another body of religionists.
Even as regarded themselves he feared many of them were not sufficiently
educated up to the mark; but at any rate it was something for the
Unitarians to be associated with such a catholic and Christian union.

One word more may be said. At the business meeting one of the speakers
was the Rev. Leigh Mann. Distinctly he avowed a belief the reverse of
Unitarianism, and distinctly he glorified the association as one in which
men of the most opposite dogmas could meet. In such an utterance we have
an indication, how significant or eccentric time alone can tell. At any
rate, while confessing that hitherto there has been little of Christian
union founded on dogma, we may anxiously ask, is there a better chance if
the common bond be work?

CHAPTER XVI.
THE LONDON ECCLESIA.

In the independent way, Baxter, describing the Westminster Assembly of
Divines, says, "I disliked many things." After mentioning what those
things were--their making too light of ordination, their unnecessary and
unscriptural strictness about the qualification of church members--he
adds, "I disliked also the lamentable tendency of this their way to
divisions and subdivisions and the nourishing of heresies and sects."
The soul of the good man was wearied, as well it might be, with these
differences, so trifling yet so fiercely discussed, with this waste of
power, with this spirit of wrangling and contention, with these quarrels
of Christian with Christian, when the world was only to be made better,
and the true Church only to be built up, by a holy life. In our time the
tendency of some minds to fly off into fresh sects is greater, perhaps,
than ever. In one street you see a placard up stating that here the
Gospel is preached, and nowhere else. A good man says he is weary of all
this sectarianism, and at once hires a room and starts a new sect. A
man's conscience is too sensitive to allow him to worship with a one-man
ministry, or with any existing denomination. He shakes his head, and
mourns over their worldliness, their carnality, their want of spiritual
life; but does he better it by standing aloof, by shutting himself up
with a few dismal-minded people, who come with their Bibles, and see in
them, not what sound scholarly criticism teaches, but that which their
own morbid fancy suggests? As men of the world, these things are to be
looked at practically, and by the light of common sense. Here are
certai