ries, may still make profitable terms with the Brahmins. This fear is already so far entertained by the missionaries, as to lead them to refuse many who daily apply for baptism. Still, the whole aspect of the movement is promising. The true issue is between a pure Gospel and a decrepit superstition.

Autumnal Convention of Unitarians at Portsmouth, N. H.—The title of Convention," applied to the annual Autumn gathering of members of the Unitarian denomination, might mislead many persons as to the purpose of the meetings, and seem but poorly warranted by the method of their organization or the nature and results of the business done at them. Only two modes of organizing and conducting the assemblages of members of a religious denomination are possible. The one is that which is adopted in Episcopal conventions, where there are rigid rules and established canons to be followed, and where the business proceeds by orderly routine, and admits of an authoritative issue, however much of open contention or of smothered dissent may be found among the members. The other mode of conducting a religious denominational convention is that which we have adopted, in which the organization is barely sufficient to serve the purpose of the meeting, and the utmost freedom of debate that the proprieties of the case allow is admitted, and no results are aimed at which shall fetter conscience, opinion, or ecclesiastical liberty. The latter course will often give our meetings the aspect of an aimless, purposeless assembly, but they will never seem to be discordant, if for no other reason than that they are not expected to be harmonious, in the ecclesiastical sense of the word. This method of ours is likewise favorable to all the social and fraternal enjoyments of the occasion. The only anomaly in our meetings heretofore has been, the introduction and passage of resolutions, by which the absent as well as the present are more or less committed. This nuisance is now precluded.

The weather during the three days of the assemblage at Portsmouth, October 7th, 8th, and 9th, was the glory of our year, the softest and richest portion of the brief Indian summer. The hospitality of the citizens not confined to the members of our own body there was of the most generous character. The opening services were held in the Stone Church of the South Parish (Rev. A. P. Peabody's) on the evening of Tuesday, the 7th, the beautiful edifice being filled in every part. The discourse, by Rev. Thomas T. Stone of Salem, was of an eminently devotional and spiritual tone, admirably suited to induce the best frame of mind for the whole season which was to keep us together. His text was 2 Corinthians iv. 10, latter clause.

A meeting for conference and prayer was held at an early hour on Wednesday morning, and at 9 o'clock the Convention was organized by the choice of the following officers: Rev. Dr. Nichols of Portland, Me., as President. Rev. Dr. Parkman of Boston, Barnabas Bates, Esq. of New York, and Rev. Mr. Cole of Hallowell, Me., as VicePresidents. Rev. Mr. Bond of Dover, N. H., and Rev. Mr. Willson of Grafton, as Secretaries. The President offered prayer, and made some introductory remarks, after which Deacon Foster, in a most felicitous manner, welcomed the assembled guests.

The Business Committee had proposed the following topics for dis

cussion:

1. Theological Education,

of promoting it.

its True Standard, and the best Means

2. The Religious Education of the Young, Christian Nurture, and the Ordinances in their relation to Christian Nurture.

3. Social Reforms, — What are the Christian means of advancing them?

4. Christian Union,

Are there satisfactory signs of its increase, and

what are the grounds of hope for it?

The discussions of the two days were principally confined to the first two topics, taken in their widest bearings and relations, with the incidental suggestions which they called up, and occasionally reaching to the fourth topic. The third subject was not discussed.

The names of the brethren whose voices were heard in the debates, on Wednesday and Thursday, were as follows: The Moderator, Dr. Nichols, Brigham of Taunton, Allen of Bangor, Gannett of Boston, Hedge and Hall of Providence, Hill and Hale of Worcester, Bellows of New York, Muzzey of Cambridge, Ellis of Charlestown, S. Greele, Esq. of Boston, Judd of Augusta, Waterston of Boston, Farley of Brooklyn, Hon. S. Hoar of Concord, Osgood of Cohasset, Pierpont of Medford, Holland of East Cambridge, G. W. Warren, Esq. of Boston, Judge White of Salem, Palfrey of Belfast, Burton of Boston, Harrington of Hartford, Thayer of Beverly, and Hon. A. Fearing of Boston.

A discourse was preached on Wednesday evening by Rev. F. D. Huntington of Boston, from Phil. iii 3. After the evening services in the church a Levee was given by the women of the society in Congress Hall, which was the scene of true Christian hospitality and pure happiness.

When the hour drew near for the dispersion of the Convention, a proper acknowledgment was made for the kindness which the guests had received in Portsmouth, and the Rev. A. P. Peabody gave expression to reciprocal feelings of regard.

The only measure of the Convention in the nature of business was the choice of a committee (consisting of Rev. Drs. Parkman, Gannett, Young, and Hill, Hon. D. A. White, G. B. Emerson, Esq., and Rev. G. E. Ellis), to consider what measures, if any, can be taken, for the further promotion of theological education at Cambridge, or elsewhere, with full powers to fill vacancies in the Committee, and to act in the premises as their best judgment may direct.

