was not sent out without some prevision of the place in which it was to accomplish its mission. So, after the fact, we can see that such grains of true Christianity as the Roman Church could spread, found the lodgement that had been prepared for them in the fresh mind of Northern peoples just coming forward to assume their great part in history. So, before the fact is fully demonstrated, we may predict that the liberty of our individual churches is the opportune field in which the doctrine of a Divine Humanity is to begin its work.

Congregationalism has no valid place in the old Trinitarian system of religious thought, and cannot live upon its dogmas. You might as well try to couple the divine right of kings with belief that government derives its power from the people as to unite orthodox theology and a church which stands for liberty of conscience. Orthodox Congregationalism may be defined as a democratic form animated by a monarchical spirit. How much the spirit may belie its outward form, the intolerance of the New England Puritans plainly shows us. Under the rule of the old theology, the nominal right of an individual church to do its own think ing must remain a perfectly barren result of past labors; and history has brought forth this form of church life entirely without use or purpose, unless the design was to prepare a home for some doctrine not in the old creeds. Such a design may be seen in the fact that the germ, at least, of the idea of a Divine Humanity, has at last planted itself within the Congregational Church. Here, finally, we have the soul of religious freedom in a free body; and, though that body is yet in its infancy, may we not believe it to be the infancy of a giant, whose power is yet to astonish the world? A church which has none of the tools or instincts of war must advance slowly. Its growth will not be like the forcible conquest, wherein, after one or two sharp battles, a stronger race at once overruns the territory of a vanquished nation; but, taking what naturally comes to it, and simply doing its work in honest, straightforward fashion, it will rise, as the great commercial powers of the

earth have peacefully risen, to overtop all systems of despotic and military force.

The

The great advantage of the idea of a Divine Humanity, from a purely religious point of view, is that it brings the objects of reverence and faith near to the soul, without destroying that sense of awe and mystery which is as essential to religious life as love and trust. The God of philosophical thought is too far away for us; while, on the other hand, the gods who have received most worship from mankind are much too near. In the controversy between Mr. Spencer and the champion of the Religion of Humanity, one feels that the charges of both disputants are true. wonder we may feel in the contemplation of that unknowable All Being which is the last generalization of scientific thought is, as Mr. Harrison has called it, simply "the ghost of a religion." But, when we undertake to worship men as we know them, without recognition of an infinite might behind their lives, we are simply travelling back to the childhood of the race, and adopting the infantile custom of paying divine honors to the shades of our dead ancestors. When Christian theologians had disposed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by weaving their names and persons into an unintelligible dogma, and thus banishing them in effect to an unknowable realm, it is in no wise strange that the Church resorted to a worship of saints and martyrs, who visibly represented worshipful qualities. But, if the thought of the divine, in its essence, and apart from its manifestations, takes us into an atmosphere too thin and cold for our spirits to endure, equally to be dreaded are those moist sensual heats, where only the human manifestations are regarded, and the tempering winds of an infinite Holy Spirit are not felt. We need to have our attention. fastened somewhere between the imperfect lower world on which we stand and the distant haze, which is our only symbol of illimitable space. And this is what the idea of Divine Humanity accomplishes for us. It puts our thought within reach of both the two natures, that of Deity and that of created form. It balances and mingles in our mood

a feeling of boundless majesty and power, and the warmer sentiments that lay hold upon things seen and known. Interpreted by this idea, the person of Christ becomes truly our mediator, our living way to the heart and source of all existence. The infinite heavens above are no longer a blank, for here is our token and sign of the attributes of Deity as they mirror themselves in a deep, pure soul; and, through his patient love and brooding pity, we can confidently raise our eyes to a Father of all holiness and peace. The earth beneath is no longer a wilderness filled with fierce passions, or an uncertain battle ground for our best thoughts and dearest hopes. We do not need to cheat our souls into enthusiasm by the employment of any such vain form of words as "living into the life of humanity." We are living into the life of God. The victorious might of his spirit is with us in our labors. The nobler nature is born for dominion, and the ultimate subjection of all foes to the higher life is perfectly assured. The earth is touched by, and shall be full, not of an evanescent splendor flickering out of its dust, but of the glory of the Lord descending upon it from realms of ineffable beauty and exhaustless strength. However long it may be till thoughts like these can enter into possession of the religious consciousness, we may be sure that they are slowly taking form and shape within the mind of man, and that their advent to power will for the first time reveal how broadly and deeply Christ planted the foundations of his kingdom, what vast possibilities of spiritual exaltation and command are open to the church that bears his name.

