ed to get
the people, who preferred, instead, the preaching of the most illiterate
ranter whose heart was in the work.

In our day a wonderful change has come over Unitarianism. It is not, and
it never was, the Arianism born of the subtle school of Alexandrian
philosophy, and condemned by the orthodox Bishops at Nicea; nor is it
Socinianism as taught in the sixteenth century, still less is it the
Materialism of Priestley. Men of the warmest hearts and greatest
intellects belonging to it actually disown the name, turn away from it as
too cold and barren, and in their need of more light, and life, and love,
seek in other denominations what they lack in their own. The Rev. James
Martineau, a man universally honoured in all sections of the universal
church, confesses:--"I am constrained to say that neither my intellectual
preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with the Unitarian
heroes, sects, or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians,
all seem to me to contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to
exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of
the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest
obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to
writers not of my own creed. In philosophy I have had to unlearn most
that I had imbibed from my early text-books and the authors in chief
favour with them. In Biblical interpretation I derive from Calvin and
Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham. In devotional
literature and religious thought I find nothing of ours that does not
pale before Augustine Tauler and Pascal; and in the poetry of the Church
it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley or
Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor
and cold." This is the language of many beside Mr. Martineau--of all,
indeed, to whom a dogmatic theology is of little import compared with a
Christian life.

Let us attempt to describe Unitarianism negatively. In one of his
eloquent sermons in its defence, the late W. J. Fox said, "The humanity
of Christ is not essential to Unitarianism; Dr. Price was a Unitarian as
well as Dr. Priestley, so is every worshipper of the Father only, whether
he believes that Christ was created before all worlds, or first existed
when born of Mary. Philosophical necessity is no part of Unitarianism.
Materialism is no part of Unitarianism. The denial of