women who turn a revering and affectionate heart to Christ, and yet persist in that dogmatic rejection, are found in our day, as they have been in other days. To us they seem exceptional cases, standing somewhat apart from the vigorous currents of Christian life in the Church, indebted after all to hereditary influences which they do not acknowledge, not very successful in handing down their piety from one generation to another, and denied some opportunities and privileges which, in a clearer doctrinal agreement with the ancient standards, would enlarge their usefulness along with their satisfactions. They also seem to us,—if the remark may be allowed,-to suffer soon or late under a degree of theological inconsist ency, exalting Christ in their reverent affections to a place which they refuse him in a deliberate and express confession. But it must be a narrow construction of the substance of faith which does not cheerfully and gratefully recognize in them a sincere and beautiful imitation of much in the Master's example. We are aware that there are those who fail to connect the evils we have just enumerated with the cause to which we have ascribed them. But when we consider how marvelously God binds causes and effects together, and how at last he blends all revealed truth with righteous practice and accepted institutions, it does not seem very strange that an error respecting so supreme a reality as the nature of God, Christ, and the Spirit, should entail damaging consequences not readily traced in all the links of their succession, by the eye, on all the interests of personal and social religion. Undoubtedly, too, there are faults enough in those branches of the Church where the truth we are advocating is fully held. But the common imperfections of human nature are not to blind us to the existence of real contrasts, nor justify us in ignoring conclusions equally enforced by the interior nature and the exterior history of the Christian system." pp. 399–403.

We had intended to present some extracts from other sermons in this volume, all of which breathe the same evangelical and affectionate spirit, and some of which invest with great beauty and freshness the cardinal truths of the Gospel, afford

a

ing happy illustrations of the householder's art, "who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." We have spent so much space, however, upon the twentieth sermon, which is indeed by far the longest, and will attract most attention, that we must pass over other discourses we had marked, to say word in conclusion upon the accomplished fact, which now ranks Dr. Huntington among the supporters of Trinitarian. Christianity. It was a gradual history, and no one could have anticipated any more rapid development under such circumstances; and it is an event illustrating at once the wisdom of the polity and the strength of the faith we have inherited from our Fathers. That polity has been brought into suspicion, and many who have been nurtured under it have assailed and re

jected it because the chief development of Unitarianism in this country has taken place beneath its wings. They have been ignorant or uncandid enough to deny that in England the same defection took place in the Presbyterian fold, and that, unlike the course of events in New England, the whole body lapsed from the faith, and in place of exile churches rising up beside the defected ones, and gradually supplanting them, the very name itself changed its import, and was as commonly associated with Socinianism in the popular mind, as it had been with Calvinism. The Presbyterianism that once fenced error out, acted as well to fence it in. But with us this is no argument against the polity, and we cite it only as an offset to the reproach which is sometimes cast upon the way of Congregational churches. The truth is, church polity never was intended, and never can be relied on, to protect the church from false doctrine; we might as well attempt to exclude the pestilence from our houses by bars and bolts. The laws which govern the thoughts and sympathies of men, which determine the course of speculation, and raise successive tides of opinion, act independently of church organization, and must be met in their own sphere by corresponding and appropriate influences, or they cannot be met at all, and all outward hindrances will act rather as helps; the fire will find fuel in such attempts to smother it. We claim, therefore, a priori, from the very nature of the case, that the freedom of our polity, which imposes no restraint upon the life of the spiritual body within, but yields as readily to error, when it has intrenched itself in the conviction of men, is an excellence, for it does not assume to be a conservator of the truth, which it never can be, but warns the ministry and the church alike, that nothing can effectually keep heresy out, but that which keeps the faith in the hearts of the people. The first and most essential thing to be done, in protecting a city from invasion, is to expose the insufficiency of its trusted defenses. If the maintenance of spiritual life be the only safeguard against death, and eternal vigilance the price of security, it is vital that the church should know it; and that polity is best which attracts least confidence to itself, gives freest motion to the life within, and concentrates

