called Unitarian Christians, it will be observed, on the other hand, have much to say of character, and less of the distinguishing principle of piety, as internal. Nor is what they say without effect. If they encourage or leave room for the error of supposing that the substance of piety is made up of those individual acts, which are properly only so many manifestations of it, and not of internal principle as related to God, they do at least secure, in many cases, acts and manifestations that extort praise and respect. We have sometimes thought, that if a practical Unitarian and an orthodox disciple could be melted into one, they would make a Christian. This at least will do to illustrate our meaning. There needs to be more done for character-to produce a sense of character, what it is, what is necessary to it, and why it is necessary. A rude, graceless piety, a zeal that hurries by things that are of good report, is needlessly odious. If it be a well tempered, it is yet an awkward instrument, wherewith to convert the world. Should not the preachers of Christ have more to do with his external life, which is itself the model of Christian beauty and goodness? Might they not often instruct themselves as well as their people, by this model of character? If they had a nicer sense of character themselves, might it not add much to the dignity and power of their ministry, as well as to their personal acceptableness? moderating austerity, softening hardness, expanding contractedness, making the unworldly spirit amiable, assisting them to be accessible with dignity, and dignified without distance, and preparing them to be pastors, not drivers of their flocks -or in failure of that, driven by them.

In regard to family training we have more to say. We have spoken of the immense resource, the fertile capacity of internal growth

possessed by the church in her children, if trained up in piety according to the intent of the household covenant. By the prevalent misconception of this covenant and of Christian education under it, we suffer manifold and grievous mischiefs. First of all we lose our children, which is too great a loss. Next, what is scarcely less deplorable, we pervert the style and habit of our piety.

One principal reason why we are so often deficient in character, or outward beauty, is, that piety begins so late in life, having thus to maintain a perpetual and unequal war with previous habit. If it was not true of Paul, it is yet too generally true, that one born out of due time will be found out of due time, more often than he should be afterwards-unequal, inconsistent with himself, acting the old man instead of the new. Having the old habit to war with, it is often too strong for him. To make a graceful and complete Christian character, it needs itself to be the habit of existence ;-not a grape grafted on a bramble. And this, it will be seen, requires a Christian childhood in the subject. Having this, the gracious or supernatural character becomes itself more nearly natural, and possesses the peculiar charm of naturalness, which is necessary to the highest moral beauty.

It results also from our mistaken views of Christian training, that we fall into a notion of religion that is mechanical. We thrust our chil dren out of the covenant first, and insist, in spite of it, that they shall grow up in the same spiritual state as if their father and mother were heathens. Then we go out, at least on certain occasions, to convert them back, as if they themselves were heathens. Our only idea of increase is of that which accrues by means of a certain abrupt technical experience. Led away thus from all thought of internal growth

in the church, efforts to secure conversions take an external character, which is not proper to them. Accretion displaces growth. The church is gathered as a foundling hospital, and lest it should not be so, its own children are reduced to foundlings. Immediate repentance proclaimed, insisted on and realized in an abrupt change, proper only to those who are indeed aliens and enemies, is the only hope or inlet of the church. We can not understand how the spiritual nation should grow and populate and become powerful within itself;-nothing will serve but the immediate annexation of Texas.

Piety becomes inconstant, and revivals of religion take an exaggerated character from the same causes. If all Christian success is measured by the count of technical conversions from without, then it follows that nothing is done when conversions cease to be counted. The harvest closes not with feasting but with famine. Despair cuts off Christian motive. The tide is spent, let us anchor during the ebb. It is well indeed to live very piously in the families, still there is nothing depending on it. The children will be good subjects enough for conversion without. The piety of the church is thus made to be desultory and irregular by system. The idea of conquest displaces the idea of growth. Whereas, if it were understood that Christian education, or training in the families, is to be itself a process of domestic conversion, that as a child weeps under a frown and smiles at the command of a smile, so spiritual influences may be streaming into his being from the handling of the nursery and the whole manner and temperament of the house, producing what will ever after be fundamental impressions of his being; then the hearth, the table, the society and affections of the house, would all feel the presence of a practical re

ligious motive. The homes would be Christian homes, and life itself a stream of genial piety.

Here too is the greatest impediment to a true missionary spirit. The habit of conquest runs to dissipation and irregularity. It is as if a nation, forgetting its own internal resources, were scouring the seas, and trooping up and down the world, in pursuit of prize money and plunder, forsaking the loom and the plow, and all the regular growths of industry. Whereas, if the church were unfolding the riches of the covenant at her firesides and tables-if the children were identified with religion from the first, and grew up in a Christian love of man, the missionary spirit would not throw itself up in irregular jets, but would flow as a river. And so much is there in this, that we do not believe it possible to produce a steady, patient, practical spirit of missions, except through the education of childhood.

