fiction of Gray, that the loss of his sight was occasioned by the brightness of his celestial senses, it is, alas! nothing but a fiction. Those fine orbs were quenched in the service of a vulgar and usurping faction; and, had they not been closed in endless night,' the world perhaps would have wanted the 'Paradise Lost,' and that master-spirit of England have been wasted in more praises of Cromwell and more ribaldry against Salmasius."

Nothing could be more in the face of Channing's portraiture of Milton than this, or more opposed to his whole attitude towards modern reform. In fact, few if any living English writers could now speak of Milton and Cromwell with the contempt that the pet of Boston conservatism spoke at Cambridge on the 31st of August, 1809. Yet both Channing and Buckminster were perhaps equally opposed to the radicalism of the eighteenth century, especially that of the French revolutionary school; and it is surely one of the advantages of the political Federalism of the early Unitarians, that they had no affinity with the materialism and infidelity of the French and English radicals. We apparently owe to Channing, more than to any other man, the rescue of Unitarianism from the keeping of a somewhat aristocratic caste, and opening its spirit and truth to the mind and heart of the people.

How far he went in this positive purpose, we cannot exactly say; but it is evident, that he was more and more inclined, during the latter years, to confide in the thought and movements of the progressive party outside the Orthodox Church, than in any new ecclesiasticism or any renovation of the old creeds and discipline. We could wish that he had had more social fellowship in his teaching as well as his habit, and given the power of genial sympathy to the noble ideas which are identified with his name. His delicate health, as well as his temperament, undoubtedly kept him more aloof from the people than his convictions warranted. If so honored and cherished a friend as Dr. Dewey could write of his natural reserve as in the admirable letter on page 372 of the "Annals," we must not wonder or complain that we sometimes desired more of the electricity of hearty companionship than he usually gave.

Yet he was always kindly and encouraging. No young man surely ever failed to find ready hearing and kind and cheering counsel from him. We regard him as marking the third period in the social history of Unitarianism in this country. Whilst the old Arminian Arians, such as Gay, Chauncy, and Belknap, were a powerful social order of liberalized Orthodoxy, and Buckminster and his school headed the community of classic humanists with high aristocratic prestige, Channing led on the new order of progressive Unitarians. Within his Arian theology and conservative affinities, he bore the seeds of all the new ideas that have given such life, and at times threatened such mischief, to the Unitarian body.

Yet, even while speaking of Channing's influence, we cannot leave wholly out of account the local and personal influences that gave such power to his ministry. In Boston he held a position that enabled him to state boldly views of doctrine and duty, which, in a community with different antecedents, would have fallen to the ground without notice, or been rejected with horror. They who expected to see at once, in New York and Baltimore, the same response to his radical Unitarian preaching as in Boston, found themselves signally mistaken; so true it is, that antecedent training and local associations prepare the soil for the seed. Only when these new times have educated new ideas and associations have we seen the old barriers removed. The downfall of slavery and the rise of more generous views of human nature have given the name and thought of Channing welcome throughout the land. Wise will his followers be if they know how to use the opportunity, and present liberal religion with the power and constancy of organic institutions, and with the persuasion of social sympathy.

When we look through these "Annals" of Unitarian Clergymen, and ask for a distinct statement of their specific doctrines, we are not surprised at meeting with difficulty. There is no exact statement of belief upon which they all agree; and, what is more, the leading minds never meant that there should be such a statement. They never wished to make a new and exclusive creed, after being so tormented by the old

one.

In this they were undoubtedly right, and their followers will be wise if they do likewise. At the same time, there is a certain animus to the whole Unitarian body that gives it historical unity. It is the religious life of an earnest, intelligent, liberal community, in different stages of development, undertaking to interpret itself into conscious thought. It has always affirmed the unity of God, the supremacy of the Father, the freedom and moral worth of man, the divine mission of Christ, the universality of the offer of salvation. American Unitarianism has, in respect to moral freedom and the relations of the soul and the body, been free from the errors of its English namesake. The school of Priestley and Belsham has found little response here; and that little has died out in spite of the predictions of the "Panoplist" fifty years ago. Even our radicals, instead of taking after Priestley and Belsham, have been more of the school of George Fox, and have sometimes distanced orthodox revivalism in earnestness and efficiency.