Many of the remarks made in the Convention had reference to the claims of theological education at the present day. It was generally felt that the institution at Cambridge, which our generous laymen had founded and endowed, deserved from us warmer sympathy and increased support. The arduous labors of the two Professors demand for them the aid of another instructor. There are still some delicate and difficult considerations involved in the subject. The embarrassing relations which the School holds to the College, and through the College to the legislative authority of the State, check the liberality of the friends of the institution, alienate from it the interest of many, and may be increased in time to come by contingencies which we have no occasion to specify here. If it be in the power of the Committee to procure added funds for the School, and to suggest any wise and just course by which certain existing embarrassments may be relieved, and certain possible contingencies be averted, we shall rejoice in their success.

While attending our conventions, the thought has often been in our mind that there is among us a tendency to regret, and even censure, the natural results of the exercise of that spiritual and mental liberty which was our first claim against the whole world of dogmatists. We see among us what we call great varieties of opinion. Should we not rather call them varieties in the expression or manifestation of the emotional elements of our nature, depending upon mental idiosyncrasies, upon different depths and ranges of speculative insight, and upon the hues cast over our conceptions or delineations of Scriptural truth from our various intimacies with religious books or religious persons? There certainly is a large amount of the material and aliment of religious views and opinions, which has not been exclusively appropriated by any class of Christians. We long ago silenced the absurd pretension that certain phrases or words, whether Scriptural or conventional, had been so fondly employed by the so-called Orthodox, as to have passed into their exclusive possession. We claimed the right to use any such phrases or words, with the meaning - whether the same or differentwhich we believed attached to them. Why should we not have our free range also amid the themes and speculations, the shadings of opinions, and the materials even of an individual eclecticism presented to us by the whole realm of Christian theology, with its substratum of dogma and its atmosphere of mysticism? We certainly must look for variety of result when we open such a field, and set every mind at large in it.

Nor was there any thing in the position assumed by our predecessors in the Unitarian controversy which defined at all points a complete system of theology for us, — a system which holds us to its rigid maintenance. We are faithful in our allegiance to essential Unitarianism, when we take our stand upon some four or five great points of doctrine, which are at issue between us and Trinitarians. The ground on which we claim Milton, Newton, Locke, and Clarke as Unitarians, will not permit us to multiply the doctrines or open questions on which a man must commit himself in order to bear our party name. The points contested in our great issue were few, and though as far as they went they were paramount and vital, yet even in them there was left a range for diversity of opinion, as to their just apprehension in idea, and their exact statement in words, while there lay outside of them a large field of uncontested territory, which no Christian denomination could presume to monopolize. Simple Unitarianism is not committed to the belief or to the denial of the preexistence of Christ; nor to any dogmatic view of the whole signification and effect of the Christian ordinances; nor to any positive construction of the terms of Christian symbolism; nor to any tone, didactic, rhetorical, mystic, or transcendental, in which the joys of the believer or the visions of the dreamer are to be spoken. We suppose, indeed, that our hymn-books are no unfair exponents of our theological freedom, of our committal on some points, and of our perfect freedom on others to range over the whole field of Christian doctrine, sentiment, and fancy.

This being our own understanding of the amount and the terms of our sectarianism, and of the extent of our committal to any thing like a religious system, we expect to find great variety of opinion in our body. This variety of opinion always has attached to us. It prevented from the very beginning the assumption of any sectarian name among us; for the name Unitarian was rather given than taken, rather imputed

than claimed. It prevented, it always has prevented, we believe that it always will prevent, the complete success of any organized association designed to include all who are really Unitarians. We are perfectly reconciled to this condition; we would not alter it if we might."

But now comes up the question, Have the few but paramount and vital points of doctrine, which from the first were assumed and maintained by Unitarians, lost their hold upon our convictions or our allegiance? Have we any semi-Trinitarianism (we have tried three times before we could write the word for the printer; we trust we shall not have to speak it in the day of account), have we any semi-Calvinism among us? Do the excursions which some of our brethren make into ecclesiology, which others make into Bushnellism, which others still make into mysticism, betoken any disloyalty to our early doctrinal banner? We think not. Whatever other objections we may have to any developments" of this sort among our brethren, we have yet to learn of any disavowal of the essential principles of Unitarianism.

