of Christ's religion are laid down, we can do things which the apostles could not do. Christ's creed is the broad law of the conscience. The apostles could not have stirred up to the duty of free investigation. Christianity then meant less than it does now. There were then no asylums, workhouses, popular libraries. The command now is-Go forth and seek out the poor, mitigate the penal code, make laws for the poor as well as the rich, educate every child in the streets.'

"3. All the old truths have a higher meaning as our minds improve. Put a book of science into the hands of a child, and he will be only able to glean out a few facts. These old truths possess greater significance as our minds improve. When I consider the heavens, the workmanship of thy hands,' said the psalmist, under the clear sky of old Palestine; how much more can we say now, with all the discoveries of modern astronomy to aid us? We can now penetrate nine hundred times deeper into space with the telescope than David could do with his naked eye. It is with a far profounder reverence, and a far more magnificent appreciation of what God has made, that we can use these words. The two words 'Our Father," constitute the sum of all religion. Un expected wells of consolation are often found in words we have been accustomed to regard with partial indifference. In the furnace of affliction, or when the cold shadow of adversity falls on you, old scraps of poetry you have been accustomed to repeat at your mother's knee will come back with a new meaning. It is as we are pure, like God, that we can realize the Divine exist

ence.

"4. It is no disparagement to religion that we can understand the Bible better, and Christ's character better, than those that have preceded us. The controversies of the 16th century and of the Reformation are now settled. Baptism is now settled. Predestination, like a spent volcano, is worn out. We have now more correct texts of the Greek Testament, and therefore know more of

the New Testament than was once known. We know now that it did not exist till the year A.D. 180. We have advantages, therefore, which the ancient Christians had not. Natural science has advanced since their times. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the religion of Christ has advanced? Surely theologians could now draw up a better confession than the Westminster or the Thirty-nine articles. Religionis growing purer as men grow purer. There are tribes on the earth that could not accept of our religion-the barbaric Indians for example. It is through ages of education that we can come up to this mark. The more holy you are, the more spiritual truth there is for you. The more we obey the moral law, the more religious we grow. The good man, however, has never reached perfection. He is ever rushing on to it. prayer of the good man is more light, more light!"

The

We shall not detain the reader with any lengthened statements on the foregoing address. It is not a sermon, nor an exposition of any part of Scripture. It is an utterance sui generis, and belongs to a school which it would be difficult to characterize. Where it does not "darken counsel by words without knowledge," it perverts plain Scripture teachings. We do not deny that it contains many honest, manly thoughts, fluently spoken, and occasionally well decorated. But the most dangerous arsenic is that which underlies confec tionary, "which is sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly." The worst poisons are those that come as pleasures, and are only known to be such when all antidotes are unavailing. Now, it is perfectly easy to say a great deal, and still keep up an appearance of truth; to touch a number of points along the margin of faith, and yet remain a determined doubter. In like manner, it is possible to gild the shield of deism with the gold-leaf of a pure and an orthodox form of Christianity, while it remains the shield of Satan as before. There is a sense in which religion is progressive, but we apprehend it is not the Unitarian

sense. Progression is progress forward, not a relapsing into the path of the past. Society is marching onward in the broad highway of reform. But society is not "the poetry of man's soul;" and we may not infer that because society is what it is, therefore religion must be the same in degree and extent. There is equal truth in the remark, that as the mind becomes imbued with the rainbow radiance of holiness, it is all the more susceptible of additional impressions. But it does not follow from this that the mind makes religious truth, or that religious truth grows under a mental or moral discipline of this character. It would be sounder metaphysics to say that the religious truth is the nutriment of the mind, or the substratum on which it rests. We likewise demur to the conclusion that duty and happiness are coordinate, or, in plainer terms, that a man will feel happy in proportion to the efforts he makes to implement the moral obligations under which he is placed. Benjamin Franklin attempted to keep all the commandments of God, but was compelled to acknowledge his failure. His is but one case out of the nine hundred and ninety-nine that presume on the experiment. Every awakened sinner, indeed, makes the attempt to gain God's confidence by doing something, but he is no sooner convicted of sin than he is convinced that, by this means, it is impossible to please God. But, without entering at any length, we may simply quote the words of Jesus to his apostles, who were certainly not behind other sinners of mankind in the matter of obedience:"So likewise ye, when you have done all those things which are commanded you, gay, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do." There is no selfglorification here. The maxim of our Seneca goes to pamper pride, and feed the caterpillar, self-love. We would not stop to consider the impudence of the wretched boast, that we know more than the apostles knew of the Christian religion; nor shall we spend words on the Pharisaical leap, to rise above the height of the throne of the sweet singer of Is

