of God on earth, it is natural that men who respect themselves as well as their fathers' religion should look at his works, and by them decide whether he is what he pretends to be. We are neither in China nor Japan. To demand of civilized nations that they should not criticise the acts of a prince merely because he says he is to be subject to no one, . is certainly to demand more than Europe or America can grant in the decline of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. All endeavors to prevent men from beholding the light that shines around about them must fail, nor is it in the interests of the priesthood to come out with the ridiculous pretension of being exempted from observation and censure. Let the Bishop of Rome spontaneously descend before he is hurled down from the high seat he has usurped; let him mingle with the disciples of Christ, whatever be their name, and become the least among them; let him give up his claims to infallibility, and entreat his brethren not only to advise him, but to judge his every act, and then some hope may be entertained of seeing the Roman See to stand above all other Sees in the world. The beautiful dream of Gioberti may then be realized, and the longing even of many a Protestant for a centre of union and unity satisfied. The day, however, when the Pope will be prevailed upon to do so much is yet far, and nothing can be said of the probability of its coming till his temporal power is done with. It has been the temporal power which has caused error, superstition, dissension, schism, and crime, to dishonor, corrupt, rend, and prostitute the Church; and the chief remedy for all these evils consists in the abdication of it. We say abdication, not surrender, nor overthrow. For if the Popes were to lose their States only in consequence of a revolution in Italy, or a revolt in Rome, even if then they submit to the necessity of events, and give up the useless practice of protesting against and excommunicating everybody, then the idea of their taking advantage from their position to uphold the supremacy of the Roman See would be preposterous. Two thirds of the Italians, and fully one half of the Catholics, could not be persuaded to acknowledge as the head of the Church a man who, by his obstinacy and thirst for power, had caused the slaughter of thousands of his fellow-Christians and countrymen, and plunged his country into all the horrors of a revolution. This would be true, especially at this time, when the Pope and his advisers have committed wrongs so many, so great, so evident and manifest, as to excite pity rather than indignation when they attempt to justify or deny them. or deny them. We gladly believe that Pius IX. is moved by the most conscientious motives, and really thinks to do his duty in the interest of the Church and of religion; but we doubt very much whether his counsellors are animated by the same spirit, or care either for religion or Church. Natural goodness and purity of motive may be suf ficient to justify the man, but will never justify the prince and the chief pastor of so large a portion of Christendom. All the curses uttered of late against the Liberal party, that is to say, the best men and women of Italy, all these curses may return on the head of their author, and prove the most effectual cause of his destruction. God does not settle accounts at the end of the week, but the time will certainly come when the law of retribution must take effect. The Pope bitterly complains . of the ingratitude of his children, and stands before the Catholic world as the victim. But he does not say how that ingratitude was preceded by patience, and long-suffering, and disappointments, and outrages received, and tortures suffered, on the part of the people, by deceit, unkept promises, unheardof insults, cruelty to beggar description, and treason, on the side of his government. The oppressed, the murdered ones, are represented as deserving their fate; but bare assertions cannot belie facts which are known to everybody that can read, and does not go to the enemies of his country for information. We hope that the inhabitants of the Papal States will endure a little longer, and when they rise and have subdued their oppressors will make use of the victory with moderation, and be magnanimous towards the fallen. We tremble, however, knowing that Providence deprives nations of their reason at times, as it does individuals, that they may avenge their wrongs without being accountable for the act, thus employing them as instruments of Divine justice upon those that deem themselves not amenable to the justice of men. The bloody scenes of the first French Revolution might be repeated in Rome, and the obstinacy of a bishop would then cost thou -- sands of priests their lives. So far the Romans have allowed their regard for the Supreme Pontiff to overrule their indignation at the enormities perpetrated by the prince and his government. They have respected the rather morbid feelings of several Catholic nations, which, not knowing by experience what priestly government means, ascribe to the ambition of a few Liberals the general sentiment of the whole peninsula. How long will that respect prevent the explosion of their for so many years compressed wrath? Do they really owe to their Catholic brethren of other countries the sacrifice of whatever man holds dear and sacred on this earth? Will they not rise and make their ecclesiastical oppressors feel the consequences of that principle upon which the religion they teach is founded: Without shedding of blood there is no remission. These remarks may appear