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under the influences of Heaven, and that to this growing excellence there is no limit or end. We believe that even in the future there is discipline for the soul; that even for the guiltiest there may be processes of redemption; and that the stained spirit may be cleansed as by fire. We believe that this view of a strict and graduated retribution exerts a more quickening, personal, realizing power than that of Eternal torments which no heart believes, which no man trembles to conceive; where the iniquity which is to be visited with such an awful punishment becomes a shifting line which every sinner moves beyond himself; until Heaven itself is profaned, and all its sacredness violated and encroached upon by those who feel that it would be infinite injustice to plunge them into an Eternity so unutterably dreadful, but who have been taught to believe that to escape this Hell is to be sure of Heaven.

Now our present objection to this doctrine of eternal punishment is the practical one that it has no moral power. It does not come close enough to truth and justice to take a hold of the conscience, and so instead of binding and constraining, it is inoperative and lax. The fact is, it is not practically believed. It is too monstrous to be realized. Where, we ask, are the fruits of this appalling doctrine, which is everywhere preached? One would suppose that its dreadfulness would keep the tempted spirit in constant alarm. I know that it occasions misery to the timid, to the sensitive, to the feeble of nerve, that is, just to those who require the purer and gentler influences of religion to give them trust in God; but what sinner has it alarmed? what guilty heart has it made curdle with terror? what seared conscience has been scared from evil by the shriek of woe coming up from the depths of the everlasting torture? No; these are not the influences that convert sin. They are not believed or realized, and yet they displace from the thoughts those definite views of the future which would have power to move and save the soul. The righteous allotments with which God will award the joys and sorrows of the future; the character of the individual mind when it first appears for judgment; the value of every moment of present time in assigning us our first station in immortality; the exact righteousness in which every variety of character shall have its graduated place on the scale of recompense; the appalling thought of every separate spirit standing before God just as the last effort of convulsed nature dismissed it from the body;-the trifler in his levity, the drunkard with his idiot look, the murderer with the blood-stains on his soul-and the sainted spirit passing on the breath of prayer from the outer to the inner Court of God's presence;-these, the solemn distinctions of that awful world, are all lost, because of that common Hell into whose abyss unawed Conscience hurls her fears, and then forgets the infinite gradua VOL. VIII-68.

tions of punishment that still remain to pour evil at the award of a retributive God.

dread

recompense on

These are some objections urged against these views of the practical importance of Unitarianism to which I must now give brief and emphatic answers.

1. It is said that Unitarianism generates no love to Christ: and the reason assigned is, that as we reject the primal curse of original sin, we have not so much to be forgiven, and consequently not equal obligation to love; for to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. Now in our view forgiveness is of God, in whom Trinitarians find no forgiveness, and Christ is the image of our Father in Heaven, and we love him who leads us into that pure and blissful presence, and in whose face we have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, full of grace and truth. We love Jesus for what he is to our souls, and not for the theological fiction, that he took off a disqualification which our God laid on. We love all holy and good beings for the same reasons, that they strengthen in our nature the springs of goodness and unselfish love, and lift us into fellowship with themselves; and therefore we love God supremely, and next to God, him who through self-devotion and perfect filial trust preserved the moral lineaments of Heaven, of a mind harmonized with providence, against the weaknesses and through the temptations of this humanity, whose tremblings we know so well, and whose fallings away in ourselves from the higher impulses of God, have taught us the love and veneration for him who made it bear the likeness of Heaven, and, through its trials and its shrinkings, realized perfection.The moral estimate that would proportion our love to Christ, not to his own fitness to inspire love, to the heavenly benevolence that breathed through his own life and death, but to the selfish measure of the outward benefits received, can be equalled in the confusion and impurity of its moral ideas only by another moral judgment pronounced upon the same occasion-that the guilt of the Jews, when they crucified Jesus, must be estimated and measured in proportion as Jesus was man or God. This certainly is quite consistent with the Trinitarian scheme, that guilt can be contracted unknowingly; but who will set right this utter ignorance of the primitive ideas of morality? What spectres of the thirteenth century rise before us when we listen to these conceptions-of God dying under the hands of his creatures; and of their guilt, by some process, (not moral, but metaphysical,) becoming infinite because the sufferer was infinite, though they knew it not, and believed themselves to be crucifying the man Jesus! It is only further proof that the Atonement and its allied ideas tends to confuse in the minds that receive it the fundamental perceptions of Right and Wrong.

2. It is said that Unitarianism leads to infidelity: and the proof assigned is that those whom Trinitarianism makes sceptics, find

with us ideas of Christ and Christianity with which they have sympathies. We intercept the minds whom they have driven from Belief; we present our serene and perfect image of Duty and of God to minds wearied and perplexed with views of Religion which are felt to be too coarse for their own nature and therefore infinitely unworthy of the spirit of God; but because they leave the Church, that Christian Jerusalem, and come to sit at the feet of Jesus in our humble Bethany, where at least he is loved purely and for himself;-then this is Infidelity, and we who stay the wanderer, and retain him within the fold, are called producers of unbelief. The spirit of Jesus said, "he that is not against us is for us." The spirit of Trinitarianism says, "he that is not for us is against us. It was said that the spirit of infidelity is the spirit of this age. I only ask, if this is so, could there be a more practical condemnation of that system, and of that Church, which sways all the religious influences of the country; and whose representations of Christ and of Christianity, the universally prevailing ones, have produced the religious character of these times? If there is Infidelity in the land, it is mainly the recoil from Orthodoxy.

