not repudiate the alphabet.

Give them then, by all means, this alphabet! It is a wonderful, almost a mysterious implement. In the compass of six and twenty little symbols, all human knowledge is comprised and while we deposit this intellectual seed, we know not with what forms of beauty, or exuberance of growth, it may shelter and adorn the national mind in no very distant times. If they will not defer to our Protestant sentiments of liberty, at least it is something that they reverence the alphabet. If they cannot be brought within hearing of the same pulpits, at least it is something that they will meet us on the floor of the same school. If they cannot approach to the same views, or enjoy with the same conviction the great ennobling truths which we discern in the sacred page, it is something surely that they acknowledge on the same authority, and embrace with a like assurance with you, that pure religion and undefiled, before God even the Father, is this, to visit the widow and fatherless in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world.' It is something surely that they hold with you, that 'the grace of God hath appeared to all men, teaching them that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, they should live soberly and godlily in the present world.' And surely it is something that they no less believe, that the hour is coming when all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.""

After exposing with great and merited severity the objections made by various parties to the plan of Education proposed by Government, showing the inconsistency of those objections in themselves and with each other, and reprobating the spirit of bigotry and intolerance by which the opposition was characterised, after showing from the work of Charles Butler, Esq. the Catholic Barrister, that there were many points in which all Christians, of whatever denomination, were agreed; and that these marked out a common ground on which all might unite their efforts for the education of the people,-after quoting passages from various opponents of National Education, illustrative of their rancorous hatred of every faith but their own,after proving that the standard of truth, or the measure of heresy, to these persons, was not the Bible, but an Act of Parliament or the Westminster Confession,-after showing, in answer to the objections against selections from the Bible, that "what we subtract, we only postpone; but what they add, they bind upon men's souls with chains too heavy to be borne, and without the solace of one glimpse of hope that they are ever to be removed or lightened," Mr. Armstrong said, "Sir, the public ear has been stunned with lamentations of this complexion; and all the art of language, all the resources of hate, have been exhausted upon the system which has presumed to abridge (they call it to mutilate) the sacred records, and adopt them to the peculiar necessities of a people whom superstition may indeed oppress, but whom we hope fanaticism may never rescue. And yet, Sir, this work of sub

traction, this policy of adapting, of consulting for time and place and exigency, had not been unheard of before. Will it be believed, when reverend persons, as well in Dublin as in London, were lavishing anathemas on the impiety of 'selection,' that no fewer than 112 chapters, together with three entire books of the Jewish Canon, were discarded from the Scriptural services of the Church of England! Will it be believed, when gentlemen were telling with horror, of the presumption of deciding perchance by a show of hands, whether the Prophecies of Ezekiel were fit for perusal,' that of the eight and forty chapters which compose that prophetical book, no fewer than 37 were omitted in the Scriptural services of the Church of England! Will it be believed, when these persons were quoting, amidst a tempest of shouts and bravos, the words, if any one shall take away from the words of the Book of this Prophecy, God shall take away his part from the book of life;' that all this while, their precious palms were smiting the head of the Spiritual Mother that bore them, inasmuch as out of the two and twenty chapters of the book of this very Prophecy, no fewer than nineteen are altogether omitted in the Scriptural services of the Church of England! How true it is, that they who live in glass-houses should be careful of throwing stones. But such men are incapable of prudence. At every step they take, and every missile they discharge, retaliation tenfold is ready to overwhelm them."

Mr. Armstrong then admirably exposed the absurdity of the opponents of National Education heaping on its friends the epithets of Papist, Radical, and Socinian, and continued, "We come forward to patronise with all our influence, and to cherish with all our might, this scheme of Education, for the first time truly national, because it is purely impartial in its character. We come forward to avert, from the calumniated Board which is to be the agent of its salutary influence, the shafts which malevolent and factious hands have aimed at it. We hail the first measure which has been accorded, for diffusing with a liberal hand, the seeds of a vigorous, because an unsuspected and a welcome knowledge. From such a beginning, we own we expect a plentiful, though it may be a distant return. We are disposed to think that a little leaven being once introduced, the whole mass will in process of time be fermented. We are disposed to think that the point of the wedge being once firmly fixed, its whole insertion, not speedily but surely, must be effected; and the toughest materials which ignorance, indolence, superstition, or intolerance can oppose to its progress, be riven into fragments.

