rower, when around them religious hope is burning brighter and wider, and religious faith is becoming sounder and more inspiring.1

Yet in some respects their tendencies have been just and good. Why do they not see that if they would follow them out to their lawful end, in stead of cutting them short amidst narrow bounds, they would flock into the great Catholic Church, and strengthen that Branch of it which in their days has advanced so much in England, and has signs of so bright a prospect before her,-in times gone by the pattern of Unity to the State, at the present the example of Unity to Greater Britain, the Church of the land with her widening sympathies, and her communion even overlapping the Empire?

1 For more information on all points, see my History and Doctrines of Irvingism, 2 vols., Kegan Paul & Co., and some Articles in the Church Times in January and February, 1888, and some Articles in the Church's Broken History by Dr. Pusey, and the Rev. W. J. E. Bennett.

THE UNITARIANS.

BY HENRY W. CROSSKEY, LLD, F.G.S.

(Minister of the Church of the Messiah, Birmingham; President of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, 1891.)

It is my privilege to speak on behalf of a body of men upon whom it cannot be said that a very favourable judgment has been passed, either by the Churches of Christendom, or by the world at large.

By a large number of Christian Theologians, for many a long year, Unitarians have been condemned to "eternal perdition,” ¿e (if the religious men who use such words realize their meaning) to share the very worst fate to which the most degraded of our race-scoundrels and liars, thieves and murderers-could by any possibility be doomed. When we have remonstrated, we have been met with a curt, sharp, decisive syllogism, de rived from a verse in the Gospel of Mark: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned." "You do not believe. Those who do not believe cannot be saved; your souls must therefore be numbered among those that are 'lost.'”

This conclusion, we have been told, to our mingled amusement and amazement, is clearly deducible from "the word of God"; and its acceptance cannot be regarded as any sign of want of charity in man!

The shadow of this stern condemnation falls darkly over us throughout the whole confines of what is called technically "the religious world ”—the world of divided and battling sects-a world which, in my judgment, often proves itself less generous-hearted than the world of poets and artists, mea of science and novelists, philosophers and statesmen. In this "religious world" the Unitarians are very generally regarded with suspicion and distrust.

Among Christian sects we are the dangerous people. Religious com munion with us is interdicted. Through the length and breadth of England there is scarcely a church or chapel-save it belong to the small group known as Free Christian" or "Unitarian "-in which an avowed Unitarian would be permitted to preach, although he himself would willingly exchange pulpits with the most orthodox of orthodox believers. Books, bearing on their title-page the name of the "Unitarian Association," are practically placed on an index expurgatorius; and devices have to be employed to obtain a general circulation for them.

Men will sometimes come and listen to us in public halls, who will not

enter our churches-fearfully imagining, I suppose, that the germs of our pestilential heresies fill the air they would breathe in them, and haunt the cushions on which they would sit, so that they might "catch" Unitarianism, like small-pox or scarlet fever.

The Education Act, which excludes from Board Schools the teaching of creeds and catechisms "distinctive of any particular denomination," is so interpreted by the majority of English School Boards as to mean that Unitarians are not a denomination entitled to any particular respect; and in schools supported by the rates, to which Unitarians as well as Trinitarians, Jews as well as Christians, may be compelled to send their children, the doctrines of Biblical Infallibility, the Fall of Man, the Atonement and the Trinity, are very commonly taught; and scholars sing hymns of glory to the "Bleeding Lamb" and the "Crucified" God! Even when men throw off the popular creeds, and announce opinions which are as much entitled to be called "Unitarian" as a rose is to be called a rose-they will repudiate that name with indignation, as though it were shameful; and denounce us as narrow bigots should we venture to apply it to them.

Outside the ranks of the professed adherents of distinctive Churches a curious aversion to the Unitarians may sometimes be noted. We have, e.g., fallen under the lash of that great prophet of the nineteenth century, Thomas Carlyle. He meets a Unitarian minister, and admires him"One of the sturdiest little fellows I have come across for many a day. A face like a rock; a voice like a howitzer; only his honest, kind grey eyes reassure you a little "; and after asking with amazement, in the spirit of the famous old question, “Can any good come out of Nazareth ?”– "That hardy little fellow, what has he to do with the dusthole of extinct Socinianism 1" Carlyle describes the Unitarians in no complimentary terms: These people and their affairs," he writes, seem all melting rapidly enough into thaw slush, or one knows not what. Considerable

madness is visible in them. Stare super antiquas vias! No; they say we cannot stand, or walk, or do any good whatever there; by God's blessing we will fly-will not you? Here goes!' And their FLIGHT—it is as the flight of the unwinged; of oxen endeavouring to fly with the wings of an ox."

Why do I speak of these things? As an appeal ad misericordiam? God forbid that I should speak of my RELIGION with bated breath and whispered humbleness!

A man has no firm faith in his religion, no solemn confidence that its Temple is upbuilt upon the Rock of Ages, when he can apologize for it.

