by the reality of an inward communion and not by outward signs, there is yet no universal disposition amongst men to rest themselves, or to permit others to rest, in this direct and immediate worship, and, satisfied with knowing that God is in his temple within, to be spiritually independent of the mere mechanism of Religion. Few are the minds so purely Christian, that they dare to trust themselves to God without a mediator, or to look within for the kingdom of heaven. In these days spiritual safety is made to consist, not in Christ's feeling of union with his Father, but rather in interposing as much as possible what are called Means of Grace, — in fact, in protecting ourselves against God, that, in the multitude of spiritual contrivances, we may get possession of the true watchword, or connect ourselves with some outward vehicle of favor, dotal, sacramental, or doctrinal, — to which if we but cling fast we may find a passage into heaven. Where are the Christians who can put aside all this intervening machinery, and say with the filial heart of Christ, "I am not alone, for my Father is with me"? Alas! to meet the Deity alone, without some intermediate protection, is just the most terrific idea that Theology has planted in the common mind. "Prepare to meet your God!" are words employed to awaken the terrors of the soul, and the intervention of an Intercessor who will prevail for us, as the means to assuage them. To many minds, a Christianity in spirit and in truth, the filial relation of Christ to God, appears to afford no protection, — in fact, to be no Religion, a word that seems to

sacer

be used in the old heathen sense, of something so prescribed that a man can observe it with an outward exactitude and certainty, - and which when observed binds God to show favor. To profess that your whole Christianity consists in making your own spirit a living temple for God, employing as your greatest aid the study and imitation and spiritual attraction of his Christ, is held to be no definite answer to the question, What do you believe? what are your grounds of Hope? what is your Christianity?

How often are Unitarians met with that question, What is Unitarianism, what is your Religion? And the question always means this: "What are your special reliances, that you have secured for yourselves a protection against God?" If you say, "Christianity has taught you to have faith in the divine Love, and to seek immediate communion with the Father of the soul, and that the Son of God has shown us how to prepare the heart for some inward union with God's spirit," -you are thought to say a thing utterly vague, indefinite, shadowy, in fact, to have no certain grounds of safety, no definite terms on the observance of which you can hold God bound to save you. For this is what is chiefly sought for in religion, this is the refined selfishness of spiritual anxiety;-"How can I get assured of my safety, how can I hold God pledged to me? Let me know what I am to believe in as the terms of salvation, what are the outward observances that God has appointed as the conditions of final Mercy?" and so vanish, in this legal and cove

nanting temper, all the filial trusts of a religious mind, — the worship of the Father in the spirit of a child's faith and reality. There never was a time, since the Reformers, with a dim consciousness of spiritual freedom, made their ineffectual protest, when Christianity was so prominently an ecclesiastical, and so little a spiritual interest. On all sides the machinery is thrust upon you, as if it was the inward and essential life. Not the soul's communion with God, but the agency of a Church,- not prac-. tical discipleship to the Lord Jesus, the baptism of the affections into the spirit of his life and death, but the efficacy of the sacraments, not faith in God, but belief in doctrines, not reliance on divine Beings, but confidence in dead rites and propositions :

these are the essentials of which we hear so much, the symbols every thing, the Realities forgotten. Even the dying wretch, on whose crimes man will have no mercy, is taught to lay hold on the symbol, and, naming the name of Christ, to exult in his safety. The man who has spent his life without God in the world, will yet close it with some feeling of protection if he has partaken of the Sacrament on his dying bed; - the most worldly deem there is some security in avowing an attachment to the Bible, and the Ministers of the Gospel of repentance and newness of life not only assume, but, so little are they aware of the degradation, vindicate, their exclusive claims to the character of spiritual Magicians.

The Priest is the symbol that, in all ages, the common mind has substituted for a spiritual com

munication with God within the soul of the worshipper. The worldly man, occupied with low and perishable interests, and conscious of no sanctity or elevation of desire, has always shrunk from a direct intercourse with God, and interposed some mediator, set apart from common life, whose office it is to perform religious services for the people, to pray not with them, but for them, and through a sanctified medium to convey supplications which God would not listen to from profaner lips. There is no superstition that lingers so long upon the earth, for there is none that so accommodates the mechanical devotion of the material mind, as the peculiar consecration of places and of persons. There is something definite and tangible, conveying assurance of protection, — and this is what the worldly mind avowedly requires in a Religion,— in being able to go to some authorized intercessor who has access to the ear of the Almighty, or to some holy place which imparts a consecration, makes prayer acceptable to Heaven, and communicates to the pilgrim, in virtue of his bodily presence, a spiritual charm. Religion in its common forms has ever been, and continues to be, an attempt to possess one's self of the low satisfaction of security, by means of prescribed services, so definite and tangible that the purchaser of heaven can be in no doubt that he has fulfilled his part of the covenant, having transferred the terms from the spiritual qualifications of the soul, which might raise many a doubt, to a Creed, or a Sacrament, which may be reduced to a matter of absolute certainty. I mean not to say any thing so

harsh, and I belive so false, as that those who adopt this mechanical religion expressly desire to divest themselves of any part of their moral obligations; or that they seek to have a claim upon the kingdom of God in a local heaven, without having the kingdom of God within. It is their want of Trust, not their avoidance of moralities, that materializes their religious character, and embarrasses the spirit of life within them by unnatural adjuncts, — fastening the dead to the living; — it is the absence of all Faith in a spiritual God, who manifests himself to the devoutly pure, and bestows immediate salvation on the filial heart, that narrows the religious sympathies, and makes bigotry the honest expression of a selfish alarm; it is the spirit of Fear, seeking, not to evade a Duty, but to allay the torments of distrust, that by the bonds of express conditions desires to lay an outward hold on God, and to have, as it were, at his hands, a title-deed to heaven. Does any one suppose that the bigotry, the exclusive and denunciatory spirit that may prevail, is primarily either the outbreak of positively malign passions, or the expression of a disinterested spiritual anxiety for the heretic's "salvation"? It is originally neither of these, — though, no doubt, it often partakes of both. It is neither pure hate nor pure love, but much more nearly pure fear; —it is the expression of irritation that you, with your doubts and your rationalism, have broken into its spiritual repose; you have disturbed its sense of security, you have dared to question, and expose to rude investigation, the virtue of the spiritual charm, and the bigot's