about Jesus Christ, from a modal or Sabellian Semi-Trinitarianism, through High and Low Arianism, Socinianism, Priestleyism, down to pure Humanitarianism and Naturalism. I name these types of our faith for the benefit of the few theological students who may be present, and to give all my audience an idea of the diversity in our ranks. I should be glad to state as exactly as possible what those various Unitarian views are. There are no views entertained by any portion of our Unitarian ministers or people about Jesus Christ, or any other theme, which we desire to conceal or to apologize for. The Unitarian denomination is responsible for the opinions that grow up within its boundaries. It is trying to convince the world that dogmatic creeds are not necessary to the perpetuity of the Christian Faith; that differences in speculative opinion need not separate the disciples of Christ from each other; that honest, earnest, unconditioned inquiry into all questions of history or tradition, of Scripture or Church, of dogma or practice, is lawful, safe, and useful. It does not wish to deny or conceal the fruits of these principles. The world has a right to judge of Unitarian principles by the opinions and conclusions to which they lead, by the sort of men who represent them, by the diversities of views they allow, and even by the extreme breadth of the interval between what is sometimes called the right and the left wing of the body.

The Unitarian body is divided, perhaps nearly evenly, beween what may be called the Old and the New School of thinkers, persons, on the one hand, more in sympathy with Dr. Channing; and persons, on the other hand, more in sympathy with Theodore Parker: and I think I may add, that the union of the two extremes, in spite of mutual criticism, is growing every day more complete. If there ever existed a disposition to disown each other, it has nearly disappeared, and is sure to fade out entirely. Theodore Parker, from the obloquy which his bold and antagonistic utterances provoked, was, for several years, a kind of bugbear in our denomination, whom many individual Unitarians repudiated as not of the body; but he was really never cut off from his connection

with us, and I have always thought our Trinitarian brethren perfectly justified in charging us with whatever responsibility belongs to a Church that reared such a man. Although his views are not the prevalent views, yet there is no place of safety in the Unitarian body for any Christian who is afraid of fellowship with such men as Theodore Parker. We have a hundred men, I presume, in our pulpits, who look up to him as one of the best Christians, and one of the greatest spiritual forces, that Divine Providence has vouchsafed to our denomination or our generation; and, differing from him widely in many of his conclusions as I do, I feel bound to say, that I believe his influence has been good and glorious, and that, instead of a source of weakness, his name is a tower of strength to our cause. Let me add, too, that to put Dr. Channing and Theodore Parker, differ as they did in theology, into opposite categories, is a mistake in every way. In his lifetime, Dr. Channing was the friend of Theodore Parker, and was far less afraid of his opinions and influence than most conservative Unitarians were. I do not doubt, that, if both of them were alive to-day, they would not only scout any plan of distrust and separation between the two schools. in the Unitarian body, but would confess that the more radical element in our denomination was as vitally necessary to its usefulness and success as the more conservative one.

Let me say, still further, that I suppose Orthodoxy has no exaggerated or mistaken idea of the absolute liberty, the critical tendencies, the diverse opinions, which prevail among us Unitarians; and that we have no disposition to apologize for them, or to have them thought any less than they really are. I hold it to be no permanent misfortune that Unitarianism has attracted the alarmed, disparaging suspicions and denunciatory attention of the Christian world; that it has been crowded out of the fellowship of the popular sects. as a form of faith not to be countenanced, because violently contrasted with their fundamental idea. Only so could the great work of correction and purification of the common faith of the Church be accomplished; only so could. the vast step onward and upward which the moral and spir

itual interests of humanity wait for and sorely need, be secured. Had the fundamental Unitarian protest, denying the deity of Jesus Christ, been regarded as only a common heresy, or shade of sectarian opinion, which might be overlooked or quietly endured, as one of those inconsiderable and merely functional disorders of the common Faith to which the Church has in all ages been compelled to show a reluctant toleration, it would have done serious injustice to the magnitude of the reform, the radical character of the revolution, which actually lies hid in the very idea of Unitarianism. No such other step remains to be taken in Christian theology as Unitarianism took. It cannot be exaggerated in height and depth. To deny that Jesus Christ is the creator and builder of the universe; to deny that he is the actual and positive equal of the Father, uncreated, eternal, very God, the proper object of divine worship, is to deny the fundamental idea on which the theology (I do not say the religion) of the Christian Church has rested since the fourth century; is to dig up the very corner-stone and to undermine the whole structure of the popular theology, both of the Catholic and the Protestant Church, for fifteen centuries. If that denial be made good and successfully established, the very key of the Church position and creed is taken; and it is only a question of time, when every other characteristic dogma of what has called itself Orthodoxy so long must be formally surrendered or silently abandoned as untenable.