too strong and our fears groundless to any one that reads history to no purpose, or thinks that human nature has entirely changed. The noble attitude assumed by the people, both in France and Italy, towards their trembling fugitive rulers during the revolutions of 1848, may lead to the conclusion that there is nothing more to be feared. But if we think of the new and manifold crimes committed against the nation by the Papal Court during these last twelve years, we will not deem it impossible that the time may have come when strict and terrible account will be demanded. Who knows but the expedition of Garibaldi to Southern Italy is not the signal for the oppressed to rise in their might, and summarily put an end to a scandal which has already lasted too long? Can Pius IX. answer for the safety of his clergy? Can he prevent the Romans from rising by his bulls of excommunication, or even by the army he musters out of the scum of Austria and Ireland? Romans know no fear. Rather than bear any longer with the temporal power of the Popes, they are determined, like the Samson of the Jews, to bury themselves under its ruins. E troppo tardi,-"It is now too late," is their motto. No promises, no reforms, no concessions, will they accept or listen to. Abdication, absolute, unconditional abdication of all claims to an Italian state, is the only means to avoid bloodshed, and keep the Italians from declaring they do not recognize the Pope as the Head of their Church. 1. Le Troisième Jubilé Séculaire de l'Église Réformée de France. Sermon, par ATH. COQUEREL Fils. Paris. 1859. 2. "The Unitarian Position." A Letter addressed to the Rev. I. F. Mac Donald, by the REV. JAMES MARTINEAU. London. 1859. 3. The Unity of Christ's Church. A Discourse delivered in Harvard Church, Charlestown, March 4, 1860. By GEORGE E. ELLIS. Charlestown. 1860. 4. The Monthly Journal of the American Unitarian Association. July, 1860. Vol. I. No. 7. Boston. 1860. HERE are four recent pamphlets, which we name where we might name scores. They are recent exhibitions, in quarters widely separate, of the certainty that the unity of the Church is to be attained by some broader philosophy, and some organizations more comprehensive, than those which led each sect to expect that in the end its rod should swallow all other rods, and that its uniform should be worn over all other uniforms. The possibility of the diversities of administration where there is one spirit begins to make itself felt. What is better is, that not only is this tolerated as a possibility, but announced as a necessity. The leaders acknowledge that there must be some foothold broader and more certain than that held by any religious body which stands on quivering tiptoe upon the top. pinnacle of its dogma, and cries out to other bodies to boast that they are not so high. M. Coquerel warns his Reforming friends of the dangers of their position in France. Mr. Martineau, in this tract, and in the discussion which followed it, pointed out very clearly to the Unitarians of England the danger of any Procrustes policy. Dr. Ellis, in one of a series of Discourses, which has very properly been rescued from the obscurity of manuscript, shows in America the grounds of the vital unity of the Church. More than this, in the Anniversary exercises of the American Unitarian Association there is evidence enough that these are not the accidental statements of strong men speaking for a minority of the Unitarians, but that the catholic view taken in these discussions may be regarded as the received view of the Unitarian fellowship. The Christian Examiner, for several years, has felt bound, for good and sufficient reasons, to deviate from the custom of printing in its pages the annual "Conciones ad Clerum." But at the earnest desire, expressed by a unanimous vote, of the audience who listened to it, we insert the following discourse, read at "the Ministerial Conference" by the President of the Unitarian Association; since the subject of it is one of such central interest, and the views it contains would be likely to find a place in our pages in some other form. -EDS. EXAM INER. THE BROAD CHURCH. "And they shall come from the east, and the west, and the north, and the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God." * We all know how utterly and astonishingly this prediction. was verified in the first centuries of the Christian Church, which is what is here meant by the kingdom of God. Fifty days after the death of Christ, in whose tomb it was seemingly extinct, and whose resurrection was then the private persuasion only of a few friends, the soul of that kingdom burst forth again with irrepressible vehemence at Jerusalem. It swept the city with a rushing mighty wind from heaven, and a demonstration of fiery tongues, inaugurating the new heavens and the new earth of the Christian ages. Three thousand souls sat down in the kingdom, by invitation of Peter, that day. East, west, north, and south were all represented. "For there were dwelling at Jerusalem at that time Jewish proselytes out of every nation under heaven," providentially gathered to the feast of the tribes;-Parthians, Medes, Elamites, from the east; people from the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Cappadocians, Phrygians, from the west and the north; and dwellers in Mesopotamia from the south. When this rushing mighty wind struck them, it lodged a seed of the kingdom in their souls, which they took with them to their proper homes, and sowed in their several lands, where it grew to be a heavenly plantation, a spiritual oasis amid the perish * Luke xiii. 29. |