sistencies of the Alliance, and in conclusion proposes the "Basis of a Christian Alliance grounded upon religious duty." The observations are characterized throughout by sound sense and an Evangelical spirit.

PERIODICALS.

The Quarterly Review, No. CLVI., October, 1846, opens with a military article, explanatory of fortifications, and the mode of attacking them, called forth by Louis Philippe's " Fortifications of Paris." The subject has no charms for us, unless there be more weight than to us appears in the reviewer's suggestion, that these warlike preparations may in fact conduce to peace, i. e. may remove the temptation to aggressive war by diminishing the probability of its success. The second article deals with Lord Nugent's delightful book, now accessible to every class of readers in Charles Knight's Weekly Volumes, "Lands Classical and Sacred." Justice is done to the book, the day being happily gone by when a Quarterly reviewer thinks it necessary to use the tomahawk because he criticises a book by a well-known Whig. We must, in passing, express our dissent from the critic's vote of confidence in Lord Nugent's criticisms on the topography of Jerusalem. If ever traveller justified a canon, it was Dr. Robinson, when he laid down and acted on the rule, that the traditions of the native Arabs are more trustworthy in respect to the antiquities of Palestine than those of the ecclesiastics who profit by ministering to imposture. The next article which has attracted our attention consists of a series of sketches of society and manners in Constantinople during the fourth century, derived chiefly from St. Chrysostom. Let no one turn from the article under the apprehension of its being dull as a homily, for he will find in it a good store of amusement, culled from the pages of the Byzantine father. The "Cathedral of Cologne" presents, in the sixth article, a fine subject for the historian and the ecclesiologist, and the writer has made the most of it. All Germany has contributed to the completion of this glorious work, as all England, not many years back, contributed to the restoration of York Minster. It is hoped that in 1848 the whole interior work will be completed, when a grand celebration is proposed of the Cathedral's sixth century. The last and least worthy article in the number is on the "Close of Sir Robert Peel's Administration." If, as is publicly stated, it be the production of Mr. Croker's pen, it gives abundant evidence of his senility. It has his malice, but it wants his force and talent. What writer, knowing any thing beyond the table-talk of some club presided over by Lord George Bentinck or Mr. D'Israeli, would be so rash as to commit to print an estimate of the probable strength of parties in the next Parliament, giving the Liberals 295, the Protectionist Opposition 310, and to Sir Robert Peel a party of only 30! This at the moment when the Protectionist organization is in most places shivered to atoms, and, for the first time since the passing of the Reform Bill, the din of battle is hushed in the registration courts, although all parties agree that on the coming register the elections will be made!

The Tory reviewer proposes a political amnesty in favour of all the late deserters from the Protectionist party, except their leader in the Lower House, who is not to be forgiven, and who, in the vain hopes of the ultra-Tory party, is for ever to be excluded from the power and sweets of office for having dared to prefer the safety of his country to the insane demands of his party. We leave this trashy article, and turn with pleasure to one conceived in a very different spirit, on "The Education of the People." With gratification not less than our surprise we welcome the Quarterly reviewer, with all his great influence amongst the English clergy, as a coadjutor with Dr. Hook. Thus temperately and wisely does he describe the circumstances that make the present a fit time for educational action:

"There seems to be such a gradual and even unconscious approximation in men of such opposite sentiments; we begin to understand each other so much better; the wise and moderate, and even the zealous on all sides, seem to have

gathered so much experience; points which appeared of such vital importance have been so quietly and easily dropped; the practice of education has so much changed, tacitly and by common consent, in the best-regulated schools; there has appeared, on examination, so much unanimity in the desire to give a religious education to the people, yet so much more difficulty than was at first supposed as to what is the best and most effectual manner of teaching religion to children; there has grown up so sober and wide-spread a conviction, that reading religious lessons and learning by heart religious formularies does not necessarily either impart religious knowledge or infuse religious habits or foster religious feelings-that we cannot but think in regard to this infinitely momentous question, any bold but temperate Administration will find far less obstinate prejudice to encounter, be watched with less suspicion, and command much more general respect, if not cordial co-operation, than heretofore. At all events, we avow ourselves to shrink from the fearful responsibility of arresting the course of national education under any auspices; we will deliver our souls from this awful weight; and we solemnly remind every one-Tory or Conservative, Whig or Radical, Economist or Anti-Economist, Churchman or Dissenter-that if by any one act, by any one vote in Parliament, by any suffrage on the hustings, by any rash language in public journals, by any inconsiderate petition, by any party or class or rank or sectarian jealousy, they unnecessarily impede any Government whatever in the amicable advancement of this work; if they act otherwise than under the most grave, deliberate, well-advised and dispassionate convictions; if they are not prepared to make the most generous self-sacrifice of all which is not Christian principle-not what passion may dignify by that sacred name, but what asserts and proves itself to the enlightened conscience as such-if it be not Christianity in its vital, absolute essence which is at stake, then they are guilty of imperilling the life of the nation without due cause at least, of not doing their bounden endeavour to avert the death of anarchy and ruin which may await, if we be not wise in time, this most glorious, this most wonderful people of England.”—Pp. 378, 379.

