lible in such matters, and would speak with modesty, are rather failures in Art than deficiencies of Nature. If this, as we believe, is a first attempt in poetry, it raises high hopes for the future, and we shall rejoice to meet the author again in this most difficult walk of literature, when she shall have taken confidence to write solely from the simplicity and earnestness of her own heart, without departing from reality, or seeking, afar, the adventitious charm of fancy or ornament, as though she modestly distrusted what herself supplied.

SONNET.

I CALL my little child unto my knee,

He leaves his play, and resting his small hand
Gently on mine, most quietly doth stand,
Waiting in patience till I set him free;
And his sweet face looketh up lovingly,
Without a shade of doubt at my command,
But fond confidingness, expression bland
Of
pure affection in his eyes I see.
Oh if the earthly parent does receive
Such willing duty, loving reverence,
From the free spirit of his spotless child,
Far more should He, who willeth not to grieve
His erring children, but doth e'er dispense
All chastisement, in love and mercy mild.

ART. II.-TWELVE LECTURES, IN ILLUSTRATION AND DEFENCE OF CHRISTIAN UNITARIANISM. By J. ScoтT PORTER. 8vo. pp. 170. London: Green,

Mardon.

THIS is a work admirably adapted for popular use. It is a broad and effective, yet just, statement of the relative claims, merits, and evidences of Unitarianism and Trinitarianism. It is direct, plain, and vigorous, presenting the great features of the question in full and striking lights. It does not pretend to more than this, nor does it accomplish more. It is a popular statement, manifestation, and defence of Christian Unitarianism. It affects no originality, yet it is always fresh, and conveys that charm the most delightful to a reader, the feeling that the sentiments and thoughts are reproduced by the writer, and are springing into life from a moved and earnest heart. We know not that there is a new thought or illustration in the book, yet there is not a page that is stale, or borrowed, or tame. Every where there is the impress of a living mind, speaking from itself, and clothing even familiar views with its own individuality. This is exactly the exhibition of Unitarianism that the great mass of Trinitarians require, not too critical, or philosophical, or refined, yet partaking of all these qualities, and presented in the lights of Scripture, of history, of reason, of feeling, of the moral nature and requirements of man.

Mr. Porter is an Arian, but he attaches no essential importance to the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ. This is an honourable peculiarity, by which we fear he is almost distinguished amongst Arians. Few men will admit a gratuitous difficulty into their creed: if they cannot find a practical reason for a doctrine they will not encumber themselves with its defence. The Trinitarian Theology has mainly sprung from the necessity of finding offices for the three persons in the Trinity. Mr. Porter thinks that the example of Christ is equally obligatory and influential on the Arian and the Humanitarian view. But if Christ was a man, our powers, our destinies, our possible perfection, were exhibited on one of like nature with ourselves; not so, if he was a pre-existent angel. As an exhibition of God's will, Christ's life, if Christ was an angel, would still hold good, but not as an exhibition of man's power to do God's will. The moral, the personally binding power of the example ceases to exist. How can the example of an angel be urged home on the conscience of a man? If there is no alliance between their

powers, what alliance is there between their duties? What argument can logically be maintained from the immortality of an angel to the immortality of a man? Christ's resurrection sinks from a supernatural representation of human destiny, of man's alliance with God, into a mere testimony, borne by God to the providential mission of the angel; nay we do not know enough of the nature of angels to refer the resurrection of one, in a body that it had assumed for a time, to the special interference of Deity. Only on a man could God exhibit the divine image in man. Only in a man could God impersonate the duties and the destinies of man. Only on a man could God show forth the immortality of a man. There is neither obligation in the example, nor logic in the argument drawn from Christ's resurrection to that of the whole human race, if the Christ was not one of the human race. Mr. Porter himself urges against Trinitarianism that the doctrine of two natures in Christ destroys the effect of his example. But one of these natures was human, and suffered all that a man can suffer, though the divine nature suffered nothing. But in Arianism the whole spiritual nature is superhuman, and what can we know of the sufferings of an angelic essence, or of its power to resist pain? Once more, is not an angelic nature, a pre-existent spirit lodging in the body of an infant, and growing in favour with God and man, passing through childhood, boyhood, manhood, a difficulty of exactly the same kind as that which Arians, and Mr. Porter among them, oppose to the Trinitarian hypothesis of the Deity taking flesh and dwelling amongst us? Indeed the difficulty, though less in one sense as not involving the union of two natures in the person of Christ, is in another sense greater, as the Arian hypothesis requires that the pre-existent angel should dwell in the body of the infant Jesus, and under the apparent form and developments of childhood be actually veiling and concealing the highest and most perfect of created minds,-whilst in the Trinitarian Hypothesis it is not necessary to suppose the union of the two natures until the period of the baptism of the Christ. We confess we do not see how any one who is not stopped by the difficulties of Arianism can find any thing insuperable in the difficulties of Trinitarianism. However, we cordially sympathize with Mr. Porter's spirit. Far be it from us to divide the Unitarian world on such a question, and whatever may be our views of Scripture, Reason, and Philosophy on this subject, we feel assured, on no theoretic grounds, but from the perusal of his book, that Mr. Porter has lost nothing of the truest and purest influences of Christianity.