Far be it, then, from any sincere and faithful Unitarian to complain of the obstinate and passionate zeal with which this denial has been controverted, or the Christian name and discipleship of those who have made it has been questioned. I do not doubt the sincerity or the earnestness of the hatred and dread with which this postulate of Unitarianism has been met. Nay, I hold it as an honorable recognition of the fundamental importance of the theological reform represented by the Unitarian movement, and of the vastness of that final progress, which, under this providential leading, the Church is certain to make in its ultimate conception of the real nature and scope of the Christian religion itself, and the actual character and work of its founder.

For this is precisely what all schools and all shades of Unitarianism do agree in denying, the proper deity of Jesus Christ. And this and this alone - Christian faith and character being assumed-is what specially makes a Unitarian. We deny universally, that Jesus Christ is, in any proper sense whatever, the Supreme God; that he is an uncreated being, equal in power and glory with his God and our God; that he created the material world, or that he is the Providence over it. We deny that he ever claimed, or that he is willing to receive, the religious worship of his disciples; that he is the proper object of prayer; that he possesses a single special attribute of the One and Only God.

I do not propose, at this time, to prove that this denial is justified and required by the Scriptures, easy as that would be. True, I believe fully that it is so, and that it is impossible to prove, by any just reading of the Old or New Testaments that Jesus Christ ever asserted himself, or that his apostles ever declared him, to be God in the sense in which the Church has commonly pronounced him such. I have no faith that it ever entered into the head of those who knew him in the flesh, or those who planted Christianity, or those who cherished its early growth for the first two centuries, that Christ was God. The opinion grew up later, and was the fruit of the marriage of the gospel with the new Platonism of Alexandria. But I do not now propose to bring together the proof-texts, scattered in the greatest profusion through the New Testament, in evidence of the derived and dependent character of Jesus Christ, the Sent of God, the Mediator of the New Covenant, the Son of God, the Son of man, born of a woman, and dying a mortal death by the hands of his enemies. Whatever might be incumbent, in the way of a main reliance on proof-texts, on those who accept the fictitious and exploded dogma of the plenary and verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, this reliance would be both fraudulent and foolish for one who believes that the New Testament, sacred and precious and true as it is, is to be read by no other light than that which belongs to the interpretation of any other ancient historical work; who regards it as a record of the honest

attempt of great, good, and believing men, moved by the devoutest faith and love to communicate their own best conceptions of the events of which they were witnesses, with all the ordinary influences of human imperfection, the prejudices of the age and of their own education to bias and impair the account they gave. It does not belong to such a view of the Scriptures to enter into a textual controversy with those who assume that the Bible is not merely what Unitarians believe it to be, the word of God, - but also that its very words are the literal words of God, as absolutely celestial in their independent authority and meaning as if the heavens had opened, and God had this moment spoken forth, in a voice of thunder, some explicit declaration of his will.

I fully believe, indeed, that so genuine, so honest, so true, is the record of the New Testament, so early in its origin, and so thoroughly imbued with Unitarian theology, that, if every word of it had been plenarily inspired, and if it were properly to be handled as our Orthodox friends handle it, Unitarians would lose nothing in the argument with their Trinitarian opponents, in respect of the alleged doctrine of the deity of Christ. I deny with all my understanding and with all my heart, that the Trinity is found in the Scriptures. The Roman Church, when it serves her purpose, confesses that it is not found there, and bases one of the most important of her arguments for the necessity of an inspired and infallible Church on the absence of so important a dogma from the New Testament,- a want, it maintains, providentially left to be supplemented by her own councils. I believe, that, in the textual controversies carried on between Trinitarian and Unitarian scholars, the Unitarians have had immensely the advantage. But it is not so that the deity of Christ is to be disproved. It never came from the Scriptures, and it will never be overthrown by Scriptural evidence, strong as that may be. It grew up in a state of society, when men craved in their religion what partook of mythological extravagance, and material, hyperbolic mystery, to offset the melodramatic and polytheistic notions in which they had been bred. That