to secure us against unbelief as well as against zealotry; for what source of scepticism has sent out its troubled streams so widely as the idea that revelation is the very same thing with the documents that tell us of it, and has its safety utterly dependent on the works that from time to time have been thrown up about it; that it lives in each part of a long series and accumulation of recorded opinion and testimony, and is answerable with its life at every point of the complicated whole? What has opened to the enemies of religion so broad a ground of triumph as the custom of its friends to contend about sentences and paragraphs, as if all faith was involved in them, and to speak of the Almighty as if he had written a book on perishable parchment? This is not undervaluing the scriptures. God forbid that we should do so! It is vindicating them rather. It is giving them their own station, and it is a high one, among the oracles of sacred instruction. It is showing them as human means for an intelligigible purpose, for the most important and admirable of purposes, and as such inestimable. Try to make them more than this, and you bring them into contempt, and you open through them a tide of superstitions without end. They contain the record of great events and momentous disclosures and promises, resting on the authority of a divine teacher; and as such they take the ground of testimony. They contain, too, the treasures of a various wisdom, which are to be estimated according to their respective values; according as they are in harmony with that supreme and original law of reason and the soul, which is not so much a written as an inbred law; which we have not learned, received, read, but from nature herself apprehended, drawn up, drank in; to which we were not educated, but constituted; not trained, but destined.'*

All that has now been offered has a close connexion with the question proposed to be answered, and in fact leads us to the conclusion we are seeking. If Christianity does not consist in the writings which only testify of it, its perfection is not to be found in any arrangement of words into theories and systems. What remains, then, but to look for it in the thorough understanding and general prevalence of its spirit? It is the spirit that gives life, the spirit that bears witness, the spirit that sanctifies. It is the spirit of his Son which God sends into the heart, crying, Father! This is to the christian what the orac

* Cicero.

ular breast-plate was to the Jewish dispensation,-its Urim and Thummim, its light and perfection.

And what is this spirit? We answer first in the words of a prophet, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and knowledge. The Comforter that Jesus promised and God sent down is TRUTH. Here we have instruction with clearness and authority, on subjects of the most immediate and the deepest interest to us, to which no one who reflects, no one who looks about him or before him as a moral being, can be indifferent ;-subjects, on which we need the hand of a heavenly guide because they are vast and confound us, and a ray from the Father's brightness because they are often clouded by our nature's imperfections, and have often lain hidden from its needs. Here we are directed how to use our reason and our affections with respect to our Maker, and are shown the relations in which we stand to Him and the service that he requires and the recompenses that we may expect. Our views of these things are confirmed, and cleared, and expanded by the representations of the gospel; and as the gospel becomes better known, purified from its corruptions, and acknowledged in its power, they will grow yet more distinct and glorious. There is no limit set to our progress in this quiet and elevated wisdom, but the undetermined one of the human mind itself. 'Then shall we know, while we follow on to know, the Lord.' It is not of doctrines that are merely speculative, that are unintelligible, or of no personal use if understood, that our religion in its purity makes any boast; it is not with disputable opinions and verbal subtilties that it feels at all concerned; they are no new and strange principles which it comes to set up among mankind. In a plain speech is its delight, and in simple though sublime realities. It is its highest use and praise to confirin what the wisest and best of every generation have loved to believe and ventured to hope. It does not profess to initiate us into any solemn mysteries. Such have always belonged only to the ignorant who might need them, or to the wiser who would keep them in that need; and how remote was all this from the teaching of him, who spoke in the full light and free air, and addressed alike all who came to him, and drew instruction from the field-flowers and the small birds of heaven! He does not turn our minds to what is too indistinct for them to perceive, or too abstruse for

them to feel. He throws out the whole glow of his spirit on the paternal character of God, and the duties and hopes of his children. Will not this be discerned one day to be his great and only object, when the peculiarities that stamped themselves on his own age, and all the systems of after devising, shall be disregarded together? Then if men will still hate and slay each other, they will not at least do so for differences of faith; and if it will not be that wars cease to the ends of the earth, it will yet be something, that the venerable name of religion will not be taken to a falsehood,' and made to furnish the watchword and sanctify the carnage.

