quences one of another, but each separately and distinctly is the consequence of a parental act in the parents. So is it with universal progress in the human race. Event follows event, state bounds state, alternate links of gold and iron succeed each other; but they are not generative sequences one of another. No; they are each and severally distinctly referable to an antecedent generative causant, from which all flow. The better idea seems to be that of a perpetual refunding and referring of man to this operant, in order to the evolution of the new state. Man must thus be consciously re-united, before he can be sentimentally united, as he has learnt that he must be sentimentally united, before he can be physically well arranged. In double union with this uniter true harmony consists. Vain have been, and vain must ever be, all practical attempts in external association, without a pre-existent internal association with Unity itself. Community is only possible to such as recognize the common good, or rather, only to those who are re-born in this nature. Brethren are not made by an asseveration of brotherhood towards each other, but by birth from the same parents. Associates, communists, unitists, are not made by avowal of socialism, communism, or union amongst each other, but by a birth connexion with the Associator, the Common, the Unity. It is a birth, a nature; not a thought, nor an act, which is required for man. This is the real or unal elevation, of which new views are only the ideal; and without the real, or unal, the actual mover cannot be permanently exhibited. This Unity, this Uniter, this One, who is to be the head and fountain of human unity, has long been sought in a posterior direction. Men have expected of each other, that the initiative should be furnished by some one amongst them. Mind rests upon mind, individual upon individual. Fatal error for all for the false source, or for the false expectant. It is as if the brethren should attempt to increase the brethren by their own marriages, instead of looking to their common parent. The One must be discovered in a prior direction. It is a Unity, or Uniter, antecedent to man, that can alone unite men to each other; and they in whom this union first is consummated, may, indeed, be thereby better conditions for a similar result in other minds, but the birth-act devolves not upon them. There being, at the base of every human soul, not excluding even the dullest, an intuition of the Common Good, or Uniter, all that seems demanded for its spontaneous expansion are the suitable conditions. Vigor, truth, virtue, would be as native in the human being, as leaves, blossoms, and fruit on the apple-tree, were but the seasonable elements brought around. But it is still winter, and the chill atmosphere of opposing society freezes humanity almost to the pith. Still the central life is centrally there; and the moment it is appealed to in the pure spirit, it makes a true response. There is yet little faith in this spontaneity as a nature. Faith must grow larger and stronger in the few in whom it is; they must not be driven back from their uncorrupted mission by hireling sneers or ungrateful assaults; for, seeking neither applause nor thanks from men, their occupation is more with such as from the old nature spurn their solicitude, than tender a ready reception. Never, however, can beams from the love Sun fail in producing a spiritual atmosphere, in which some budding of the spirit nature shall appear. Small as these appearances are, they suffice to prove the nature alive within; and as spring progresses to summer, the living tree will spontaneously expand. Seeing this winter for the human soul so piercingly prolonged, some well-intentioned, but mistaken gardeners, instead of nourishing the life within, have, under the name of education, adopted a process almost comparable to that of tying some of last year's fruit on this year's barren tree. Reselts, though pretty, yet dead, drop of, and the artifice is again renewed. Man is not to be humanized by plans like these; the tender plant may be protected, but after all, it must be fed with living elements, such as the Love Spirit within it may happily employ for growth. The very atmosphere about humanity must be pure, and soft, and sunny life, light, and love supplies must be furnished. We shall then not fail to witness pure life, soft light, and sunny love results. It is, therefore, a condition far beyond that which the utmost efforts in the way of learning can bring about, which is now demanded. Learned circumstances can merely facilitate learned results: love circumstances are essential for love spontaneity. Man must have his higher appetites supplied, and he will begin to separate from excessive indulgence in his lower natures, which have only been so much cherished, because the others have been forgotten. Men plunge into the inferior when the superior is denied, for there is no stationary medium line. Thus, for want of alternate occupation, they fall into monotonous drudgery. The needful supplies for physical industry, mental employment, and moral interest not being furnished, one half the world is consigned to animal toil and almost sympathetic annihilation, the other half to sympathetic anguish and physical idleness. It is a question for casuists, which is the more unhappy. Whether the dread factory-bell, or the fox-hunter's horn, calls to a pursuit more fatal to man's best interests, is an inquiry which appears more likely to terminate in the cessation of both, than in a preference to either. The strong readiness with which man falls into the mere habits and customs existing about him, is more easily accounted for than remedied. "Use is second nature." These uses and observances being the product of the same ancestry which generated the present race, the facility with which the begotten declines into them cannot be a subject for wonder. Generation, as well as habit, has to be amended. Their action and reaction having been mutually operative for depression, they may become combinedly serviceable in man's elevation. There is hope for this prophetic fact in the universal acknowledgment, that use is only second nature, it is not the first nature, the primary constitution. There is a primary nature in man, which can resist not only the tyranny of custom, but the foulness of generation, which can wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, Yes, there is hope, of no faint character too, though the old spirit may, in selfish gratulation, again conclude, that the old rule will "outlast our time." It is not so; the musty records are, even now, under revision by the youthful spirit, and a new decree is in the writer's hand. The con servatism of the old world cannot save it from dissolution, nor prevail against the birth of the new. The unitive human law having been discovered and promulged, is as certain of being acted on as the unitive planetary law. The latter has always been sure and direct; but the former has been wavering, indefinite; and, though never altogether broken, yet it has been rather an indirect influence, than an abiding law: it has been a blind painful necessity, rather than a conscious joyous freedom. Science, so long confined to the sphere of intellect, or subverted to warlike and mercantile purposes, already is turned to moral ends. In