I have noted the adverse judgments passed upon the faith I hold, because I believe that the unpopularity of a cause is a divine challenge for its careful study. The stone "rejected by the builders" is the very stone to be considerately and conscientiously examined, to see if it may not be fitted "to become the head stone of the corner." Discarded prin

ciples of thought and conduct make majestic demands of their own upon the hearts and souls of men, in the great might of the excessive wrong that may perchance have been done unto them. Not once or twice only, to find the world's heroes its prisons have had to be searched; not once or twice only has truth been found in those intellectual dungeons, heavily barred with iron prejudices, into which scorned heresies have been pitilessly thrust.

In this world's history, its "foolish things" have so often been chosen to confound the wise"; and its "base things" and " things which are despised" have so often brought "to nought things that are," that the condemnation of any principle by the numerical majority of any generation is like the sound of silver trumpets heralding the presence of a Power, on behalf of which it may fairly be pleaded that there is at least sufficient chance of its possessing truthful authority to justify the lover of righteousness in entering upon a calm and thorough study of its claims.

In this spirit, although condemned as a heretic by every one of the great Churches, whose thoughtful and devout representatives have stood before you, I ask your kindly and generous consideration for the religion commonly known in this country as the religion of the Unitarians.

One further word I am bound to say by way of prelude. Every Unitarian speaks for himself and for himself alone. I am the mouthpiece of no organization; I cannot be "brought to book" by any authority on earth for any word I utter, however wild and foolish it may be. I am no more amenable to a "Unitarian Association" than I am to a presbytery or a general assembly, a lord bishop or a court of arches, a general council of Christendom or a pope.

Although born and bred, trained and educated among Unitarians, and a minister in the churches they fréquent during my whole period of active life, I have never signed with my hand, or professed with my lips, a dogmatic “Unitarian Creed." The principles of my Unitarianism forbid me --for reasons which will presently appear—to sign a “Unitarian Creed" as peremptorily as they would forbid me to subscribe to the "Westminster Confession of Faith," or the "Thirty-nine Articles," even should I personally believe every doctrine those documents enunciate. In this I do not stand by myself; no Unitarian can speak authoritatively for any other Unitarian. The Unitarians are not like an organized regiment of soldiers, keeping step with each other in the ranks, and promptly obedient to their commanding officers; they are simply and solely a band of independent men, who are bound together, as friends are linked to friends, by certain broad and deep, although unwritten and unenforced, sympathies, ends, and aims.

All, therefore, I can do is to present statements for which I alone am responsible. Since, however, I have held from childhood to manhood continuous and intimate religious fellowship with those who are commonly called "Unitarians," this much may be fairly concluded, viz., that a man

holding such convictions as are mine has his place openly acknowledged among them, and may find a spiritual home within the churches in which they worship.

To this extent but simply and solely to this extent-without any egotistical assumption, I may claim to be their representative. Should any Unitarian question what I say and declare that my thoughts are not his thoughts, I reply, "I worship where you worship, and no man has forbidden or can forbid me."

At the outset, there is one striking characteristic of the Unitarians that must be made especially clear and firmly emphasized, or our whole position will be misunderstood.

The body of men called “Unitarians" hold that no series of dogmatic articles of faith, no "creed," ought to be imposed upon the ministers or members of a "church" as a condition of religious fellowship; in other words, that a church ought to be kept as freely open for the pursuit of religious truth as a college is for the advancement of learning.

The name "Unitarian" is applied to men who hold, as individuals, certain opinions; but it does not adequately describe the constitution of the churches in which they worship. Our churches, with very few exceptions, have free and open trusts; they are dedicated, ie, to religious purposes, but no special form of theological opinion is made legally binding upon their ministers or members.

Personally, I happen to be a Unitarian; but I am the minister of a "church" in which no subscription to any specific articles of theological belief is either required from the congregation or involved in my own position. The ministers who preceded me held many opinions which are not mine; they frankly and freely taught them. The ministers who will follow me will, without doubt, not teach altogether as I teach; and no legal restrictions will close their lips. The living men and women of each day and generation are at absolute liberty to worship God according to their consciences, without being compelled by any Trust Deed to forsake the churches their fathers built.

The term "Unitarian Church" somewhat hides from the light of day this great fact. In the irony of fate, a body of men who place less stress upon dogma than any other body of men in the world, have yet been christened with a dogmatic name. Strictly speaking, what is popularly known as a "Unitarian Church" is a church in which "Unitarians" can and do meet for worship, but in which no legal obligations exist to check or forbid the free pursuit of truth. Our history illustrates our principle.

The Act of Uniformity (1662) rendered it imperative upon every clergyman to declare his unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the Book of Common Prayer; incapacitated every person from holding a benefice or administering the Lord's Supper who had not previously received episcopal ordination; and prohibited any one from preaching or conducting public worship unless he