rael. The allusions to ecclesiastical controversy, to creeds and confessions, form a specimen of the logic of sneers, which is always answered most effectually by dignified silence. Falsehoods of opinion are, however, less heinous than falsehoods of facts; and therefore we cannot grant a passport to the assertion that the gospel was not in circulation till the year 180. We do not say that the assertion referred to constitutes a hard monosyllable we do not like to name. Either unpardonable ignorance or wilful misrepresentation has dictated the sentence. We know not which. But any one who has any acquaintance with ecclesiastical history can show, that not only the four gospels, but also the twenty-one epistles, were published between the years 51 and 70, John's gospel excepted, which is usually supposed to belong to the latter years of the first century. It is one thing quoting a date from a pulpit, and another making it good.

Our limits forbid us from enlarging further on this matter. We never did before, and probably never shall again, cross the threshold of a Unitarian chapel. We have done so, and seen and heard enough. A prayer addressed to the Eternal, without plea, is what few of your readers may have ever listened to. A petition for help presented by a lost and ruined creature to the insulted Creator, on this simple ground, that "We often do things amiss, O Father, but do thou accept of what is good in us, and overlook whatever is wrong," is what startles and shocks the feelings of an ordinary reader of the New Testament, not to say that it fills his mind with a kind of sacred horror. A Christless sermon is a sad deficiency, but a Christless prayer is a heartless, soulless service, which God will not accept. We realized the last words of the address literally and figuratively. The dim, spectral light of the dying day was lingering on the casement, as the preacher uttered the words of the dying Goethe, and we felt that they were strictly appropriate. The veil of redemption had not, to his eyes, been rent in twain to admit the glancing beams of the Sun of Righteousness. He

a greater, as naturally as a seed leads to a sapling. Christian gentlemen have been in the habit of using their carriages to convey them to and from church; they of course see no evil in this. There is a little evil in it, however; and I doubt not but that the first pair of pampered prancing horses that were driven up to a church door, struck the plain worshippers of the lowly, humble Jesus with horror; and we take them to have formed part of the advanceguard of an army-which is now threatening to sweep the Sabbath from the face of the earth. Many, very many men, have no higher standard to compare by than a fellow-mortal; they stop not to inquire if this or that action squares with the eternal principles of rectitude. They merely look about them and say, here is a most respectable, and religious gentleman, who makes his coachman drive him to church. I have a couple of omnibuses standing idle in my yard, and a number of horses employed in the same unprofitable manner in my stable, I will send them to church also; if any of my lads object, I will pay them off; they have no right to complain; they are no worse off than this good gentleman's coachman, and I know that he would never ask a man to do anything wrong. The omnibus appears upon the stand, ticketed, "To church" -how holy! "No money can be taken upon Sabbath"-how astonishingly disinterested! "But you must favour us with a ticket." Ay, ay, the clovenhoof appears at last; we might have guessed it from the first; but who could suspect the devil mammon of driving to such a locality? The concern pays. "To church" is thrown overboard; they can afford to run now without "benefit of clergy." They can take money too; hard cash is in the ascendant. The ice is fairly broken, and others are plunging in as fast as hell can drive them. Poor men, poor horses; but poorer far proprietors!

"The game goes bravely on," and the spirit of evil rejoices and claps his ebon wings. Is the water more holy than the land? No. Has the engineer of

a steam-boat any greater right to the enjoyment of the Sabbath than a coach or omnibus driver? No. If it be right in a coach proprietor to use horse-power on Sabbath, can it be wrong in a steamboat owner to use steam-power? Decidedly no. "Then up with the steam,' cries the engineer. "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; and here go I with the first of flood." So away goes the first Sabbath steamer, soon to have a fleet in her wake; and although a hurricane of public opinion blows right a-head, she impudently looks into the eye of the storm, trusting to the lull that will follow. Thus link after link is rivetted to the burning chain of evil, till it encircles the globe. What can stop this awful work? Certainly not all the preachers or teachers on earth, although they are a tower of strength; but the labouring masses could, if they knew their own interests; were aware of their own strength, and how to use it, and were impressed with the solemn fact that they were created for a high and a holy purpose, far, far removed from that of crouching at the feet of a fleeting mortal, or obeying his sinful commands. This man-worship is the most dangerous idolatry that ever blocked up the path to heaven or peopled hell.

