Murmurs about the thinness of the congregation are heard from those who care not themselves enough for the Sabbath and the sanctuary to attend worship, if they can find a cause to detain them at home in some trifling excuse which they have not made too often to be ashamed of. They are loud in proclaiming the dullness of the preacher, which they have done all that indifference could do to increase, and which may be owing in part to his being obliged, through their irregular attendance and its example, so often to address himself to empty seats.

The active interest of individuals in their several societies is not to be governed by the varying fortunes of their sect. It is not to be relaxed when the cause apparently prospers, as if they were sure of advancing with it in the same proportion; nor is it to be discouraged when the cause labours, as if the interests of the society must therefore labour too. The springs of prosperity are in each case distinct, and the prospects in each are different. The true wants of a society, being invariable and perpetual, require the untiring endeavours of its members. Unity of purpose in promoting the great design of the gospel, is a steady principle of action, a principle of stability as well as of growth, by means of which, whether the general interests of a sect be advancing, or retrograde, or stationary, its societies may remain steadfast, and each independent community add at length the advantages of establishments to the improvements adopted in the beginning from the freedom of sects.

Though we have occupied so much space in explaining what has seemed to us to be the distinctive character, the obligations, the wants, the interests, and the policy of Christian societies, we must be permitted to advert, as briefly as possible, to the consequences of indifference and the call for exertion. In all liberal societies at the present day there is a demand for singleness of purpose and unity of effort. No zeal, no eloquence, could preserve or prosper a discordant people. The Apostles laid down no principle more plainly than that the welfare of the church is grounded in love. Liberal societies cannot compete with others formed on stricter principles of church polity, and entertaining different views of Christian influence, either in mere zeal for peculiar doctrines, or in the machinery of popular excitement. They must depend on other means. They must recur to the true principles of social prosperity. Each society must be in earnest to use its own resources for its own benefit to the utmost extent

possible. A new society in a divided community, or one in a minority, may be contented with maintaining its ground, or with advancing slowly. Even this may require a strong, a determined, and unremitting effort, in which all the members should cordially unite. It is a great mistake to think that nothing is wanting but to let things take their own course. The system of protracted meetings is alone enough to show that if liberal societies have sometimes sustained themselves without any extraordinary union of effort, it is not because there is not united zeal and concentrated power which may be inflamed and wielded at will against them. The new force above mentioned will be applied at intervals, until its novelty is worn out, with prodigious effect upon those who come incautiously within the sweep of its current, which in its irresistible progress awes the timid, warps round the worldly and calculating, sucks in the thoughtless and presumptuous, and besides the ignorant and weak, sometimes hurries away the judicious and firm, unawares drawn passively along, and unconscious perhaps of their compulsory movement, and of the cause. If this system should in any case happen to operate unfavourably upon us, we have nothing similar to oppose to it. When this at length shall fail, other machinery will be invented, but we shall invent none to counterwork it. Our trust must be in applying the principles of true and lasting prosperity. As members of religious societies we must make up by individual disinterestedness and zeal, consistency and usefulness, for the want of fuel for popular heat, and of the weight accumulated by acting uniformly in masses. Our societies, in fine, should cultivate mental and moral independence, a disposition to make truth and right their constant guide, that they may be enabled to follow a conscientious course, and adhere to a wise and steady policy, neither disheartened by disappointments and delays, nor shaken by the apprehension of suffering for the sake of truth and conscience. Their members should coöperate, both by liberality of expenditure, and unity of spirit; each giving for necessary or useful purposes in proportion to his ability, and that proportion in each instance a part of a liberal estimate; each cultivating a spirit of harmony and good will, sustained by a unity of purpose, founded on a conviction of the momentous importance of their common wants, and the coincidence of their real interests, on their common obligations to God and to each other, to the present and the coming generations. A Christian minister has indeed a weighty responsibility,

but so likewise has a Christian people. A society acting upon such principles as have now been urged, might hope to prosper, if the Apostles understood what Christian prosperity is; acting contrary to them, it must inevitably decline and cease to be fruitful, though it should have yearly a new Paul to plant, and a new Apollos to water.

Although in some points of view the interests of a society and a sect are separate (without being opposite,) and those of the former far outweigh in importance those of the latter, yet they act reciprocally upon each other; and although a single society may go to decay while the sect to which it belongs continues to grow, yet it is plain that no sect could be flourishing while all its societies were falling away; consequently, notwithstanding the distinction that we have kept in sight between them, we may draw the conclusion, that to advance the prosperity of its Societies is the policy of a Sect. T. R. SULLIVAN.

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The Unitarian Heresy.