Again-the perfection of the word of Christ' is in an humble piety and confidence towards God. While it teaches us much of the ways and purposes of our heavenly Father, it also teaches, that much must remain hidden and impenetrable; and that equally what we know and what we cannot know should inspire within us the dispositions of submissiveness and trust. All that it discloses is full of assurance, and before all that is veiled it bids us adore. That we should feel this assurance, and that we should be sensible of this obligation to confide, the gospel has given us its pure and noble views of the Divine Being, of his mercy, wisdom and truth. In proportion as from off these views all the errors of artificial divinity,-whether belonging to the first century or to the nineteenth-are scattered like mists and shadows, and in proportion as the minds and hearts of men receive the influence of the returning splendor, our faith is on its way to its consummation. But what a long distance is yet before it! Nothing has been more strangely and variously mistaken than the nature of piety, and under many of its false forms nothing more wild and disastrous than its effects. It has been made to consist in every kind of mental disorder, and been expressed by every abomination. With how many among ourselves it is a gloomy austerity or an unnatural fervor! Some place it in a servile fear, and some in a glowing zeal; some in a melancholy renouncing of this world, and some in the anticipated raptures of a world to come; some in ordinances without, and some in the most questionable impressions within. With how many it is but a passion, and with how many but a pretence! True piety answers to none of these descriptions. It is the silent homage of the soul to its Creator. It is the spirit of praise and reliance;-of praise

that is never weary and reliance that neither wavers nor repines. It is the habit of acknowledging in all things the Lord of all, of committing ourselves to his keeping, seeking his help, rejoicing in his rule and hoping in his mercy. What might not be expected for mankind, if a principle like this should everywhere spread itself over their actions, and reign in their hearts? Moral obedience is the perfection of Christ's word; and all separate from this is but as its beginning, its means, its preparation. 'God,' said Peter to the multitude at Jerusalem, 'having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.' Here is the point, to which all the doctrines and sanctions of the gospel have chief respect. Its truths are for the meek, and its rewards for the faithful. Love that devises no evil, righteousness that commits none, the moral courage that fears none-these are its dispositions. Industry and contentment and peace and every duty and the most blessed hopes,-these are its fruits. It has no changes to produce, no effects to accomplish, independently of ourselves. Its work is no mystical efficacy. It is on the earth, and not on worlds beyond us; on our own hearts, and not on the counsels of heaven; on the generations to come, and not on those which have perished, or are now passing away without the knowledge of it. Its truths are profitable but to those who will embrace them, its consolations are availing but to those who will secure them, its ransoms are paid but for those who will win them. It has done nothing for a single soul that breathes, never can do anything for it, except by making it better. Here is the succour it offers, and here rests all the deliverance it brings. Let Christians remember that with all their light and privileges there is one ground of decision common to them and to the heathen, in the sight of the impartial One. It is, 'in every country he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.'

SIR,

THE CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR ON MISSIONS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

Notice was taken some weeks ago in the Christian Register, of the sarcastic style of certain articles lately published in the Christian Spectator. This induced me to look into the

December number of that work, in which I perused with great interest a review of Dr Ware's Correspondence with Mr Adam, the Appeal to Liberal Christians for the Cause of Christianity in India, and two other pamphlets on the subject of missions. I presume this was one of the articles referred to in the Register. As I read it, I thought it worth answering; for it was written, I found, with considerable eloquence, and not a little skill; and as to sarcasm and ridicule, Sir, if Unitarians say or do any thing which seems to justify that kind of notice, why, let it be ridiculed, I say; we do not often suffer the mistakes of our opponents to escape, without sending after them an arrow or two from the quiver of satire; and it is very natural that they should claim a shot in return, when they see an occasion, and very fair that they should have it, too; and it must furthermore be a pretty poor cause which will not stand a few hits, and an amazingly good one, which is not sometimes exposed to them.

The course pursued in that review is just such a one as might have been expected. The writer begins by asserting, that the subject of foreign missions is evidently an embarrassing one to the leaders of Unitarianism;' and that their inaction in that great cause, notwithstanding their numbers and influence and 'overweening pretensions,' is a peculiarity in their character, which has attracted the notice and strong animadversion of their neighbours. He goes on to say that for a long period they maintained a silence on this subject, as convenient as it was dignified; or if the silence was ever broken, it was by the expression of contempt. But in an evil day, for them, a missionary at Calcutta disavowed the doctrine of the Trinity, and a native Bramin renounced idolatry, and published a system of pure Deism to his countrymen; and in a still more evil day, the voice of Mr Adam came over the waters to his brethren in America. The temptation took effect; there was a stir in the camp; columns were written in the newspapers, and articles in the magazines; the time of inaction was declared to be past, and Unitarians were called on to engage in the work of foreign missions. By and by came out the Correspondence between Dr Ware and Mr Adam and Rammohun Roy; then a society for obtaining information; then another pamphlet ; and thenand then the pamphlets went comfortably to sleep on the shelves of the pamphlet-mongers. The reviewer next sets