, its moral character, and to call themselves the redeemed of Christ. Surely there is a "practical importance" in the Unitarian controversy, if it warns men against these notions of substitution, these unspiritual views of Heaven and Christ. The worst of all delusions is that which turns us away from inward holiness, inward qualifications for Heaven, and holds out to our too-ready grasp some foreign, some adventitious, and extrinsic hope. It is right that we should rely on God, for his strength is our strength, and his mercy our supporting hope; it is right that we should love and look unto Jesus, for his influences are our spiritual wealth, and his path our bright and beaming way ;— but where in Heaven or earth are we to rest at last, but in what God and Christ do for us, in the formed character of our own souls?

And now shall I be told, that this is claiming Heaven on the ground of our own merits? And how often shall we have to repel that false accusation? If by this is meant, that we deem our virtues to be deserving of Heaven, the charge of insanity might as well be laid against us, as that infinite presumption; but if it is meant that, to a holy spirit, and to a holy life, to a supreme love for the Right, the True, the Good, and to these alone, God, with a love that is infinite, has attached something of the blessedness of his own nature;— then we do hold this as the first and brightest of Truths, the very substance of the Gospel, the sublimest lesson of the Saviour's life, shadowed by his death, only to be authenticated and glorified by his resurrection and ascension. I know of nothing so deeply sad as to witness the ministers of Christ appealing for support to the lowest parts of human nature—the fishers of men casting out their nets, that they may take into

the drag the most selfish passions and fears-bribing over to their side the terrors and the weaknesses, to which, except through penitence and restoration, Unitarian Christianity dare not offer peace. Trinitarianism will not deal so justly and so strictly with sin. We are speaking of its tendencies; not of the forms it sometimes, nay we will say often, assumes in the higher and purer order of minds. It is true to the weaknesses of men; but false to their strength. It seems to many to save them in their low condition, not from it. It will not meet the soul, and tell it that there is no substitute for holiness, and that to move guilt from its punishment would be to move God from his throne. It takes that guilty soul, and instead of dealing with it truly, cleansing from sin, and pouring in the spirit of the life of Christ, leans it against the Atoning Sacrifice, and the Righteousness that cometh by imputation, an unhallowed and unnatural alliance, to make that glorious virtue an easy retreat for guilt, and the holy Jesus a 'Minister of Sin."*"They have healed the hurt of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, where there is no peace." †

And if we value Unitarianism for what we feel to be the efficacy of its views in regard to the offices of Christ, we value it even more, for its views of God, and for the connexions it gives us with his spirit. Piety is the noblest distinction, the richest happiness, the purest fountain of the soul; and we love, without measure, the faith that nurtures it most strongly. We feel our affections to be drawn towards one God and Father with a singleness and intensity, that we believe would be impossible, if the heart was to be distributed among three objects, or distracted by a confused conception of a tripersonal God. We boast an undivided worship, and an undivided Temple, where all the soul's devotion centres upon one Father. His spirit was with us when we knew not that was exciting our irrepressible joy; and

the power

though He has led us through his ways of discipline, we knew it was the same hand that had guided our early steps; He has met our souls when they were abroad through Nature, and touched them with his breathing Spirit; He has pursued us into our solitudes, and, in our more solemn moments of penitence and suffering, He has made us to see light in darkness, mercy in trial, and to drink of the deepest fountains of life; His compassion has mercifully cooled the burning shame of our guiltiest confessions, and saved us through fear and weakness by heavenly hope; His peace has descended upon all our aspirations, and shielded their feebleness from blight and death;—and, throughout this varied experience, there was but one voice speaking to the heart; the pressure of one hand on the pulses of life; one God revealing himself to the spirits of his children. Whatever is delightful in the Universe, whatever is pure in earthly joy, whatever is touching in Jesus, whatever is profoundly peaceful in a holy spirit, are to us the splendours of one God, the gifts of one Father; bonds upon the heart, uniting it to one spiritual and everlasting Friend. We do not profess that our Piety has glowed with the intensity of these mingling fires, but we feel that there is a power of motive drawing us to the love of one God, which no other Theology may lay claim to.

But the "practical importance" of our views of God consists not merely in that Unity of being, through which all the devotion of the soul is poured into one central affection; it affects also the unity of his Character, the moral perfections of the source of Piety. We reject that faith which represents the moral government of God as a system of favouritism. We meet with nothing in nature to impeach the Impartiality of our Heavenly Father. We believe that the same God who sends his sun and his rain upon the evil and upon the just, is willing to shed the dew of his blessing upon the hearts of all his children. We rejoice to overlook the vain and perishable distinctions of time; to believe that all the human family,