The reviewer states with some strength the great want of the means of education in the manufacturing districts; and then, instead of launching a fierce attack upon the reckless sordidness of cotton-masters, a once favourite party weapon, he writes thus gently and candidly on the subject:

"We doubt not, as we have acknowledged, and rejoice to repeat our acknowledgment, that with not a few of the great manufacturers there is a constant and systematic endeavour to provide, as well by the cultivation of better habits as by general liberality, against these dangers and reverses. Mr. Horner could point us out establishments where the little republics are regulated with the noblest and most sagacious generosity; where it is the study to enlighten the minds, to improve the moral habits, to elevate the social condition of the factory labourers; where the active producers of the wealth are considered fairly entitled to some proportion in its advantages, and are held to be a solemn trust from that God who has blessed the worldly advancement of the man of millions. But speculation to be generous must be successful; it must be tolerably secure in its opulence before it can, or at least before in ordinary cases it will, permit itself to indulge in these luxuries of benevolence. Gratitude for service profitable as well as long and faithful must have incurred that debt. He who lives hardly and precariously himself, will in most cases be a hard master. Recklessness in our own concerns produces recklessness as to others. All this ought fairly to be considered, in justice to the first creators of our manufacturing wealth, against whom it has now become the custom to declaim in speech, in novel, in poem, and, we suspect, in sermon; whom 'Young England' denounces as the authors of all political evil, and a certain school of theology as having surrendered the whole realm to the undivided kingdom of Mammon. Our mediævalists look back with fond regret to the times when the convent-bell swung over leagues of bleak moor, with the few roads in a state of romantic insecurity, and when the few and scattered inhabitants crowded for their dole, which was bestowed upon them out of the wealth of provinces by those whom our coarse ancestors described as the fat abbot and his lazy monks, but who are now described as lordly, indeed, yet most holy and venerable dignitaries."-Pp. 386, 387.

The reviewer proceeds to sketch the changes of English society, especially

in newly-peopled manufacturing and mining districts. He does not fail to notice with commendation "the primitive order and zeal" of the Dissenters, especially the Methodists, and their "kindly enthusiasm" in hastening to supply the religious and educational want of these newly-created masses. The following passage is full of good feeling:

"No Churchman can deny that in many districts by them alone the wavering light of Christianity was kept alive. It would, for this reason alone, be as ungracious and ungrateful as it would be unjust and impolitic, to withhold from the descendants of those who may have been thus attached to the Methodist body by the dearest bonds-the bonds of grateful recollection for their first rescue from unheeded, unrebuked infidelity-a full share in any grants from public funds for education. Even if in many cases it be but an imperfect, a superstitious Christianity which these missionaries have introduced, the best way to raise men's Christianity is to enlighten their minds. That which is coarse and vulgar, irreverently familiar, the language of human passion misapplied to sacred things, will slowly refine itself away by every step with which the general mind is softened, purified, unsensualized."-P. 390.

The reviewer proceeds (p. 391) to consider how the great and growing deficiency in the educational means of the country is to be supplied.

"Can less than legislative enactment secure adequate funds, enforce and maintain a large, comprehensive, yet flexible system, which will adapt itself to growing or to shifting exigencies? Can it be less than a national work? Will private benevolence supply, not some sudden and glorious burst of heavenaspiring waters, which, having caught the light of heaven, descends in genial dews; but a deep, and permanent, and perpetual stream, to irrigate the whole land?"

