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religion now-a-days. Christianity is not shut up in the church. Instruction is not doled out solely from the pulpit. The world has become a reading world. It has grown out of the control of any one class, clerical or otherwise. It is manifest that the clergy are losing official importance. The profession steadily diminishes in attractiveness. Dr. Wayland has shown us that we cannot cheapen theological education enough to make it popular; that we cannot give it away; nay, that such a bribe as a thousand dollars nay, sixteen hundred dollars, — said to be the actual sum received in privileges over and above his private expenditures by every graduate of the Theological School at Cambridge is not sufficient to win our young men of promise into ministerial studies. The Report, too, has spoken of the great difficulty of obtaining ministers for the West. It is not our difficulty alone, all sects are experiencing it. It is manifest that the heart of the world is not just now in our calling. We are depressed, suspected; our usefulness and importance questioned. Well, Sir, let it be so! I would not lure one single man into the sacred profession. Let it fall away! Let it lose caste and influence! Let the world diminish its importance as much as it can! It wants no petting, asks no forbearance. It has received far more harm than profit by such tenderness. No! Let the profession come into fair issue with the world. If the clerical office can be dispensed with, - if it is not important, if it cannot vindicate its place in society, let it perish! If the world can do without it, any better than it can do without the world, it ought to decay. But I have no fears of any such result. It is my firm conviction, that the great office of stated instruction in religion is founded in the nature of man and in the providence of God. But this is not true of many of the circumstances that have characterized the ministerial profession. And it is the decay of these, and not of the office, which is now showing itself. The world, the Gospel, can neither of them bear in this day the notion of two codes of morality, two sets of manners, for the laity and the clergy. The ministry will derive less and less support from prescription, from sanctimonious

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ness of looks, and peculiarities of costume, and asceticism of behaviour. But it will have more and more authority and influence, as the real nature and difficulty of the Christian life, the real height and depth of a true piety, are better understood. The application of the simplest principles of Christianity to the actual business and duties of men in this age demands a courage, simplicity, and faith, which will thoroughly vindicate the importance of those who display them. We have not fallen upon smooth times; the ministry is not henceforth to preach in chapels of ease. It is a part of the popular philosophy, I know, that the future is only bright. Many seem to think we have at length got the world from its old jolting road on to a railway, and that it is now necessarily to go forward with ever-accelerating speed and security to a destination of unspeakable blessedness. But I cannot join with these prophets of smooth things. There are enough elements of anxiety and difficulty in the prospect. The awful problem of Socialism, so terrible a question in France, is sure to present itself sooner or later for our solution. Nay, it has already found a voice on this side of the water. And the coming generation will have to meet it. The heavy cloud of domestic slavery hangs portentously in our horizon, with very little light in its folds, and we shall have to meet that. With such questions added to the constant sum of difficulty, the moral and religious teachers in this country never more needed to be brave and practical and business-like men, who feel that their calling rests upon the broad basis of utility and reality, and who are ready to vindicate their own importance by the common principles of social valuation.

But, Sir, I must not continue this unpremeditated strain. I see you looking at your watch, and am reminded of the narrow limits of our time. I conclude with hoping that, so far as our own body is responsible, the liberal literature and free thought of the age may be controlled and directed by the spirit of the Gospel, administered by earnest and faithful men.

Rev. RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER, of England, being next introduced to the audience, spoke on "Unitarianism abroad for the last twenty-five years," in substance as follows:

Sir, The black cloud to which the last speaker has alluded has saddened us, even on the other side of the Atlantic. When we contrasted that freedom and prosperity, which might naturally excite your pride, with that baneful and humiliating institution, we were reminded of the providence of God, who permitted the Apostle a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to buffet him, lest he should be exalted above measure. To many of my brethren, that cloud seemed to shed so much of its darkness even here, that they feared to come among you; but whilst not insensible of the evil, it has been my privilege to behold the rainbow of promise, and to know that there was light which would dissipate the gloom. My father's love for America made me well acquainted with many who are honored here. When I heard this evening the names of the sainted dead, I recognized several as familiar household words among us. When I looked on him who uttered them, and on you, Sir, and on others here, I remembered that I had seen you first under our own roof. Nor are we strangers to you. I have visited many of your societies in the Slave States and in the Free, and have found there the products of my father's mind. The great principles which we hold in common on each side the ocean are mitigating the evils in the world, and preparing for their gradual extinction. I have visited the churches which were first established on a Unitarian basis, and have been reminded that our opinions were first promulgated here by Englishmen.