The work is very complete in its plan: it embraces the whole

field of the Trinitarian Controversy. The first six Lectures are occupied with the external evidences of Unitarianism, as the Faith of the Old Testament, of Christ and his Apostles, and of the Primitive Church,-and the last six Lectures illustrate its internal evidences, its moral character, its influences and practical efficacy, and its accordance with the nature and wants of man, as a rational, a devotional, a benevolent, a holy, a consolatory, and a progressive Faith. These topics are indeed not philosophically distinct, but they form an excellent popular classification of the leading characteristics of any Religion that is worthy of God and sufficient for man, and they afford an opportunity of presenting many interesting views of practical Religion, and likewise of directly meeting many prevalent popular objections to Unitarian Christianity. The subjects of the last six Lectures cannot in strictness be separated from one another, but much of impression and of touching illustration would have been lost if the Preacher had sacrificed his appropriate aims and functions for the sake of a more philosophical arrangement.

In meeting the argument for the Omniscience of Christ drawn from John ii. 24, 25, " But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men," Mr. Porter proposes the translation, "Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew them all." There is nothing in the passage to prove omniscience, in any sense of it, and the suggested translation we think singularly unhappy. It does not meet the necessities of the very next clause, " and needed not that any should testify of man; for he knew what was in man," and it has no application whatever to Nicodemus, with whom our Lord was not previously acquainted, and with whose visit, by night, the verse in question has so close a connection that it ought not to have been separated from it by the division of chapters.

We cannot at all agree with Mr. Porter's view of the use of the expression "Holy Spirit," in the Scriptures. He denies its personality and consequently its deity, and regards it mainly as signifying the power of God manifested in miracles. That Mr. Porter should disown the Arian doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit is only what we should expect from him; for a doctrine more unmeaning, more revolting to all sound scriptural interpretation, it is impossible to conceive. But surely there is no clearer scriptural usage than that of the holy Spirit, for the spirit of God, and consequently for God himself. When the soul of man is moved by the spirit of God, then man is said to partake of the spirit of God. And is it not so, even without a figure? In all right states of the soul are we not one with God as Christ was one with God, and is not

the spirit of God in us and dwelling with us? It is frigid and totally foreign to the genius of Christianity, to its intimate feeling of the possible union between the human and divine spirit, to speak of the Holy Spirit as an attribute or power. It is God himself, but chiefly God in his connections with the soul of man, natural or supernatural.

As an example of the freedom and freshness of Mr. Porter's style, though a little out of place, we are tempted to give a passage which lies on the page (p. 74) we have been last criticizing. He had very successfully been disposing of the inferential argument for the Deity of Christ drawn from the supposed ascription to him in various passages of divine honours, and he thus closes his examination of these passages :

"Now if these passages do not establish the points in question, they cannot possibly be established; for those that have been selected are among the strongest and clearest that ever have been, or that can be brought forward in their support. Is there a man in this assembly, who, if he were upon a jury empanelled to try a case of £20 value, would feel himself justified in giving his verdict upon either side, on evidence so irrelevant, so wide of the point at issue? And yet on such evidence we are called upon to award the sovereignty of the world to one who never claimed it for himself,-who always consistently declared it to be the sole right and property of another! And we are told, that, unless we pronounce this unwarrantable judgment, we forfeit all hope of our eternal salvation !"

We shall give another example of the same homely strength, combining a directness and a solemn earnestness well fitted to be very effective with a popular audience:

"In former lectures, I have compared the Unitarian and Trinitarian systems, with reference to their agreement or disagreement with Scripture, and I think I advanced some solid reasons, from our sacred books, for the hope that is in me. I have now briefly contrasted a few of them together, with reference to their claims respectively, to the designation of rational. I have shown you, that Unitarianism involves nothing that can be considered as self-contradictory, absurd, or irrational. I have shown, that the commonly-received hypothesis involves a number of contradictions in its very statement: that these contradictions have not been, and cannot be removed; that, therefore, its doctrines cannot possibly be believed by any one who considers the meaning of the terms in which they are expressed, without violating the laws of the human mind; and that this opposition between reason and orthodoxy, is so far from being denied, that it has been admitted, nay, asserted and gloried in, by some of the most able writers who ever maintained the Trinitarian doctrine. Here then I close the case for the present. I put it to you, as reasonable and accountable beings, to weigh the evidence, and deter