Working men should keep their eyes open; the days of blood-money are far from being past. There are hirelings abroad, who, with freedom always in their mouths, and liberty ever on their lips, are cutting the ground from under freedom's feet, and smelting the ore from which fetters are forged for the free. There are men who, under the pretence of liberating them from the bonds of superstition, unblushingly set one portion of working-men to enslave the other, well knowing that it is kindred sinew that forms the cord which binds the slave-men who never knew what a heaven rest is to the wearywhose bodies were never drenched with the sweat of toil-who never suffered from that exhaustion which deprives the sufferer of even the miserable power

to complain, prompting them to cast an envious eye into the grave, and raising a desire to lay the languid head upon the last low pillow of dust. With the private conduct of these men we interfere not, beyond giving opinion and advice. If they are, notwithstanding our advice, resolved to travel the shortest possible road to hell on their own feet; that account must be settled between them and their Maker; but when they attempt to force others to carry them, then it becomes a question to be settled between man and man; and it is on this point alone that we assail them.

The Sabbath, to be retained in its purity and efficiency, must be undivided -surrender the slightest portion of it, and a breach is formed through which the enemy may rush in and take entire possession. Let no profane hand touch it-let no unholy foot trample upon it -let no treacherous friend tamper with it-let not the breath of labour sully its glorious purity. We find men who certainly draw largely upon the bank of human credulity, are imposing, or at least trying to impose upon the world, by saying that their hostility to Sabbath observance arises from an anxiety to promote the cause of freedom. Perish freedom's tree, if its roots must fix and fester in overwrought man and beast; if its branches and leaves must sway to the foul, hot breath of slavery!

There is also a number of insignificant creatures who, in ordinary circumstances, would not be worth naming, who sign themselves "working men," although it is questionable if ever they wrought a hard day's work in their lives with minds furnished with scarcely an atom of natural or acquired sensecrawling reptiles, with all the serpent about them, save the sagacity of the animal and the sting. They have picked up a few of the cast off ideas of their enslavers, confused enough in their original state, but now utterly confounded; they print them, and post them on every available corner, and look upon the insensate raving as words of inspiration. Here is a specimen of their reasoning powers, taken from that

non-circulating library, the back of a street pump, "The steamer Emperor sails on Sunday. A certain gentleman's carriage runs on Sunday. Therefore, the steamer should sail on Sunday." The truth of this conclusion must appear as evident to every one, as that a black and a blacker must make a most dazzling white. That the human frame, if subjected to continuous labour, requires more than a nightly allowance of rest, and that the mind, if allowed nothing but nightly remission from thought, will injure the material upon which it acts, are self-evident facts to all who earn their bread by toil of body, or of brain.

The Sabbath supplies this deficiency; the Sabbath, guaranteed to man by the decree of God; and he who allows the smallest portion of it to be wheedled or wrested from him, is a cowardly traitor to the nature to which he be longs; and the avaricious despoiler who, to put money in his purse, would destroy justice, and extinguish mercy, should recollect that, although he keeps within human law, and sets at nought the decree of Divinity, that the arm of retribution is ever bare-that the enslaver of his kind is not free-and that the tyrant is more miserable than his victim.

The present aspect of this question, and the results to which such a state of matters naturally and inevitably tend, must raise a feeling of deep grief in the mind of every lover of his kind. For the salvation of men, who have neither blood, language, nor colour in common with him-the devoted missionary forces the icy barrier which nature has placed between him and the objects of his solicitude, or exposes himself to the death-striking rays of a vertical sun; and can we do nothing while the scene is our own birth-place-the objects to be saved are our own flesh and blood?

Every Sabbath conveyance in Scotland could easily be stopped, simply by buying out the men. The greatest reprobate that ever lived works unwil lingly on Sabbath. It is a money ques