We have been told that the British and Foreign Unitarian Association dates back, as this does, a quarter of a century; but in Exeter, eight years ago, I attended the fiftieth anniversary of the Western Unitarian Society. Sir, in the founders of that society a courage was required which we are not called on to display. Before the year 1813, any persons convicted of Unitarianism were disabled from enjoying any office; and, after the second conviction,

were outlawed, and liable to three years' imprisonment. But when the law of man and the law of God seemed at variance, our fathers hesitated not which to obey. It was, indeed, the boast of our jurists, that Christianity was part and parcel of the law of England; and it was in the Toleration Act of the champion of freedom, William III., that these persecuting clauses were enacted. But the Unitarians held not such a notion either of toleration or of Christianity. The part must be less than the whole. The Christianity which is part of the law of a land must be subordinate to that law. Their aim was to make the law of England part and parcel of Christianity; and till it should be so, they fearlessly, though lawlessly, held by Christianity. In 1813, a Unitarian could obey the law and his conscience at the same time.

Perhaps there was never more zeal manifested among the English Unitarians than about 1825, when this Association was first established. Their doctrines were advocated, not only by converts from orthodoxy, such as were their earlier champions, but by men whose religion had been nurtured under Unitarian influences. As allusion has been made to my father, I may say that he was one of the first English Unitarian writers, who was not only a Unitarian, but the son of a Unitarian. The meeting-house in Kidderminster, in which he worshipped as a child, and where my friend, Mr. Mountford, worshipped after him, was one of the earliest which was erected for the maintenance of liberal opinions. He may, therefore, be taken as an example of what Unitarianism can do for man's heart and soul, whilst he was free from that asperity against which a convert finds it needful to strive. 'It was just about a quarter of a century ago that he officiated at the opening of the York Street Chapel, the first for the promulgation of Unitarianism in the West End of London. Since that time our history has been an eventful one. In 1828, the Test and Corporation Acts, by which the Dissenters were excluded from most civil offices, were repealed; but, as if there must be always persecution somewhere, no sooner were Dissenters freed from these grievances, than they began to persecute each other. The Uni

tarians were descendants of a body which always possessed political influence. We have never been without some member of the aristocracy, and have had more of our number in the House of Commons than all the other Dissenters put together. Other seets have used both their hands to build up their church ; — we have kept one hand free to improve the world. The result might be anticipated. Our sect is small, our worldly influence comparatively great. As long as there was a heavy pressure on Dissenters, the Orthodox denominations were glad of the talent and energy which they found among us. When that pressure was removed, there were some who thought that they might safely cast us off and injure us. The law, which was so bad that it had been a dead letter long before it had been swept away, was virtually revived by the professors of freedom. They obtained the decision of the lawyers, that, since no one can legally do an illegal act, no one could make a Unitarian endowment before 1813; and that no endowment made before that date could be administered by Unitarians. Declaimers for tolerance wrested from us Lady Hewley's fund, worth about £3,000 a year, though the trustees, with a liberality characteristic of our body, had distributed two thirds of it among the Orthodox. They quarrelled among themselves, however, as regards the division of the spoil. They were proceeding to attack our other property, when government, who saw more evil than these religionists did in angry and ceaseless litigation, introduced and carried, about five years ago, the Dissenters' Chapels Bill, by which Unitarian endowments previous to 1813 were legalized, and by which that period of twenty-five years which we are now celebrating was made of importance; for it was enacted that, in case the trust-deed should specify no doctrine, the undisputed profession of any doctrine for the space of twenty-five years should be sufficient security from attack. This Act marks an epoch in our denominational history. It enables us to live in peace with our fellow-Dissenters. It has removed one cause for despondency, and improvements have been made in the old edifices, and new and handsome structures have been raised on old foundations,