3. It is said that Unitarianism encourages the pride of human Reason. Now I shall answer this very briefly, because any lengthened exposure would necessarily take the form of sarcasm. Whose Reason is it that we oppose when we reject Trinitarianism? Trinitarians say that it is the Reason of God. But how do they know this? Because they are sure that they know the Mind of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures; and they are sure that we are in error. Infallibility again! So that to oppose their interpretation of the Scriptures, is to set up our own Reason against the Reason of God. Now I ask, in all simplicity, Can they who say these things have taken the trouble to clear their own ideas? If there is any pride of Reason, on which side does it lie? They first identify their own sense of the Scriptures with God's sense, and then they charge other men with the pride of Reason, for not bowing down their minds to God, having first taken it for granted that their Reason and God's Reason are one and the same. Look again to the uncertain doctrines which they deduce from the Scriptures by processes of inference, sometimes technical and sometimes mystical, and say, does the world afford a more marked exemplification of the pride of human Reason, than the absolute confidence with which these doubtful conclusions are received, and not only that, but pressed upon men, as the exact meaning of God, at the peril of their eternal Salvation?What do these divines rest upon when they deduce from the Scriptures their essentials of Christianity? Their own reasonings. And yet they will tell you, that to differ from them, is to oppose your own Reason to the mind of God. I ask, hereafter in this controversy, Should not this matter of the pride of human

reason be a weapon of attack in our hands, an accusation against Trinitarians, instead of a charge which Unitarians are to answer? We have too long, in this and many other matters, stood upon the defensive.

And now, in conclusion, let me say once more, that though we think Trinitarian views of man's connexions with God injurious to Christian perfection, inasmuch as they throw the minds which receive them out of harmony with the realities of God, and must therefore undergo future correction and re-adjustment, still our strongest objections to the Trinitarian scheme is the fundamental one that it is based upon principles of exclusiveness, upon the indispensable conditions of a narrow and technical creed, and that thus it is the parent and fomenter of all those dissensions and practical evils in religion which these times witness and deplore. How many has orthodoxy persecuted into a hatred for the very name of religion? In how many minds has it darkened, or mixed up with the most incongruous associations, the beautiful image of Christ, destroying its healing and persuasive power?_O! why should it be, except for this Trinitarian scheme of an Exclusive Salvation, that Religion should be directing her whole energies to the support of creeds, instead of going about doing good, and with her heavenly spirit entering into conflict with the moral evils that afflict society, and degrade man, and rebel against God?— Why is it, that instead of this, we have a distinct class of sufferings, that go under the name of religious evils? Why is it that we are here holding controversy with our fellow Christians, instead of uniting our spirit and our strength to work the works of Christ? We wage not this controversy for the purpose of aiding a sect; but we wage it, to do what we can to expose and put down universally the sectarian spirit.

THE ORPHAN NOT FATHERLESS.

The golden sun was shining,
The flowerets bright and gay
O'er shrubs and green grass twining,
'Twas a glorious summer day.
The glad air, cool and free,
Made the forest leaves to quiver

As I hied me down the path

To the brink of the darksome river.

Right joyful then was I

'Mid these happy things to bide;
When hark! that voice, a sigh,

"Would to God I had died."
Ah! what unhappy one
Can wish this day to die;

When earth 'neath the bright sun
Sends forth such melody?

Down, down in yonder valley,
Under that old maple tree

Sits a fair young boy, and weeping,
'Tis a sight full sad to see.
Now tell me, gentle child,
Tell me, what aileth thee?
In these lone woodlands wild,
All things are gay but thee.
He raised his blue eyes mild
And looked so piteously,
Then said-poor orphan child!
"There's no one cares for me.
"My parents are in heaven,
"They've left me all alone,
"My heart it feels so lonely
"For I loved them, and they're gone."
Now tell me, my fair child,
Sure none would do thee ill?
"No, they're all kind to me,
"But yet I'm lonely still.
"I have no friend to love,
"Stranger, wilt thou love me?"
My heart I thought would break
To see him weep so bitterly.
I sat down by his side,
Took his small hand in mine.
Look up my boy to the blue sky,
See'st thou the bright sun shine?
Look! through the leafy boughs,
The rays pour warm and bright,
And birds and blossoms gay
Drink in, that gladsome light,
Who made those creatures small?

Who watches o'er their joy?

Will not the God who guides them all
Love the poor orphan boy?

Thou art not all alone,

Thou hast a friend above,

A father ever by thy side,

One whose blessed name is love.

"Yes, of a God in heaven
"I've sometimes heard them tell,

"Stranger, I do remember now,

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