Mr. Müller's practice is as much opposed to Mr. Müller's theory in the matter, as Mr. Müller's theory is opposed to the Bible. Under all dispensations God has sanctioned direct appeals to men, and systematic, for money to promote his cause. Paul made no mistake, therefore, when he appealed to the Church at Corinth on behalf of the poor Christians elsewhere, and sent not one agent but several, to urge the case, in order, as he said, that they might be ready with their benefactions against he came.

We submit, therefore, that neither by the Word of God, nor by his own practice, is Mr. Müller sustained in his sweeping denunciations of the benevolent institutions of the day. We have as little fear that the churches will be shaken in their ' steadfast affection for the great Christian institutions which God has so signally blessed, by the visionary theories of George Müller, as that they will be tempted to turn their feet from the old beaten highway of sanctification by any dreamy prophet of perfectionism.

ARTICLE II.

AMERICAN UNITARIANISM.

THE section of our ecclesiastical history which shall bear this title must truthfully acquaint our posterity with the causes which led to the introduction of this schism, the means by which it was promoted; and the process of disintegration through which it is now passing; - to what future conditions, those who are alive to witness will relate. We only purpose at present to set down rather a full synopsis of the subject as thus far developed - nothing more.

A statement of the prominent causes which favored this defection is important to answer the inquiry, Why were wild. grapes found in the Lord's vineyard?

Never was a soil planted with better seed than was New England; and never were there better cultivators than the

first Puritan preachers. After giving a catalogue of them, Mr. Neal bears them this honorable testimony: "I will not say that all the ministers mentioned were men of the first rate for learning, but I can assure the reader, they had a better share of it than most of the neighboring clergy at that time. They were men of great sobriety and virtue; plain, serious, affectionate preachers; exactly conformable to the Church of England, and took a great deal of pains to promote a reformation of manners in their several parishes." Both ministers and churches were evangelical in doctrine, and consistent in practice. How then did the gold become dim? The chief causes were threefold, and a unit in their results.

1. Church-membership was made essential to the right of suffrage. None but members of the church were allowed to perform civil duties at the polls.

2. The half-way covenant. Persons of sober life, who had been baptized in their infancy, but who gave no decisive evidence of piety, and who were both unprepared and unwilling to unite with the church, were permitted to "own the covenant" and present their children for baptism.

3. Treating the Lord's Supper as a converting ordinance. Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Mass., advocated and introduced the practice of bringing the unregenerated to the sacramental supper, that in the use of this means of grace they might be converted. The practice extended thence through Hampshire county, and to other parts of New England.

The first-named cause was a premium for hypocrisy, tempting many who had no piety to offer themselves for church-membership for the sake of enjoying the civil privilege of suffrage, and creating a bitter enmity against the church on the part of those who thus offered themselves and were rejected.

The second introduced the many to an honorable standing, and a large share of the privileges of the church, while very few came to her solemn feasts.

The third dropped the principle that regenerated persons only should belong to the church, and partake of its ordinances, and lifted upon her the floodgates of worldliness. "The letting go this principle," said Dr. Owen, "brought in the great apostasy of the Christian church."

And in the instance before us, these three causes, severally and combined, so opened the door that the church was secularized and paralyzed by unconverted members. The piety of the sons of the Pilgrims turned pale and sickly. The salt of the earth lost its savor; the light of the world its brightness. Here was introduced another powerful cause of spiritual degeneracy. If persons without piety might enter the church, why might not the same enter the pulpit? Within threescore years, ending the middle of the eighteenth century, it is feared that many entered the ministry who had not the love of God in them. They were moderately orthodox in sentiment, but their public devotions were frosty, and their preaching pointless and powerless.

Attempts at reformation were feeble and fruitless; and so low was the declension in piety and morals that Cotton Mather declared, "in forty years more, should it continue to make progress as it had done, convulsions would ensue, in which churches would be gathered out of churches." This was the time while men slept for the enemy to sow the tares of Arminianism and Pelagianism; and it was industriously improved.

