Happy for us, if we have opened our cyes to the greatness of our destiny, to the nearness of our privileges, to the reality of a present God, to the hope of a heaven of goodness, to the respect for self, which comes from faith that a God is our Creator, and the respect for men, which regards every human being as an immortal, as an imprisoned angel. Oh! brethren of the Ministry! lay aside your dogmatisms, your bigotries, your pride of intellect, your ingenuity of speculation, your prejudices of opinion, your metaphysical subtleties, and be baptized into the faith of a "Father" of infinite goodness, of a "Son" who comes to call you his friends and brethren in the eternal family of God, of a "Holy Ghost" ready now as ever to inspire you with purity and holiness, and the truth of a living soul.. W. H. C. LICENSE OR NO LICENSE. Agreeably to public notice, a meeting of the citizens of Cincinnati was held at the College Hall on Tuesday evening 2nd inst. The meeting being organized, SAMUEL LEWIS, Esq., from the Vigilance Committee, presented their Report, accompanied with verbal remarks, in substance as follows: That the ward committees have held frequent meetings for consultation, and that there have been eight general meetings of the whole committee. Many propositions have been discussed, and much time employed by the committec in laboring to enforce the laws against those who were selling in violation of them. From the Mayor's statements to the committee, it appears that there have been fined for selling liquor without license from Dec. 26th, to Feb. 25th, in all 118 persons. Total amount of fines assessed, $2,489 00 $1,443 00 832 00 $145 00 15 00 20 00 65 00 That, at the time the committee entered on their duties, they found twenty-five drinking-houses licensed, fourteen of which were regarded as mere Coffee Houses under the name of Taverns. And that on the very night of the December meeting, while this Hall was crowded with citizens, anxious for the suppression of all public drinking-houses, five or six licenses were granted to such places, by the City Council! The question now to be decided by the Cincinnati public, is, License or no License. It is an important one. Let every man give us his best thoughts on the matter. 1st. The purpose of licensing a few sellers, is to restrain the general sale of intoxicating drinks. The right to license implies, therefore, the right to limit the sale; therefore, to limit the sale indefinitely, or to prohibit it altogether. The licensing, is proof that the sale is injurious; else why prevent any from selling? Licensing then is self-condemned; and consequently, a city which licenses dram-drinking, publicly announces that it is willing to make profit from wronging its own citizens. What a mockery and a shame! If one says, "but the profit from licen ces goes to pay for the pauperism which the sale produces," he answers his own argument in favor of license, by proving that the city, which licenses, breeds the paupers, whom it afterwards supports, or pretends to. Worse mockery, worse shame!! 2d. But if the sale is injurious, why is it worse to sell a dram than a hogshead, a bottle than a barrel? If the renter of a cellar may not sell by the glass, without the city's approval, why may a renter of a large store? Is poison by wholesale safer to the community, than poison by retail? The only consistent course, is, either to license wholesale dealers as well as retail dealers, the merchant on your pier as well as the vinturn in your alley, or have no licenses. For one, I am ready to say, either prevent the large store-keeper from selling, as well as the keeper of a doggery, under the penalty of licenses large in proportion to profit, or have no licenses and no legislation upon the subject; except by making every man answerable for breaches of order which he occasions, and the supporter of every beggar family which he educates in crime. 3d. Suppose none of these high roads to ruin opened by City permission, but opened only under individual responsibil ity, and what would be the consequence? Necessarily that the business would excite the feelings it is naturally fitted to awaken. All minds would then be turned to the true means of prevention. Unless you can make homes happy, and learning attractive, and society pleasant; unless you can save young men and old men from seeking low enjoyments, from a craving for higher enjoy. ments which is not satisfied; unless you can instruct human beings in the knowledge of their true interests, raise self respect, quicken hope, surround them by pure influences, and engage their feelings on the side of good, you cannot destroy that demon of drunkenness, who now laughs in his lurking holes. . Meanwhile we say, No Licenses. Let not Cincinnati publicly brand herself with the disgrace of being a pander to vice, and of profiting by what she knows is cursing countless hearts and homes. No Licenses. And let us take the consequences. W. H. C. I have contrasted the fundamental principles of Trinitarian and Unitarian Christianity, and, without entering into their peculiar tenets, I have shown that the practical tendency of Trinitarianism is to disunite the Church of Christ; to lead to Popery as the only known provision for doctrinal certainty; and to preach "another gospel," which, to us at least, is no gospel at all, and has defaced the grace and glory of the original message. I have now to proceed to the particular views in which these principles respectively issue when applied to the examination of the Scriptures, and to contrast the practical tendencies of the distinguishing doctrines of Unitarian and Trinitarian Christianity. The Unitarians think that Trinitarianism, with all its dependent ideas, is not a system which the Scriptures would of their own accord naturally suggest to a free mind, examining them without prejudice or fear, in a spirit of confidingness in God and in truth; and that its peculiar set of notions are chiefly arrived at by inferences drawn from the Scriptures in the spirit of preconceived theories, and under the intimidation of priest-taught fears. We recognize nothing but the priestly spirit in all those systems whose cry is, VOL. VIII-67. "unless you believe this, and unless you believe that, you cannot be saved;" and acknowledging no salvation but that of a spirit morally one with God and with his Christ, salvation from superstition, and salvation from sin, and salvation from unconfiding fears; and believing that all truth is one and from God, we confidently appeal, in confirmation of our Scriptural soundness, to that great and independent test of Truth which is furnished by the moral tendencies of doctrines. I shall aim to show that Unitarianism has more power both with the understanding and the heart; that the Intellect with Trinitarianism has no resource but to disparage, and the Reason at which I lately heard, doubtless not without good reasons, such melancholy scoffs, (for what can be more melancholy than to hear a man scoffing at Reason, and attempting to reason men into a contempt for Reason?) that this Reason, one ray of the divine mind, we enlist on the side of our religion and of our souls;-that the spiritual nature which Trinitarianism insults and scorns, we contemplate with trembling reverence as made for holiness and for God;-and that the personal holiness and love, the Christ-like spirit and the Christ-like life to which Trinitarianism assigns a secondary place, this holy living and dying we set forth as the very salvation of the sons of God, the very way of spiritual safety trodden by the Forerunner and the Saviour, even Christ the righteous. I desire to be understood to affirm nothing about the actual characters of those who hold views which I think unfriendly to the soul. The tendencies of opinions may be counteracted: but still wherever there is error, that is, wherever there is any thing not conformed to the mind of God, there there is, to the extent of its agency, a principle of evil, or at least of misdirection, at the fountain of our life, though there may also be sweetening influences which are strong enough to neutralize its power. Trinitarianism does not produce all its natural fruits, though it produ ees some that are sufficiently deplorable, because it is kept in check by the better principles of our nature, with which it is now in alliance. It is vain to pretend that man's belief has no influence upon his life and upon his soul. The belief of a man is that which animates his sentiments, and peoples his imagination, and provides objects for his heart;-and if he bears no impress of it upon his character, it is only because it forms no real part of his spiritual existence, it is not written upon the living tablets of the mind. Believing then that our views of Truth, when they become a part of our living thoughts, woven into the spiritual frame and the daily food of the mind, do exercise a controlling influence over the whole being, it is our ardent desire to discover 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 endeavor, 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 Christlike 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 heaven bound 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 any 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 stupefy its life, that could more thoroughly turn it away from the spiritual purposes of Jesus.† He lived that men might *Rom. xiv. 17. |