Poor Laws, in Prisons, in Asylums, in Travelling, in Banking, in Sanatoria, we see the unitive law working partially and disconnectedly. Granted that is is too much blended with the disuniting commercial spirit, yet still in these may be perceived the distinct buds of that magnificent three, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, whose branches shall enshade all mankind. As soon as science shall divine its exalted utility, and work happily in carrying out the pure issues of moral unity, in lieu of submitting to the ungrateful mandates of pecuniary despotism, the avenue to harmonic association will be opened. Without this divination, the coalition of refined sensibility and intelligent acuteness, which is proposed as a preventive to the wanderings of either, cannot be accomplished. The associative attempts which science plans, partake too little of the unal element. They are, on the one hand, merely a means of making the rich richer, and, on the other, of regulating the poor in their poverty. No ONE yet appears who is qualified for initiating the unal, intelligent, and physical union of mankind. It may be doubtful whether the true ONE ever will appear, ever can be visible in the world of appearances. But, at all events, representatives of that one may ere long be discovered amongst the human race. The ideality is manifestly born amongst men, and the reality will follow: the Saint John is already in the civilized human wilderness, the precursor is quickened in every human bosom, and and the successor must shortly be made alive. Inasmuch as society, or the social mind, as at present constituted, can have no perfect ideality of what society should be, it is quite evident, that the solution of our social ills cannot come in that direction from which they have so long been sought. The deliberative has looked to the executive for amendment in principles. How absurd! As well might it be expected, that the hand should improve the mind as well as itself, and not that the mind should regulate its ready instrument, the hand. The people are the deliberative, or mind; governments are but the executive, or hands. The first step, though a negative, yet an important one, is now admitted, if not taken-namely, that upon the people themselves devolves the responsibility of improvement. It is at the fireside that reform must commence. The political man has to learn this, and to terminate his expectation of public good from public corruption. Changes in administration are nought to him, for they involve no change in himself; while a change and improvement in man generates, by an unfailing law, improved changes in the administration. In rational countries, how little does the political state now depend on the birth of princes, or the caprices of court debauchees. Rationality must be carried still further, so that it is per ceived that alone by unal or moral beginnings, unal or moral and political changes of a beneficial character can be wrought. The unal, or real man, must be rendered aware that the fireside at which his reform is to commence is within himself. Let this fact be well established in him, and all needful reforms, numerous as they are, will be generated rapidly enough. Let love, as divine unity, be once re-established in man by the necessary freedom which spontaneity involves, and man will be found putting forth, in every possible and beautiful way, all those unitary or associative measures which fully and faithfully correspond with it. A unity among men is actually unattainable without love in men, as the antecedent unity or uniter. Unity is not flesh, but spirit: the universality moving all individuality in the respective instincts or spheres to which each individual is assigned. Let not those in whom the highest calling is heard, suffer the voice to be outsounded by base noises. Let is be most fondly cherished, and it shall raise man superior to the sneers, scoffs, and clamors of his misguided fellow-man, as well as to the downward tendencies of his own inferior natures. This voice, this unity, is the true attractivity which is to redeem man. It is not heard in congregations of men; for the highest, the holiest works in secret, in isolation. When between love and the human soul an intimate union is consummated, the general results will be obvious to all. Even now it is conceded, that no longer is brute force or intellectual cunning admissible as the Empowerer whereby men are to be ruled. A new commandment is given to us, that we love one another. The new law being paramount in man's government, his new destiny shall be manifested. Every man is to love every man: every faculty in man is to be enlovened towards every other faculty; love is the universal bond within and without; all internal as well as external disciplines are attractivities, because they are the co-workers with love. Love, or Attractiveness, Attraction is the new grand central principle on which the great planet, man, revolves in orbicular harmony among other planets, and in diurnal harmony on its own axis. There is no other, there needs no other hope for man. Love alone, universal, pure, undegraded by selfish consideration, uncontaminated by evil temper, unperverted to base uses, can work out the great end, human happiness. Willingly to contribute in any degree to the prevalence of this attractive law, is the highest solace now permitted to any individual. But to do so most effectively, it is requisite to pass beyond the ordinary bounds which limit human activities and human nature to the physical and merely mental spheres. There is this third nature which is to come in and harmonize the existing antagonism of the two former. The new commandment belongs to the new nature-can only be acted upon by the new nature. It appeals to man not as a dual, but as a triune being. Love is the third and reconciling nature, without which neither the light nor the life can be saved. This at once redeems and elevates both. Love exalts the intelligence to new conceptions, new views, new projects, and the energies to new action, new modes, new combinations. The whole world is immediately prolific in infinite inventions for physical and mental melioration, for love is the sole origin whence all meliora tion flows. In the article on St. Augustine and the Doctrine of Life we have given an Orthodox portrait of Unitarianism. As a counterpart, here is a sketch from a Rationalist. The Unitarian Christain sect professes to build on the twofold basis of Reason and Scripture. Its advocates make their special boast of keeping closer than other sectaries to reason and scripture. They put these two together as co-ordinate authorities. It is a favorite phrase with them— "reason and scripture." Some of them seem to give a priority to the one, and some to the other-some appear to lay the most stress on ration. ality, and some on scripturality, while the most waver uncertainly between the two, or illogically confound the two: but nearly all of them go on the assumption, expressed or implied, that reason and scripture coincide; that a rational Christianity and a scriptural Christianity are only different names for one and the same thing; in other words, that their reason—the reason of English thinkers in the nineteenth century—is one and the same thing, and must needs coincide, with the reason of the many different |