The Resolution was seconded by the Rev. James Armstrong, who said—" In seconding the Resolution proposed by my respected friend, permit me to express the gratification I feel at seeing him amongst us, and taking a part in our proceedings. I consider it as a very striking and distinguished testimony to the power and truth of the religious principles we profess, that a clergyman of the Established Church, whose intellectual endowments are of so high an order, and whose virtues and learning are an ornament to his sacred profession, should thus unequivocally declare his con

viction, that Unitarian Christianity is the religion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What but the holy and irrepressible love of truth could have induced such a mind as his, not only to retire from a Church in which he was honoured and beloved, to resign his benefice, and to forego the brilliant prospects of preferment which he might most reasonably have had in view, from his connexions as well as his high character; but moreover, to join himself with a Society which he well knows is every where spoken against,' calumniated, and reviled-a society which has no emoluments or honours to bestow, and which offers no allurements but the unshackled investigation of truth, and the uncontaminated religion of the Redeemer? Proud may we be of such an accession to our cause; and thankful ought we to be to Divine Providence, that, while Robertson and Lindsey, Wakefield and Jebb, are reaping in a better world the reward of their faithful confessing of Jesus upon earth, their mantle has descended upon one so worthy to wear it-upon one so well qualified to maintain, as they did, a prominent and commanding position in that resistance to error and delusion of every kind, in that vindication of the rights of conscience, and in that uncompromising support of truth, which form the object and the bond of all Unitarian Christian associations. "With respect to the Resolution which I have the honour to second, the subject has been so fully and so ably discussed by my reverend friend, that it is unnecessary for me to detain you with more than one or two observations. I cannot reflect, without a feeling of indescribable disgust, on the manner in which the judicious and impartial system of national education, devised by our present liberal and enlightened Government, has been assailed by that political and selfish faction, which has been the constant opponent to the peace and concord and prosperity of the people of Ireland. It is shocking to observe that Peers, and Prelates, and Presbyters, members of parliament, corporations, ministers of religion, and magistrates, have conspired, in one ferocious cry of reprobation, against a measure so well calculated to improve the minds of the populace of this country, and to bind the rising generation of all religious names, in union and love, by the ties of early associations. It is a melancholy sign of the times, that they have not scrupled to give the sanction of their countenance to the promulgation of the most shameless misrepresentations (I may add falsehoods), in describing the constitution of the Board, and detailing the regulations of the system." Having given some instances of these misrepresentations, Mr. Armstrong proceeded,-" Yet, amidst this disgusting farrago of fanaticism, hypocrisy, and political rancour, it is consoling to reflect that an over-ruling Providence has made these violent men the unconscious instruments of setting forth a most important, and to themselves a new principle amongst their ignorant and besotted partizans. It is most satisfactory to hear from such persons, the cheering cry, The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible.' It seems as if the Lord had put a new song into their mouths.' I hail this cry with unspeakable delight. If it be sincerely adopted, the reign of bigotry will soon terminate. Down must come the contradictory articles,

the absurd creeds, the antichristian confessions, and all the other debasing corruptions that have so long interposed their dark and baleful atmosphere between the beams of evangelical truth, and the bewildered minds of men. Gladly do we re-echo the cry they have adopted. Long and widely may it reverberate! It is the true principle on which our Association is founded; for well am I assured, that wherever the Bible alone is the fountain of religious knowledge, there it will inevitably lead to the adoption of Unitarian Christianity."