In 1740, the good seed sown by the faithful began to spring up; and what was called the "Great Awakening," commencing in Northampton, extended to about fifty towns, near and remote. But with the good seed appeared the tares also. Such a work of grace, under such circumstances, could not occur without violent opposition. In and out of the church its opponents were fierce, seizing and magnifying into monsters everything which exceeded their own standard of zeal or measure of propriety, and denouncing the whole as fanaticism, wildfire, and the work of the devil. The burning truths preached by Edwards and Whitefield fell upon them like hot shot in a lake of ice-water, with repellent demonstrations. As the excitement of the revival passed away, their zeal cooled down into a criminal indifference in regard to religious doctrine, or cropped out in Arminianism; as in the case of Dr. Chauncy, of Boston, who closed his Arminian career boldly advocating the doctrine of universal salvation.

About this time the writings of Whitby, Taylor, Clark,

Emlyn, and others from England, with some issues from the American press, boldly assailed the doctrines of an evangelical christianity, and proposed "another gospel."

Then came on the French war, which lasted with little cessation eighteen years, and terminated with the surrender of Nova Scotia, the Canadas, and a part of the West Indies to England; and, three years after, the Stamp Act, which greatly agitated the American mind; and this was soon followed by the seven years' Revolutionary war. From these "wars and fightings came a fearful brood of immoralities and crimes. The war-horse strode over the Sabbath; the sanctuary was turned into a barrack, the decalogue into ridicule, and the precepts of Jesus into puns to point witticisms and give currency to scurrility. Infidelity drove its iron wheels over the most sacred inclosures. With all the appliances of truth, and occasional outpourings of the Holy Spirit, the sad effects of those years of strife and blood had not been removed when the war of 1812 was declared.

It was during these years of spiritual declension, of stagnant morals, and opposition to the doctrines of the cross, that Arminian errors, Pelagian heresies, and Infidel speculations secretly begat Unitarianism. The progeny bears unmistakably the strong marks of its diverse, yet homogeneous parentage.

The first American work, in which Unitarianism was advanced and defended, was by Rev. Hosea Ballou, who, like Chauncy, stepped across the undefined line, and died in Universalism. It was on the Atonement, and published in 1803.

The first prominent and open advocate of the system in the pulpit was Dr. Freeman, of Boston. Up to 1815, both the pulpit and press were generally masked and silent on the subject. But now that the world begins to suspect the existence of such a thing, it is time to consider the means by which it was promoted.

Foremost among the means was a studied and careful concealment. To this end all creeds and confessions of faith were strenuously opposed, as also the examination of candidates for the ministry. The press was silent, or occasionally issued an anonymous article, to try the strength of ice which it dare not openly tread. The pulpit suppressed or caricatured the

truth, and conveyed the impression that a preacher's religious sentiments were private property, and could not be inquired into without impertinence; that the doctrines of religion bred discord, and should not be preached; especially as it was the first and last business of a minister to please his people; and, finally, it was of very little importance what a man believed, or whether he believed anything, if he was only sincere.

But at length that concealment could no longer be practised. As Mr. Belsham, in his " Memoirs of Lindsey," had published a chapter of extracts of letters from leading American Unitarians, and that chapter, after having been concealed two years, had been published in pamphlet form in Boston, and spiritedly reviewed in the "Panoplist" for June, 1815-the mode of sustaining Unitarianism was essentially changed.

Its champions now stood forth as the advocates of all that is free and ennobling, in opposition to the iron fetters of Calvinism and the degradation of a polytheistic worship; as the promoters of an exalted charity and a world-wide liberality, in opposition to a starveling selfishness and a narrow bigotry. The press now lent a more generous aid; at first mostly in negations, then in the stout affirmation of truths which nobody denied, and finally, in a forced defence or abandonment of its positions or points of doctrine.

Liberal hymns and doxologies were substituted for the old. Priestly, and other foreign writers of note, were summoned to testify on this side of the Atlantic; ordination and other occasions were improved to disparage what Dr. Channing denominated "a gallows in the centre of the universe," and uphold a system which ignored the only Saviour of men; the influence of great names was also invoked as a shield of defence, and Dr. Ware was wrongfully inducted into the Hollis Professorship of Divinity in Harvard College, and there fed long years on orthodox bread to keep that institution in the interest of Unitarianism. And, as a climax of wrong, taking advantage of the parochial laws and the decisions of courts, by which the rights of churches were lost in parishes, the Unitarians, uniting with their own the votes of the irreligious, wrested property, including houses of worship, parsonages, communion-ware, and funds for the support of the gospel, from churches to which they right