We ask then of every parent, that he will seriously review his impressions on this subject. Let him study the ductility of childhood to parental influence, and observe how easily religious impressions are excited, and all the prejudices of the soul turned on the side of religion. Let him try the conjecture, how far God has made, or will by his presence, make what is lovingly exhibited in his own life, communicable or translatable to the childish mind. Dropping the idea of a technical experience, as proper to to older persons, let him see how far by the divine aid, really good and right dispositions toward God and man may be called into exercise. And if he has hitherto considered Christian education to be synonymous with lecturing and reproof, let him consider the text, Fa thers provoke not your children to wrath lest they be discouraged. Let family religion be a domestic miniature of heaven, not a dull for

mality. Let him be there, as the gardener among his opening flowers, expecting their fragrance and beauty, not that they will all be thistles-expecting it, because God hath promised, and the dews of his grace are perpetually felt.

But we must not leave our subject in words of reproof and correction. The truth we have endeavored to set forth is one of high promise to the church. To see its whole import at a glance, imagine the church of God to be a spiritual nation, founded or begun by a colony descended from the skies. It alights upon our globe as its chartered territory. Can this spiritual colony spread itself over the whole territory of the planet, and absorb all the human races in its dominion? You find that it can unfold more of wealth and talent, by far, than the present living races of inhabitIt has within itself a stronger

ants.

law of population, as well as a mighty power to win over and assimilate the nations. Its people have more beauty and weight of character, to exalt their predomi nance. They have great truths for their armor of assault and defense, which the world can not match or parry, and the superior wisdom of which they must ultimately yield to. And what is more than all, they are found to be all partakers of the divine nature, which they have brought down with them to be unfolded in their history and make it powerful. Having in itself elements of power and precedence like these, not to believe that the heavenly colony will finally overspread and fill the world, is to deny causes their effects and pronounce a sentence of futility on the laws of nature themselves. God too has testified in regard to this branch of his plantingTHEY SHALL INHERIT the Land.

ON reading this document for the first time, we were at a loss what to make of it. On the one hand it has the characteristic signature of "a Catholic Layman," and is dated in due form on "the Festival of St. James, 1844." And yet it is hard to believe that a man could be so simple as to think that he could get anything but contempt for his "Holy Mother," by defending her in this way. Was it written by a "dissenter" in the way of pleasant irony? This could hardly be. A man who would be bright enough to conceive such a thought, could hardly display

* A Letter to Professor Edwards A. Park, Bartlett Professor, Andover Theological Seminary, touching his late sermon before the Pastoral Association of

Massachusetts. Boston: Charles Stimp

son. 1844.

so much"greenness" in the execution of it. We are forced to the conclusion, that it must in very deed be the production of some devoted Episcopalian of Massachusetts. As we have been somewhat in doubt as to what is, and is to be the type of Massachusetts 'churchmanship,' we suppose it should receive a moment's attention.

There is a going for the whole in this pamphlet which is very pleasant. The reader is left in no doubtful state as to what his author thinks of baptism, the eucharist, dissenters and his Holy Mother, as he so devoutly calls her. He calls things by their right names, and has the twofold merit of being consistent enough to take all the consequences of his system, and honest enough to avow them. He reminds us of a very

my

worthy Episcopalian of whom we have heard, as living in the valley of the Housatonic during and after the war of the Revolution. He was a staunch high churchman and as staunch a tory, and retained his reverence for the king, long after there had ceased to be any king over these colonies. He was a simple and harmless man, though none the less devout in his allegiance to church and throne. His brethren at the bar, used occasionally to test the strength of his principles of passive obedience by teasing questions. "Suppose dear sir, that your dread sovereign, his majesty the king, should issue his royal mandate, duly signed and sealed, commanding and requiring that on the reception of the order, you should fall upon your knees before his representative the royal officer, and suffer him to take your head from your shoulderswhat would you say to it?" "Impossible!" was the reply, "the supposition itself is dishonorable to the king's most excellent majesty." "But let us for a moment suppose the case, what would you reply?" "Why if the supposition is to be tolerated, of course I should say, Let his majesty's gracious will be done." Even so it is with our author. He talks and writes like a "John Bull in America," like some third or fourth rate English traveler, who sees no beauty in our scenery because it is not modeled after the grounds of the nearest lord of the manor, and dogmatizes of our manners because they are not after those of his provincial circle.