Mr. John Neilson moved the following Resolution:-" That we cordially extend to the Scottish Unitarian Christian Association, the same measure of fraternal sympathy which its Members have manifested towards us, and deem ourselves favoured in the opportunity of expressing that sympathy to its enlightened and eloquent Secretary, Rev. George Harris; that we regard his efforts, and those of the Institution with which he is connected, as instruments of Providence for imparting to the people of Scotland, a form of Christianity worthy of their reflecting and conscientious character; and that we anticipate a time, neither distant nor doubtful, when, by a succession of such powerful agencies, the soul of the Covenanters shall awake once more, and, with spirit softened and intrepidity refreshed by its sleep of ages, proclaim the glad tidings of a new reformation, and carry through the land the bloodless triumphs of the law of truth and love, over error, intolerance, and gloom."- "It called on the meeting to express its sympathy with the Unitarian Association of Scotland. Interesting as it was to mark the progress of such a Society, wheresoever established, it must be peculiarly gratifying to the Irish Unitarians to observe its operations in a country so well fitted to be the theatre of its achievements as Scotland. There might be seen a people, famed for their love of religious study, famed for their zeal in maintaining what they believed to be religious truth; there was a horizon undisturbed by the tempests that agitated the public mind of Ireland; there the feelings of the people were undistracted by the crusading frenzy of fanatics, whose conduct had made Ireland appear little else than an arena for the exhibition of half religious, half political, but wholly frantic polemics. In Scotland the case was different. Her soil was better fitted for the seed of truth; and the Meeting was called on to express its wish, that the labours of the sowers might not be in vain. In the presence of the talented and eloquent individual to whom the Scottish Association was principally indebted for its great efficacy, to the value of whose services the present meeting had already paid the well-earned tribute of its thanks, they were called on to express their joy, that Almighty Providence had been pleased to raise up men of high talents and honest hearts, as instruments for checking the errors and absurdities of Calvinism, and for giving to the people of Scotland a religion worthy of their conscientious and reflecting character. Scotland was a scene of peculiar interest. If not the birth-place, it was the cradle of Presbyterianism, of that religion which might indeed be for a time perverted and darkened by the folly or bigotry or worldly-mindedness of its pro

fessors, but whose very essence consisted in protesting against all creeds of man's device, and whose eternal watchword was freedom of conscience. That religion had been, in its infancy, untrammelled by articles or confessions; and its sinews had grown strong, and been braced in the air of freedom that breathed upon the northern mountains. What Presbyterian, who might possibly have Scottish blood flowing in his veins, could anticipate without delight, the day when the universal mind of Scotland should burst the shackles that bound it; when the errors of a gloomy creed should pass away; when reason and revelation should assert before the eyes of all, their indissoluble unity, and religious knowledge and religious truth should enlighten every castle and cottage in the land." The Resolution was seconded by Mr. J. S. Arm

strong.

The following Resolution was proposed by Mr. H. Hutton of Kilmore, and seconded by Dr. J. C. Ferguson:-"That in estimating the prospects of pure and undefiled Christianity, it is delightful to turn to the several portions of the globe where it enjoys a peaceful shelter now, and whence we may anticipate hereafter its rapid and beneficent progress; that we contemplate with satisfaction its sanctuary in the ancient churches and university of Transylvania, its prevalence around the tomb of the Genevese Reformer, and its power in that enlightened portion of the new continent, in which truth, not encountering the hostility of institutions, has no antagonist but the natural forces of error.'

Mr. Carmichael proposed the following Resolution:-"That we hail with satisfaction every promise that pure religion shall revisit any portion of that Oriental world which gave it birth; that we sympathise with every effort to make British India the seat of improved institutions and a better faith; that we have long regarded with deep admiration the philanthropic and enlightened exertions of Rajah Rammohun Roy, to elevate the social and spiritual condition of that interesting land; and that, should he be enabled to visit this country before he quits the European shores, we should deem it a high privilege to hold intercourse with the illustrious stranger, whose mild but fearless expositions of Christian truth we have read with delight, whose character we have revered from a distance, and from whose career we anticipate beneficent results to his countrymen and mankind." Mr. C. said, "This celebrated man, a few years since, was the worshipper of Brahma, Vishna, and Siva, the Indian Trinity; and if India, as it is said, borrowed her Gods from Egypt, this is undoubtedly the oldest Trinity created by the perverse ingenuity of man. The Greek and Roman Trinity, Jove, Neptune, and Pluto, is of somewhat more recent date. The Northern Trinity, Woden, Thor, and Frega, is comparatively modern. It is not perhaps generally known, that the Kings of England can trace their lineage to Woden and Frega. These were the fabrications of barbarous ignorance; it was easy to deify human beings. There was more refinement and intelligence required to compound the Trinity of Plato: The great First Cause, his Logos or Wisdom, and the Soul of the World. The disciples of Plato, on becoming Christians, converted his Trinity into the Godhead, now worshipped by so vast an extent of civilized society.

"But Rammohun Roy, in rejecting the Trinity of India, did not prostrate his understanding before another far less ancient, equally untrue, and far more irrational, contradictory, and absurd. He gave all his heart and soul to the study of our Scriptures. But there he could find no Trinity. What did he find? That the Omnipotent God, who is the only proper object of religious veneration, is one, and undivided in person. The Lord our God is one Lord.' That Christ, through