HOWARD N. BROWN.

A VISIT TO OUR HUNGARIAN BRETHREN.

II.

After an interesting round among the Torozsko homes, we are compelled to bid adieu to its hospitable inhabitants and proceed on our way to Bagyon, where we are expected to spend the night. After retracing our course to the Aranyos, we make a turn and proceed along its banks for a considerable distance, between precipitous, rocky walls brightened with the early changed foliage of the shrubs that have lodged themselves in its crevices. A tall, irregular pyramid of rock, rising sheer from the rushing flood, is invested with a mournful interest as the scene of one of the old tragedies so numerous in this region. It was on the summit of this rocky tower that, during one of the Tartar invasions, two young damsels sought refuge from their pursuers, and, discovered in their retreat, precipitated themselves into the flood below rather than fall alive into the hands of their ferocious enemies.

We pass through Wahrfalva, Aranyos-Kakos, and Kövend, not without repeated stops in answer to the courteous. invitations of the pastors on the route; and so it is quite late in the evening when our arrival at our appointed lodging place wakes an echoing chorus of emulous dogs, and Mr. Danis Kovács welcomes us to his comfortable home in Bagyon.

The next morning before we are seated at the breakfast table, messengers come from the wardens and pastor of the village church inviting us to pay them a visit.

As we enter the church, the organist welcomes us with a voluntary and the sexton rings forth a sounding peal from the church tower. The church edifice and grounds here have been held by the Unitarian congregation for three hundred years continuously. It is one of the fortified churches that from here to the frontier are so common. A high wall surrounds it on all sides; and, within the enclosure, it is equipped with a well to supply water to the beleaguered occupants in time of siege.

It is said that, further south, some of the churches have double and even triple walls about them, and that on the platform of several of these churches to-day are still to be seen the piles of stones kept ready to be hurled down on the besiegers.

It was in these well-protected sanctuaries that, in the time of the Tartar invasions, the villagers sought refuge, and from behind their parapets gave determined resistance to the foe till succor came from the neighboring districts.

Again, later, in the time of the Catholic persecutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these churchly fortifications did good service to the hard-pressed Unitarian congregations. Once, for example, here in Bagyon, the Catholic mob attempted to seize the church by a sudden assault, while the men of the congregation were for a short time absent; but the Szekler women, it is related, turned out, and by their determined resistance, from the church enclosure, victoriously defended their sanctuary. Still later, in the time of the French Revolutionary wars, it was necessary that the walls be rebuilt; and the exigency would not allow the long delay till the able-bodied men came back from the campaign. So the women again came forward, and filled the breach, not merely figuratively, but literally. Such incidents as these give the visitor in Hungary a vivid sense of the sore trials which the Unitarian churches have had to endure, and the heroic constancy that alone could have enabled them to pass through this baptism of blood and fire without swerving from their faith or perishing entirely in the contest.

After bidding adieu to the faithful guardians of the ancient church, we drove on toward Torda, across an immense plain, the Kereztes Mezo,- or Field of the Cross, whose encircling hills made of it a Titanic amphitheatre. It was an ideal field for the evolution of grand armies, and so it seemed quite fitting that it should actually have been in olden time the scene of a great battle between the Dacians under Decephalus and the Romans under Trajan. Many relics of the conflict in the shape of Roman weapons and armor had been, we were told, here unearthed.