We may as well acknowledge openly, that Unitarianism never was and never meant to be in America a sect in the usual sense, and is perhaps further from it now than ever, since the promised organization of its churches will be likely to substitute a practical for a speculative union, and allow and encourage various thinkers to work together under a generous standard of liberty and union. This book records a range of opinion that gives historic dignity to the most generous charity. We are not certain that all the preachers named in Dr. Sprague's volume are Unitarians in the sense of being Antitrinitarians, so various are their views and so rich in lessons of tolerance. Such men as Belknap and John Eliot rejected the Athanasian scheme of the Trinity, and accepted the "indwelling scheme," as it was called, without assailing the Trinitarian theology as such. They could speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and so also can a portion of our living Unitarians. Prominent scholars among them, and, we think, manfully and wisely, refuse to be called Antitrinitarians, and regard themselves as true to their Unitarian name if they reject all Polytheism or Tritheism, and

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accept no doctrine of the plurality of persons in the Godhead that is inconsistent with his unity. We are not alarmed, that a portion of the Unitarian clergy prefer Athanasius to Arius, and regard the great Alexandrian champion as effectually demolishing the virtual polytheism of Arius, and setting forth a Trinity of divine powers or manifestations, which is the effective evolution, or the differentiating and integrating, of the unity of the Divine Being. This idea has been expressed by leading Unitarians here and in England, and has been set forth in our own columns; yet the authors have not lost caste with their brethren, nor are they likely to lose it.

Whilst the historical roll of Unitarian clergymen proves thus that they have wished to keep a liberal spirit towards their Trinitarian neighbors, and not sacrifice their proper catholicity to Antitrinitarian prejudice, it proves equally that they have not been willing to shut out of their fellowship the new and somewhat radical elements of Christian thought. The fathers, whose lives Dr. Sprague has recorded, were not tried by novel speculations precisely as their children of the present generation have been. These "Annals," which stop with the year 1855, do not include any of the transcendental theologians who have figured in the new school of Unitarians; yet, in their day, they were obliged to maintain their toleration, in the face of great provocations, of the views of the authority of the Scriptures, and of the nature of Jesus Christ, that were held even by such able and eminent spirits. Andrews Norton and his school were apparently quite as great an offence to the old Unitarians of the Arian order, as the more ultra views of Theodore Parker and his clique have been to the existing community of conservative Unitarians. Norton was far too destructive for Channing's mind, and avows that he met with decided coldness and opposition from him. Yet the Norton iconoclasts were not thrust out of fellowship. Great good has come from many of their interpretations of Scripture, not by any means unmixed with evil from their unphilosophical, and sometimes unspiritual and generally unideal, theory of religion. It is well that equal toleration has been extended to the transcendental wing of the

Unitarian body; and no mistake could be more fatal than that of thrusting out, by a sweeping ban of excommunication, the large and living class of men who have built their faith upon the indwelling God, affirmed the constancy of inspira tion from the spirit, and the authority of intuition as the interpreter of the Divine Mind. The historical school has undoubtedly much grievance to complain of at the hands of the transcendental school. The fair-minded champions of the positive revelation in Scripture, and the divine manifestation in history, have shown with great conclusiveness, that, if God is with us now, he has been with our fathers; and, if we would know him truly, we must study his entire revelation to our race, and believe, that, to the chosen ages of our race, as to gifted minds of our own age, there have been especial gifts of illumination and grace. In the study of nature, we keep the historical method in our new science, and teach the principle of the correlation and conservation of forces. Why not apply the same principle to moral and spiritual forces, and believe that in life, as in nature, all existing forms of power may be traced to opening æons of the race, and the new type that began with the creative act of God has been afterwards evolved in the regular order of history? We may justly reject as folly the individualism that looks to its own instincts for absolute truth, and slights the revelations of God in history. Nothing can be more unphilosophical, as well as unamiable, than the egotism and scorn with which upstarts put themselves wholly upon their own intuitions in religion, and set aside the convictions and usages that affirm and repeat the communication of God with mankind.

But why wonder at the excesses of the new school, when we remember their grounds of provocation and the onesidedness that is so characteristic of our poor human nature? We certainly can remember times in which we, who have since learned what seems to us a broader and deeper wisdom, were provoked by the prevalence of a belief that seemed to regard revelation and inspiration wholly as facts of the past, and to resolve religion solely into the scholarly interpretation of words that were once vouched for by miracles. Religion