But to the letter. It is a running criticism on the sermon of Mr. P. in the order of its several heads. Of the first head, he says-"Under the first head of your discourse, I am arrested by your distinctions and differences, your limits and bounds for cleric and laic, and I have to confess that in listening to your words, as those of a Congregationalist, they sound strangely, and

scarce suffer interpretation." And why? Because according to Congregationalism any set of godly men may elect a pastor, and yet you Prof. Park "acknowledge and go on to demonstrate the unfitness of the very men who themselves are judges of the soundness of your doctrines and the correctness of your views of things, which are all-important-of soul-saving efficacy." Now what did Mr. P. say? Simply this, that the laity are competent to decide on the doctrinal truths of theology, but not on its philosophical theories. Our Layman quotes his very words-" that our private Christians are well disciplined in practical theology," "that they must not imagine that they are as competent to pronounce a decision on the philosophical theories as on the doctrinal truths of theology," and yet on the same page records before and after his strange conclusions. We acquit such a man entirely of "deliberate perversion." He can be capable only of "unconscious stupidity." We should think that there might be the very best of reasons why such a man should think and say, "There are many questions which our priests alone should deal with, and which should never be referred to the laity for jurisdiction. For my own part, I wish that I had been born in a better and happier age, when I might have left the questions so often forced upon us to those whose education and office entitles them to authority."

We pass the second head, on conditions of church fellowship. Here too there would be reason to rebuke disingenuousness were there not more manifest occasion to be patient with simplicity. Mr. P.'s words and reasoning both speak of fundamental truth as essential to fellowship. Layman reasons as if he had said the contrary; and what is more preposterous, sets his own church as the only reliable defender of the faith.

The third head is of unnecessary government in the church. Of this he says "Your theory may serve for yourself, but your brethren have often practically felt the inconvenience of such a system of government, and have rued the want of one a little more suited to the necessities of the times,' more suited to the increase of reliance upon private opinion, and of the usurpations of ten-penny intellects, magnified in these days of self-glorification into acute thinkers, profound theologians." So again under the head of "simplicity in the mode of divine worship," he says, "For my own church, did I feel that she wanted a defense upon this point, I should appeal not to the host of writers within her pale, but to your own familiar friends and brethren, and point to the sly innovations and furtive liturgettes that they are endeavoring to introduce into their religious exercises." Who and where are these brethren? If there are such, Mr. Park's sermon may be as well fitted, and possibly may have been as much designed, to meet their case, as to inflict sarcasms on the Holy Mother of our Layman. To quote the opinion of such brethren, if such there are, against an argument so well fitted to rebuke them, is no very strong rejoinder.

On page 12, Layman waxes grave. "There is one passage which I regret exceedingly. I regret any thing that lessens my esteem for a fellow Christian-that increases the debit side of the awful account against poor humanity." "Repent, my dear sir, and pray for forgiveness for having spoken words so unworthy you, as professor in your institution-so derogatory to you as a Christian." And for what great sin? "I allude to your mention of the circumstance of the visit of sixty clergymen to Bishop Onderdonk, and their kneeling down in bodily presence' before him." And why is this a sin? Because it is false? Oh no, but be

cause Mr. P. did not also say, when a man of his standing could not be ignorant, "that we of the church do at the end of every service kneel down and receive the blessing of the priest !" O, rare simplicity!

On page 15, notice is taken of the objection to the Episcopal services as not making "the doctrines of the Gospel prominent above every thing else." Mr. P. did not object thus to them, but that being stereotyped, general and heterogeneous, they must be equally suited to all doctrines, and therefore specially suited to no one above another. But what is Layman's answer to the charge as he understands it? "This seems a strange charge against a ritual that appeals oftener to Scripture than that of any other sect; that it embraces whole chapters of it in every science, besides embodying scriptural language and sentences, in every part of its liturgy." Then follows the enumeration of the order of daily morning service. But what has all this to do with doctrinal preaching or making the services to be full of one specific doctrine? We have heard sermons and prayers too that were very full of "Scripture," in which there was but very little doctrine; sermons and prayers, which reminded us of the punctuation of Mr. Dexter's Biography, in which all "the stops and marks,' were printed at the end of the volume, that the readers might distribute for themselves. Under this head, the doctrinal merits of the liturgy, he quotes the testimony of two celebrated divines whom he has the grace to call John Calvin and Mr. Robert Hall, the last of whom he tells us "speaks very decidedly in favor of our admirable liturgy," but what their testimony has to do with the point in question, we are at a loss to see. But again he tells us in italics-"The churchman that follows the course of reading his Holy Mother has appointed him, reads the book of Psalms through every