To these questions he answers, The Church cannot do it, Dissent cannot do it. The reviewer glances at the opposition threatened by some portions of the Dissenting body against education being undertaken by the State, and intimates that if he looked on Dissent with perfect hostility, then indeed he should “behold with complacent satisfaction the Dissenters of England setting themselves in array against the education of the people, at once belying all their lofty boasts of superior liberality, and condemning themselves, as preferring the narrow interests of sectarianism to the propagation of a more general and enlightened Christianity.”—P. 395.

The reviewer does not embarrass himself by adopting Dr. Hook's statistics. He proposes that the State education should be in the first instance supplementary, devoting its attention only or chiefly to neglected districts. He takes high ground on the subject of what State-schools can do in respect to religious training, and urges that though religion may not be taught, religiousness may. He strongly disapproves of the perpetual and indiscriminate use of the Scriptures as a school-book. There is much besides in this extraordinary and able article which we could wish to bring before our readers, but all our available space is consumed, and we must content ourselves, in conclusion, with recommending it to their early attention.

The Eclectic Review, November, 1846.—If we had space at our command, there are many things we should say, suggested by this No. of the Eclectic. Its principal articles are on Mr. Tayler's Religious Life of England; the Comic History of England; the Memoir of Thomas Wilson, Esq.; Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens; and on the discoveries in Australia. So far as he is personally concerned, Mr. Tayler will not complain of the tone and spirit in which his book is reviewed, although, if he agree in opinion with us, he will think there are few Eclectic reviewers who would not have written better and more wisely on the interesting subjects treated of in the Religious Life of England. We could scarcely have conceived it possible for any writer to have put together twenty pages of matter suggested by Mr. Tayler's work, so little worth a perusal. After quoting a passage from Mr. Tayler's Preface, he describes it as "certainly a very ill-constructed and bewildering sentence." The sentence thus condemned, though not a favourable specimen of Mr. Tay

ler's writing, is light and simplicity itself when contrasted with his reviewer's opaque and turgid style. His principal complaint against Mr. Tayler is, that he does not think Calvinism an amiable form of religion or conducive to freedom of inquiry. The reviewer has laboured very hard to shake Mr. Tayler's positions, but with so little ability or success, that we care not to take further notice of his remarks. There is one passage in the article which we will quote, not, however, with any intention of confuting or criticising it: it needs not that. The reviewer puts this, together with other matter, into the mouth of a Deist-" You Unitarians agree among yourselves in little more than this, that there was once a man, and that his name was Christ." The reviewer would probably defend the plausibility of this sneer (more he could not do) by quoting some of the offensive anti-supernatural dogmas of Theodore Parker and his English panegyrists. We have long been aware that the whole Unitarian body would have to pay the penalty of being misunderstood and reviled in consequence of the perhaps careless, certainly irreverent, speculations of bold and dashing writers, willing at any cost to astonish, and utterly heedless of the effect of their opinions on other minds. Most remote from our purpose and our wish is it to check true freedom of inquiry and discussion; but we do most earnestly deprecate all heedless, random and wanton provocation of religious prejudice, by the publication of crude ideas, passionately adopted to-day and capriciously thrown aside to-morrow. Liberal theology is at the present moment not slightly injured by conduct of this kind.

Of the article on the life and character of Thomas Wilson, the munificent patron of Highbury College and of very many Independent chapels, we can speak generally with respect. It is for the most part thoughtful and honest. We find no mention in it of Mr. Wilson's proceedings as a Chancery relator, and suppose that the present painful and embarrassing condition of the Hewley suit disinclines his biographer, or at least his reviewer, to refer unnecessarily to the huge pile of documents on which is endorsed, "The Attorney-General on the relation of Thomas Wilson and others." But we find in the Review some observations on the subject of the trust-deeds of chapels which are sufficiently remarkable. The course adopted by Mr. Wilson in this matter does not approve itself to the Eclectic reviewer. The italics are ours.

"According to common report, Mr. Wilson's form of trust-deed was open, more or less, to two objections-the creation of a power independent of the church, and a specification, descending even to the minuter points, of doctrines to be received, and rites to be practised, by the associated body. If this be so much evil may be apprehended; not immediately, perhaps, but as surely, however slow the process, as effect follows cause. Both points are, in our judgment, infractions of the first principle of our ecclesiastical polity; and it is marvellous that the latter has so long eluded detection and exposure. According to our principles, the church is the conservator of truth. God has committed it to her; it is her high and special vocation; and every appeal from her to the magistrate, of whatever order, indicates want of faith in God's arrangement, and a leaning, however unconsciously, to the appliances of secular policy. We are no more justified in making the Lord Chancellor the protector of our purity of doctrine, than we are in constituting our civil rulers the upholders and extenders of the truth."

