heaves to and fro when the gale rises. There was a voice among the trees that sung a requiem to the Bard's spirit. The countrymen passed far down below, wrapped in their rough ferujolos, by the tomb of him who sang of their cares and pleasures, their employments and their sports, and were lost, all but the sound of their voices, borne up to the sepulchre by the wind, in the long dark grotto of Posilipo.

But, alas! all this is outside,-the delightful outside indeed on which one best loves to linger. Naples, where sorrow's sources are darkening and deepening every day. Pausilype! ah me! If you were the monarch of Naples, its cheerful sun should strike nought but grief into your bosom. Miserable policy creating tens of thousands of houseless, homeless, desperate wretches; and short-sighted institutions in vain endeavouring to remedy the results. There are Charities with open doors ready for many of the sufferers, but it is impossible that they should ever meet the gigantic and wholesale wants which bad foundation-principles are perpetually flinging up into existence. And there is the army, into which are drafted those thousands that would otherwise be driven into systematic and banded pillage-whom it just redeems from desperation, draws off from the public, and secures into tolerable control. The Charities and the Ranks are the internal arrangements of a short-sighted state-craft to patch up the evils for a time, which Commerce could alone prevent or remedy. And that soft and sunny climate-that dolce far niente-that strenua inertia of all around-that life, the chief excitement of which is the anniversary of St. Januarius, the appearance of a new Prima Donna at the San Carlo, or a Revista of the Troops-it is the life of one of summer's insects-it is not the life of a man. The utter and listless indifference to all the higher hopes and efforts of humanity, that seems to pervade the fair place and its inhabitants, would, if indulged in for any length of time, prove death to one's moral being.

Turn, then, Traveller, from Naples, and if you are one of those who feel that humanity advancing in Virtue, in knowledge, in Prosperity, is a feature in the horizon of your contemplation, necessary to your enjoyment of life, or your peace of mind, bless the Providence that has not apportioned you your lot in Naples. Though you contrive partly by the suasive power of the external, and partly by the force of voluntary oblivion, to forget the humanity of these regions for a month, or a year, you cannot forget it long. Your desires for human good must crowd distractingly and distressingly upon you, and beat for vent; and though you may have no fears or hopes or VOL. I. No. 4.-New Series.

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anxieties about the Vesuvius at whose base you stand, with its sloping outline and its vine-clad sides, yet you will soon have all for the Vesuvius that lies beneath you, albeit that you take sunny strolls in the Toledo, and breezy sails upon the Bay, and quiet evening walks to the shade of Virgil o'er Posilipo. If you then are forced at length to leave these pleasant places, which can be unmixedly pleasant for a continuance only to a rather unthinking and rather selfish mind, leave them without permanent or inconsolable regret: and when you exchange Indolence and Ignorance for the stirring and advancing interests of humanity in your own noble Isle, murmur not that also obliged to exchange warm days and sunny skies sometimes for murky November and commercial smoke.

you are

C. W.

INTELLIGENCE.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION.

Ar a Meeting of the Committee of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, held 28th ult.,

It was Resolved,

"That the Committee, having taken into consideration the expediency of calling another Aggregate Meeting of Unitarians, are of opinion that such a meeting is not expedient."

That this Resolution be communicated to the editors of the Christian Reformer, the Christian Pioneer, and the Christian Teacher, requesting them to make it known, as an article of intelligence, in their respective periodicals for the month of March.”

LADY HEWLEY APPEAL.

The House of Lords has appointed the hearing of this case on Monday, April the 8th,-to begin that day, and to go on from day to day.

COURT OF SESSION-RELIGIOUS TOLERATION.-Jan. 29, 1839.

The General Baptist Assembly and others against Taylor. This is an action brought at the instance of the General Assembly of the General Baptist Churches, meeting yearly on Whit-Tuesday, in London, and a committee of their members specially appointed to carry on the suit against William Taylor, lime-merchant in Perth, as representing his brother, the late David Taylor, builder there, for recovery of the sum of £1000, bequeathed by the latter to the Assembly, for the maintenance of a preacher of their connection (Unitarian) in the city of Perth. The defender pled, preliminarily, inter alia, that the action was not maintainable, inasmuch as the object of the legacy was the propagation of tenets which are not only not recognised by the State, but are condemned by the law of the country as directly and inveterately hostile to the creed which forms part and parcel of the law of the land. Lord Jeffrey, before whom the case depends, repelled the preliminary defences generally, and in particular, the defence above quoted, "in respect that the purpose for which the legacy is left is not a criminal or illegal purpose, or one which can, in any sound sense, be regarded as dangerous to good morals, or offensive to decency or good order;" and in a note to the interlocutor, his Lordship remarks" Where there is nothing in the tenets of a religious sect which is contrary to express law, to good morals, or to public decency, the Lord Ordinary can see no ground upon which any distinction can be taken in a civil court, between one tolerated sect and another. There can be no doubt that, by the existing law, the sect of