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We certainly have no objection to a wise and generous eclecticism, but we are concerned that any one who makes it his method to pick and choose from all existing systems should pick and choose the best. There is a kind of eclecticism which we do not applaud. We can scarce define it better than by calling to mind the Irish speculator in the relics of martyrs. At a time when a thumb-bone or a tooth brought a great price, this ingenious eclectic went about offering for sale the jawbone of All-Saints. The jaw-bone, for theological purposes, is one of the least valuable elements, even in eclecticism. In the religious journals of the two parties which constitute the Congregational body in New England, we read much that indicates what in general terms may be called a Unitarian tendency in the Orthodox, and an Orthodox tendency in the Unitarian. Yet after we have endeavored with our best ability to appreciate the exact amount of approximation which any members of either party have made towards the other, we certainly do not find that any concessions of importance have been made on our side. In the mean while, we are more confused and mystified than enlightened by such developments on both sides. As we read the religious papers and many of the occasional discourses of the Unitarian and Trinitarian Congregationalists, we see a dissatisfaction with the dogmatic forms of their respective doctrinal tenets, an uneasy spirit, and a straining after some new hypothesis, or some different statement of doctrinal formulas. But when we look for results, or ask what after all comes of these speculations, we find a mountain of rhetoric to a grain of intelligible truth of a

new sort.

It is not to be wondered at that we should have among ourselves some "tendencies" answering to those which are manifested by our Orthodox brethren. However much or little significance we may attribute to the brisk word-fencing, the brilliant rhetoric, and the ingenious exaggeration of trifling distinctions, which abound in the recent pamphlets of Professor Park and in some of Dr. Bushnell's productions, the authors insist upon it that they have not departed, by a hair's breadth, from the old standard of Trinitarian Orthodoxy. If this be true, then they give us, after all, nothing but rhetorical flourishes where we think we are to have mental protests against old notions, and prophetic announcements of new views. That there has been something of the same sort of rhetorical skill exhibited among us in declaring old Unitarianism to be effete

or

and lifeless, and in uttering the promise of some new fashionings of doctrinal belief, we will not deny. But something more than a combination of rhetoric, smoke, and moonshine is essential for the statement and defence of any one great doctrine of faith; to say nothing of how much else is needed in the development of a new system of doctrine, which proceeds upon the supposed falsity of all existing systems, and claims the high honor of freshness, and of an entirely Scriptural and Christian sanction, for itself. We are not inclined to exalt any passing "development, any lucubration of the superficial theologians of the present day, into a cause of alarm, or to regard it as deserving of an elaborate examination. The conditions by which any doctrinal system, new or old, may claim to receive a patient and sustained attention, have been well established before our day. When a Christian scholar, after the manner of the old theologians, like Ames or Cudworth, or Edwards or Priestley, sits down to his great task, and, with a thorough review of the field before him, and an assiduous and comprehensive study of truth in the Bible and out of the Bible, aims to develop the Divine method, and to set it forth in formulas of faith, he has a claim upon the respectful regard of all Christian ministers. But when, amid the incessant demands now made upon brethren to please and edify with their pens, to indite editorials, to give forth criticisms, or to produce an occasional sermon, when, under this pressure upon their minds, they have to address other minds all unsettled and undecided, it is not to be expected that there will be perfect consistency or very thorough instruction in their productions. Still less can we look for much novelty in the statement or development of Scriptural truth. We have been preceded by a race of hard students and deep thinkers. Every conceivable shade and shaping of theological opinion has been anticipated. The great fundamental theories and distinctive points of belief, to a choice between the acceptance or rejection of which we must for the most part confine ourselves, have been well defined. The obscurity of words, or their gradual change of signification, will afford materials for much seeming diversity of opinion among those who are skilled in words; but new ideas, new doctrines, new systems of faith, which shall at the same time approach nearer to the substance of the old Gospel, will be very rare.

Installations. Rev. WILLIAM O. WHITE, late of West Newton, was installed as pastor of the Congregational Church at KEENE, N. H., on Wednesday, October 1. The services on the occasion were as follows: Introductory Prayer by Rev. Mr. Crosby of Charlestown, N.H.; Selections from Scripture by Rev. O. B. Frothingham of Salem; Sermon by Rev. J. H. Morison of Milton; Prayer of Installation by Rev. Dr. Gannett of Boston; Charge by Rev. Dr. Leonard of Dublin, Ñ. H.; Fellowship of the Churches by Rev. Mr. Tilden of Walpole, N. H. Address to the Society by Rev. F. D. Huntington of Boston; Concluding Prayer by Rev. E. E. Hale of Worcester.

Rev. FREDERICK W. HOLLAND, late General Secretary of the American Unitarian Association, was installed as pastor of the Unitarian Church at EAST CAMBRIDGE, on Sunday evening, October 12. The Devotional Exercises were by Rev. Messrs. Calvin Lincoln and F. D. Huntington of Boston; Rev. F. T. Gray of Boston read Selections from the Scriptures; Rev. Dr. Gannett of Boston preached the Sermon ; and Rev. G. E. Ellis of Charlestown addressed the Society.