certain sympathy with me, and would be glad to show it me if an opportunity offered. This is one of the benefits arising from social worship, a practice eminently Christian, but which loses much of its moral effect when people meet in great numbers. I would not have chapels much larger than ours; the members of a congregation should know each other, at least, by sight; there should exist a degree of fraternity among them. Would heaven that manners and national temper admitted of making the religious meetings of Unitarians still more truly social! but I must not indulge my radicalism; there is enough, and more than enough, to make me every day rejoice in the company of the particular class of Christians with whom I am associated; and indeed it was with the intention of expressing my increasing satisfaction that I took up the pen.

I was thinking during the Sermon (do not be shocked; you know that I can hear and think at the same time), on the favourable positions of Unitarians with respect to future improvement and usefulness. I am convinced that the Unitarians with whom I am acquainted present, as a body, the only nucleus, the only point round which a true reform of English Christianity can take place. Our Unitarians are the only truly religious people who may be considered free from the two insurmountable obstacles to religious reform; they are free from enthusiasm, and from the pride of orthodoxy; they are therefore able to listen to reason, which the enthusiast cannot; and willing to listen to reason, which the orthodox is not.

Aware of this excellent disposition among our people, I am constantly thinking how it might be best employed towards the desired end. You will probably remember that soon after I settled myself in this town, I suggested a

kind of corresponding theological association, with the object of giving unity to the efforts of Unitarian Ministers, in the work of religious improvement, as well as clearing many points of doctrine upon which there must be still great uncertainty among them. Our external bond of fellowship is very narrow; a mere opposition to the scholastic dreams about the Trinity, cannot give a common direction to the studies of Unitarians. There may be— nay, there must be, a great number of long-established theological errors unswept away by so minute a besom. It is the operation of such errors, I am convinced, that now and then leads back a Unitarian minister to the labyrinthine windings of the Athanasian Creed. Unfortunately the habits and nature of English life allow no leisure for such labours as I proposed. All, therefore, I can wish is, that the studies of my particular friends may take the direction, in which it is not probable that I shall live to see even a considerable portion of the body move on.

As to yourself and our friend Mr. Martineau, it would be affectation on my part to urge you on the very path where you had been moving before you knew me. Yet it may not be totally useless to express my views when they may happen to occur to me with more than usual practical definiteness. I will therefore say, in a few words, what has lately occupied my thoughts in regard to the fundamental error among English Christians, their idolatrous prostration of mind to the Bible.

I am not about to repeat what I have said against the notion that Jesus intended his religion to rest upon the authority of the Bible. Totally opposed as I am to that groundless theory, yet I am convinced that it is the order of Providence that the Bible shall be a common source of

instruction to the followers of Jesus.

The nature, however,

of that collection of writings evidently shows that it was not intended as a means of general self instruction. I am every day more and more convinced that it is absurd to send the Bible about as an instrument of conversion. Nothing but the blindest enthusiasm, or the most thoughtless acquiescence in the loud assertions of enthusiasts can give currency to such expectations. The Bible itself opposes such extravagant hopes; I do not mean, that the Bible contains passages against them; for how could I, after my long and trying experience, trust in the power of texts? What I mean is, that since the Bible obviously contains two very distinct, not to say opposite, views of religion, it could not have been intended by a wise Providence as the self-working vehicle of Christianity for the whole world. Strange infatuation! Thousands of men who have devoted their life to the study of the Bible, in England, are divided as to the fact whether that book leaves the Sabbath, or some sort of Sabbath, as a portion of Christianity; and yet it is expected that every person within and without the country, and even the inhabitants of Asia, of Africa, and the wilds of America, will be made Christians by the Bible alone! I have mentioned the Sabbath because, being a practical point, it might be supposed that it had the best chance of being clearly made out. But what shall we say to the long list of damnable and damning heresies which divines tell us have been deduced from the Bible, in the midst of the most varied instruction and preparation to ascertain its true sense? Is it not something like madness to spend millions, as the Bible Societies have been doing, and continue to do? But to my purpose, for my limit approaches.

The

I should make use of this obvious consideration to reduce the Bible to its proper use. I am convinced that the great revelation of God to man is contained in the Bible. purest light from heaven is there; for sure as I am that the highest truths in the Bible have been also imparted by heaven otherwise than through that individual channel of revelation, I feel equally certain that those truths never were imparted in such purity, and abundance, as through the ministry of Jesus. It is nevertheless an evident fact, that the spiritual and free religion of Christ lies, even in the New Testament, surrounded by a multitude of views, not only extraneous, but directly opposed to its spirit. Christianity cannot be learnt from the Bible until it is separated from what is not Christianity, although it exists in the Bible. How then shall we perform this decomposition? To say that the Bible will teach us, is childish and totally unmeaning, for it is the Bible that presents the difficulty. Now Christ did not leave this problem to his disciples, for he certainly did not leave them the Bible. But since the same Providence which ordained his mission, has connected our present Bible with it, we have reason to believe that those writings have been preserved as the most fit subject upon which to exercise that discriminating spirit under whose guidance Jesus left his disciples. Far therefore from the Bible being the light of Christianity, the light of Christianity itself must remove the darkness in which that collection of writings has been found, age after age, to be involved. The direct inference from these facts is this: the Bible contains revelations, i. e. instructions, from God; but as they belong to different periods of human progress, and as they are unquestionably mixed with human errors, there must be a discriminating principle on which Providence

depends for the usefulness of those books in regard to Christians. That principle can be no other than the conscientious reason of those who use the Bible. The spirit of Christianity was transmitted, independently of Books, for a long period; for even after the writings of the New Testament were in existence, there must have been multitudes of persons who caught (if I may say so) the spirit of the new religion from the simple, verbal narrative of Christ's life and character. This spirit will be awakened in various individuals, in different ways, to the end of the world. It will appear in the form of reason-the highest authority known to man. To this spirit, to this reason, the whole Bible must be submitted.

It is somewhat in this manner that I should wish to see the question of the inspiration of the Bible disposed of. God alone knows what degree of assistance he gave to the different authors: He alone knows with what degree of purity from forgery and interpolation that collection has come to our hand. The indisputable testimony of a multitude of facts shows that the Bible cannot emit the divine light it contains, unless it is, so to say, elicited by that particle of the same heavenly substance which God has placed in the bosom of " every man that cometh into the world." The Bible, therefore, in regard to the use which we can make of it, is subject to Conscientious Reason, not Reason to the Bible.

Have I conveyed any distinct meaning? I doubt it; yet I am sure you will be able to guess what I mean. Yours affectionately,

J. B. W.