All this is most true and excellent, but why is it spoken now? Where was this high-minded Congregationalist when the courts of law were resounding with the din of a theological warfare, and Vice-Chancellor and Chancellor after Chancellor were appealed to, to decide on the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of professors of Christ's Holy Gospel? The lash was then held over the heads of the Unitarians, and the Eclectic reviewer was mute. But now there is a change. They who wielded the scourge are now in danger of feeling its lash. The principles which Congregational relators have been the means of fixing, are as applicable to semi-Arminian Calvinists as they were to Unitarian-Presbyterians. Hence this lugubrious cry. It is, as a friend happily observed, "the passionate howl of one who fears the rod himself has made."

DOMESTIC.

INTELLIGENCE.

Opening of the New Chapel and Schoolrooms of the "Christian Brethren" at Mottram.

The traveller journeying by the high road between Manchester and Sheffield, cannot fail to notice the ancient town of Mottram in Longdendale. It is the most conspicuous object in what Mr. Hunter appropriately enough calls "the tongue of Cheshire-land interposing between Yorkshire and Lancashire, and doubtless in remote times a part of Yorkshire." The lofty hill on which the town is built is crowned by the church, with its well-proportioned tower, which has braved the storms of centuries. In this ancient church, two years after the Act of Uniformity (1664, June 5), the good Oliver Heywood once preached by invitation from the churchwarden and with the consent of the vicar, though a Conformist." From the spacious churchyard, a noble panoramic view is beheld, extending over portions of Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire and Derbyshire. Ten years ago, the idea of an Unitarian congregation arising in this town, would by all acquainted with the district have been treated as an idle dream. Then the inhabitants were for the most part either Churchmen or Methodists of the New Connection. But at that very time a process was going on in Mottram and other places, destined to produce an extraordinary change in the religious opinions of large masses of people. Mr. Joseph Barker had been a little before settled as a Methodist preacher in a mountainous village in the same district, called Mossley. His preaching—plain, scriptural, masculine and earnest every where carried the people with him. The impression made by his public services was deepened by the self-denial of his life. When the chief-priests and rabbis of the New Connection Conference began the series of persecutions against Mr. Barker, the members of the Mottram church only felt their favourite preacher more endeared to them, because they saw that he was made to suffer for his zeal and his independence. When Mr. Barker left the Connection, the members of the Mottram church almost unanimously did the same. So completely was the power of the Conference prostrated, so far as Mottram was concerned, by this

to them most unexpected secession, that they not only did not think it expedient to attempt to continue the service, but, there being a debt on the chapel, they permitted the seceding brethren to rent it. The little church, ministered to entirely by lay preachers, increased from year to year in numbers and importance. The schools were admirably tended, and were resorted to by the children from the whole surrounding district, and had become the most numerous, as they had long been considered the best taught, in the town. A change soon began to come over the theology of the people. Themselves the objects of reviling and persecution, they saw the unchristian character and hatefulness of all bigotry, and opened their minds to instruction and truth from all quarters About two years ago, they were preached to for the first time by an Unitarian minister, the Rev. Franklin Howorth, of Bury, and so strong was the impression made by that preacher's earnestness in the cause of truth and righteousness (especially temperance), and still more by his catholic and loving spirit, that the prejudices still lingering in their minds against Unitarian ministers were removed. The change going on was not unmarked by the managers of the New Connection, and a decided step was taken early in the present year, by which it was vainly thought that the church would be checked, if not dispersed. The trustees gave notice to them to quit the chapel. It was resumed by the circuit preachers, and all means were used to detach worshipers, teachers and scholars from the heretical society. The trustees of the chapel had in their need borrowed a sum of money some years ago from a Benevolent Society, composed almost entirely of those who are now known by the name of the "Christian Brethren." For this loan they have until the present time continued to pay legal interest; but the evil spirit now actuating them is evinced by the fact, that the trustees have recently stated their determination to discontinue the payment of interest, and not to discharge the principal debt. The congregation, driven from the chapel which they had helped to build, were not cast down. Being encouraged by the friendly interest taken in their proceedings by some of the Unitarians in the neighbourhood, and particularly