Unitarians is entitled to the fullest measure of toleration; and it would be absurd to hold that there was any thing to corrupt virtue, or outrage decency, in tenets which have been advocated, in our own days, by men of such eminent talents, exemplary piety, and pure lives, as Price, Priestley, and Channing, and to which, there is reason to think, that neither Milton nor Newton were disinclined. If this legacy may be withheld on account of the reprobation to which the opinions of the legatees are supposed to be liable, the Lord Ordinary does not see how any congregation of that community could obtain decreet for a sum of money which they had raised among themselves for building a chapel or paying a preacher, if they had lent it on bond or bill to an orthodox borrower, or even deposited it on receipt with a banker belonging to the establishment; for an executor, with free funds in his hands, is full debtor to the testator's legatees, and is as much bound to pay under the testament as a borrower is under his bond. Those who belong to the great establishment of the Church of England, it should also be considered, are but sectaries in Scotland, and depend for their protection on the same toleration which has now been extended to Unitarians. It would probably startle even the defender, however, if it were made a question whether a legacy could be recovered, or a loan reclaimed, for the purpose of building or repairing an Episcopal chapel, or paying the salary of an officiating clergyman.'

LIVERPOOL TRINITARIAN AND UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY.

These Letters sufficiently explain themselves. They give the History of the Rise and Progress of the Controversy now proceeding in Liverpool. We publish them here because many of our readers expressed the desire to have the whole correspondence collected together. We shall give, in our next Number, any future letters that may appear.

To all who call themselves Unitarians in the town and neighbourhood of Liverpool.

"And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging, to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, PERSUADING THEM CONCERNING JESUS, both out of the law of Moses and out of the Prophets, from morning till evening."-Acts xxviii, 23.

Men and Brethren,-I am aware that the term "Religious Controversy," is a phrase peculiarly revolting to many minds; that it presents to them nothing in its aspect but that which has been sarcastically called the "Acetum Theologicum," a something bitter and distasteful, of more than common offensiveness and asperity. It is for this reason that, in proposing a course of lectures on the subjects in controversy between the Church of England and those who call themselves UNITARIANS, and who, by that very term, seem to impute to the great majority of professing Christians, of almost all denominations, a polytheistic creed, and in requesting your attendance on these lectures, and inviting your most solemn attention to those subjects, I wish, antecedently, to remove

from myself every suspicion of unkindness towards you, and to take away any supposition of unchristian asperity in my feelings, or of a desire to inflict upon the humblest individual amongst you unnecessary pain. That no mere political difference of opinion, much less that any apprehension of danger to the Established Church, have originated this movement, will be sufficiently evident from the fact, that while we are surrounded by many other classes of dissenters, equally opposed to the principle of our establishment, and much more likely to draw away the members of our flocks to their communion, I and my reverend brethren, who are associated with me, on the present occasion, have limited ourselves exclusively to an inquiry into, and an endeavour to expose, the false philosophy and dangerous unsoundness of the UNITARIAN SYSTEM. Now, what is the cause of this distinction? It is simply this, that while we believe the other dissenting bodies to have arranged an ecclesiastical system, in our judgment not clearly Scriptural, and deficient in those particulars which constitute the perfection, though they may not affect the essence of a church, we do at the same time acknowledge that they generally hold, as articles of faith, those great fundamental Gospel truths which are the substance of the safety of souls; truths which, while so held, give them a part in that gracious covenant in Christ, within which God has revealed a way of salvation for all, and out of which he has not revealed a way of mercy to any. These fundamental truths are the very doctrines which are controverted between us and those whom we call in courtesy, but not as of right, UNITARIANS: viz., the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the atoning sacrifice, the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit, the fall of our nature, and the gracious renovation of the human soul, through his supernatural operation. Assured as I am that these truths (which, without a desperate mutilation, or an awful tampering with the plain language of the Word of God, it seems impossible to exclude from that divine record) are of the essence of our souls' safety, I ask you, men and brethren, I put it to your consciences, is it not of the nature of the tenderest charity, of the purest love, of the most affectionate sympathy with those in the extreme of peril, and that an eternal peril, to supplicate to these doctrines the attention of such as have not yet received them, to pray them to come and "Search with us the Scriptures, whether these things be so ?"-Acts xvii, 11. Shall he who, unwittingly, totters blindfold on the edge of a precipice, deem it a rude or an uncharitable violence which would snatch him with a strong and a venturous hand, or even it may be with a painful grasp, from the fearful ruin over which he impends? Is it not to your own judgment a strong antecedent ground of presumption, that you are alarmingly and perilously mistaken in this matter, when you see such numbers of highly-gifted and intellectual men, men of study-of general information and of prayer, holy men, men who "Count not their lives dear unto them," so that they may honour God and preach this gospel, and that not in one particular place, but over the whole surface of the church; who yet account these truths, which you reject, as the essential truths of salvation; truths built, you will remember, in their minds, not on the traditions or authority of men, but on the lively oracles of God?