We cannot say when, or by whom the practice was first introduced into the world, of so abusing the Scripture term heresy," as to make it mean "an unsound system of belief," and of so misapplying the Scripture term "heretic," as to make it denote "one who holds an erroneous opinion." It is quite certain that such definitions are not to be found in the Apostolic Dictionary. The man must have been himself a heretic, in the true sense, that sense which we shall presently unfold, who first perverted so strangely the language of the Bible.

These and other similar reflections were suggested to us when we were reading sometime since a passage from a distinguished transatlantic writer, in which he is pleased to designate Unitarianism as a "puny heresy." If the author meant to say merely that. the Unitarians constitute but a "small sect," he was right, comparatively speaking, in regard to the fact and used in a proper sense the term heresy. But the whole strain of the writer's remarks in the context forbids us to interpret him so favourably. All that he says about the "meagre phantom," the "pitiful shadow," the "spectre," forces us to believe that the thinness of the Uni

tarian ranks constituted in his mind a grand argument against the Unitarian system. If he had not regarded it as a puny heresy, he would not have called it a heresy at all. But we would ask if there may not be a gigantic heresy as well as a dwarfish heresy? We think, in the true apostolic sense, there may be. It seems to us that the author's implied argument (no man of note would venture to express it openly), that because Unitarianism is the system of comparatively few, therefore it is a heresy in the invidious sense, it seems to us that this argument is like the reasoning of the child, that a copper cent is worth more than a silver sixpence because it is bigger. Is this the way in which men are to judge of the comparative value and truth of systems!

But this author is not alone in the view in which we quote him. From the earliest times the system of the majority has generally been looked up to and looked down from as orthodoxy, and every deviation from it as so much heresy. At its birth men called Unitarianism heresy, in order if possible to frighten it to death. As it grew up to childhood and youth they still repeated the cry in order to warn the world against its power.

We have not of late heard Unitarianism called heresy, but there are still many who regard and dread it as such; and we have thought it might be useful, for the sake of Unitarians as well as of others, to inquire what heresy really is,—what the Apostles considered it,—who are heretics,—and how we may know whether the charge of heresy is or is not applicable to ourselves.

When it is said, then, that Unitarianism is a heresy-what is meant? A reproach? Paul did not think to condemn himself when, on his defence before Agrippa, he professed to have adhered faithfully to the strictest sect (literally heresy) of his religion. The word cannot be applied invidiously on the authority of Paul. The utmost that can be made of the charge, on the strength of his language, is that the Unitarians constitute a sect. And so do the Trinitarians constitute a sect. No harm then, surely, can be intended by calling any body of men whatever a heresy in the proper sense of language.

But is it meant that the system of opinions and principles on which the heresy or sect is built constitutes the members of the sect heretical and that thus the Unitarians are heretics, and accordingly must be classed among those whom Paul in the tenth verse of his third chapter to Titus directs him to

admonish and, if incorrigible, to reject? It seems to us that this conclusion also is authorized neither by the language of the Apostles, nor by what we know of the practice of the church in the apostolic age. Read the verse following the one already referred to. "Knowing that he that is such (a heretic) is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of hinself." Does this sound like the description of one whose only fault is an error in opinion? Does it not apply more exactly to one who has violated in some way the spirit of Christianity? We think so and shall presently define the word "heretic" accordingly. But we said also, that the view we are opposing could not be justified by an appeal to the practice of the apostolic churches. On this subject indeed little has been handed down to us on which we can rely,but we know nothing to make it improbable, and much to make it probable that there were, even then, differences of opinion on secondary matters-minor modifications of doctrine-yet all held and tolerated in "one spirit"—and that, the very opposite of the spirit of heresy.

When we say "the spirit of heresy," we anticipate the view we are next to present of the Apostle's meaning,—a view not new, nor peculiar to ourselves, but one, nevertheless, which we consider important to be kept in mind and in heart by Unitarians and by every denomination of Christians. We understand, then, Paul to mean by "heretic" a man of heretical disposition (not merely of wrong opinions),—a man in whom is the spirit of heresy, the spirit of sect. Wakefield, we think, defines the word rightly, "a fomenter of divisions." It has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of any doctrine, but only with the spirit in which that doctrine is held or urged. Milton says "a man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy." Now, though we think there are other more natural manifestations of the spirit of heresy than those to which Milton alludes, some of which we shall directly notice, yet we agree with him most fully in the principle that the quality denoted by the word heretical is a quality of disposition and not of doctrine. What then, let us ask, are some of the elements of the spirit of heresy, and what some of the prominent modes of its manifestation?

In the first place, then, the spirit of heresy is a proud spirit. In all ages of the world sectaries who agreed, perhaps, after

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