attention upon the only conserving power. We may add now to these theoretical reasonings the corroborations of facts. The movement of mind which brought in Unitarianism, and introduced it into our churches, because they were free, has been followed by another movement which finds equally free access to restore the faith that was cast out, and which, coming back after such an experience, is entrenched in the pulpit and at the communion table as it never could be by canons and subscrip tions. It is now just half a century since Trinitarianism was taught in the pulpit of Harvard College Chapel; and under the free workings of the Congregational polity, it has come back again; not by imposition, which could only dishonor the truth, but by invitation, because, in the state of the college, an evangelical—we do not say Trinitarian―ministry was desired. We are constrained to add, however, that in striking contrast with the freedom of our principles, has been the narrowness of some among us in working them. When it was first announced, several years ago, that some of the prominent ministers of Unitarian churches in the city of Boston were evangelical in their tendencies, and had actually embraced some of the formative elements of Trinitarianism, the announcement, in place of awakening sympathy and aid, aroused an inveterate spirit of suspicion, started investigation as to what they did not believe, rather than what they did, and because thinking and cultured men, coming out of the bosom of Unitarian fellowship, and working their way carefully but manfully through spiritual and intellectual battles, of which the inheritors of a traditional theology have no comprehension,because these men could not at once pronounce all the shibboleths of provincialism, they were denounced, and their good was evil spoken of. When one of their number, Dr. Huntington, was called to Harvard, instead of making it a subject of congratulation, they warned the friends of truth the more against the institution; and when he published a sermon on the Deity of Christ, in which any sympathetic and candid mind would have discovered the seeds of his later and matured Trinitarianism, these heresy hunters saw, or affected to see, only a treacherous Sabellianism; and when, on the basis of

this substantial agreement of faith, the pastor of the North Church, New Haven, gave him the right hand of fellowship, and invited him to preach, it was the occasion of a renewed assault alike upon the Harvard professor and the New Haven divines. And when another pastor of a Unitarian Church in Boston, Rev. Mr. Coolidge, had passed through all intermediate phases of belief, had planted himself broadly and unmistakably upon Orthodox Christianity, carrying his congregation with him, at least in personal attachment to himself, and the Unitarian proprietors were willing that the church should fall into line, as an Orthodox Congregational Church, had the Orthodox community accepted and sustained it; through suspicion in some, and indifference in more, Mr. Coolidge was permitted to stand alone, his tie to the church to be dissolved, the congregation to disband, the house to be sold, and we are glad to learn, as the last item in this strange history, that it has passed into the hands of a Presbyterian society. Under such an administration of Orthodoxy in the old Puritan metropolis, it is no matter of surprise that the decadence of Unitarianism should not strengthen and dignify our Orthodox Congregationalism. Mr. Coolidge has entered into the Episcopal Church, and should Dr. Huntington be led, from any considerations, to resign the ministry in Harvard College, which he exercises so much to his own credit, the good of the institution, and the benefit of Christ's church at large, and should he find himself, by such resignation, a preacher of Trinitarian Christianity, but disconnected by any formal ties with any Trinitarian communion, it is more to be hoped than expected, that he would seek a union with Orthodox Congregationalists. But the facts to which we have alluded, however much they are to be lamented, and all the more so because of the contrast they form to our principles, we need hardly add, do not represent our churches or ministry; they are to be traced to a sinall number, and the only thing to be wondered at is, that they should have been suffered to represent and misrepresent a communion. which we believe to be the freest of all Protestant denominations from sectarianism, and the most catholic in sympathies. and adaptations.

ARTICLE IX.-NOTICES OF BOOKS.

THEOLOGY.

THE CONCORD OF AGES.*-This work is a pendant to the "Conflict of Ages," and, as such, completes the exposition of the views of the author, which, in that work, were given to the public in part only. In the dedication he gives a brief exposition of the origin and relations of the work thus:

"I have ever felt the assurance that the greatest and most comprehensive principles are always of necessity most simple, intelligible, and sublime. The allpervading law of gravitation, which holds not only our solar system, but also the universe together, is as simple and intelligible as it is sublime. I felt assured that the great organic law of benevolent sympathetic attraction, by which the moral universe is to be organized and held together around God, is equally simple and intelligible, and still more sublime and glorious.

"Yet, when I came to examine the Christian system as now taught, I found that, although such a law was proclaimed in words, it was denied in fact, and a law of repulsion substituted in its place, and that God was virtually represented as holding this universe together by naked power, in opposition to the great law of repulsion, which by false doctrine has been made to pervade all things.

"This repulsion exists in two respects,-between God as represented in his dealings with our race through Adam, and the moral affinities of the mind, as sensitive to honor and right; and no less between God represented as an unsym. pathizing God, and the benevolent sympathies of the mind as sensitive to recip rocal affection.

"It was my great aim, in the Conflict of Ages, to convince the church of the real existence of the first great cause of repulsion, although I also indicated the second.

"It is my purpose in this work to prove the existence of the second, and in opposition to it to develop and apply the true law of benevolent sympathy between God and his creatures, without which the organization of a vital and concordant universe would be impossible." pp. iii, iv.

It would seem, from this announcement, that the central theme of this volume was to be "God, a suffering or sympathizing God." In examining the volume, however, we find that this is by no means the

* The Concord of Ages: or the Individual and Organic Harmony of God and Man. By EDWARD BEECHER, D. D. New York: Derby & Jackson. 186012mo. pp. 581.