land. At first the Calvinistic doctrines were not rejected, but generally dropped out of preaching, as rather rugged, and well enough known already. Nor were they dropped formally and avowedly, but by common, tacit consent. Some who exhibited them occasionally, did it apologetically, and as if they were of very little consequence. There are men now living who remember to have heard Dr. Osgood of Medford, and such as he, preach these distinguishing doctrines quite fully, and then, at the close, tell their hearers, in substance, "These are the truths which the Bible seems plainly to teach; nevertheless there are many good men who think otherwise, and I leave you to receive or reject them as you may feel inclined." This first stride downward being taken, the way grew more and more precipitous; and when they had passed away, their churches proceeded to settle avowed Unitarian pastors over them, constraining small minorities to withdraw, rebuild, and, under great disadvantages and bitter reproach, fight the battle anew for the primitive faith and piety.

Who were the divisives of that conflict? Is disease or remedy to be ranked as the detested invader? For that was not a causeless, or a trifling battle. Then, for a memorable period, the strife and tumult, as often before, resounded. Then was heard the clangor of arms, the wail of the wounded, and the shout of the victors, mingling in mournful discord, as Jehovah sifted out, and led back his humbled followers to the original Puritan standards from which they had so wickedly and perilously departed. Again the Spirit was poured out, as in Pentecostal times; the great benevolent societies were organized; and the revivals of 1832 and 1837 stimulated the increasing sacramental hosts to unheard of activity and zeal.

But along with this unwonted activity, it was but natural that there should come new perils to truth. It produced a hot-bed growth of evangelists, revivalists, reformers, and laborers for immediate effect. It engrossed the mind with external appliances and onward progress to the neglect of, or out of proportion with, deep, scriptural cultivation of the heart and the appreciation of first principles. It has accustomed the Church to such great and rapid changes as to expose us to the danger of the most debauching and reckless radicalism, that

of loving the excitement of change, and desiring novelty for its own sake; for radicalism in religion lays the foundation for radicalism in politics and all reforms.

Again the time seems to have come when many ministers and churches are looking about, like Christian and Hopeful, for some smoother way than the rugged old path, and some are already climbing over the stile into By-path Meadow. That there are, at the present day, tendencies to new and dangerous forms of Arminianism, we think, cannot be overlooked by those who are prepared to examine candidly, being free from selfish, partisan, and entangling friendships and alliances, and "who, by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." That it will be generally seen and admitted before it gains firm and bold possession, is more than can be expected, according to all the history of its repeated incomings. We think it can and should be boldly met and resisted now in its beginnings, and thus much of the bitterness and disaster of rupture and division be prevented. But always the encroachments of error have been doubted, denied, and the very idea scouted, until it has strongly entrenched itself. While, on the one hand, we would be the last to excite needless alarm and jealousy, on the other we would lift up our voice against that false and lazy charity, and that fatal delay which will not believe in the existence of an enemy until it has quietly taken our fortifications and turned our own Columbiads upon us. If we must err, let it be on the side of safety, rather than on the side of ease and quiet. It were better that an aggressive army, like the Christian, should be aroused by a false alarm, to set double watch, to send out scouts, and to make thorough examination, than that they should be overtaken in determined sleep and dreamy safety. The success of Wellington, as he advanced into Portugal and Spain, is attributed chiefly to his caution and prudence in making impregnably secure every position behind him.

We do not intend to indicate all the present signs of New and divisive theology, preferring that Christians should be stimulated to open their eyes and look about them. Having fresh before us the past plausible and treacherous modes of the entrance of great errors, in the place and garb of truth, as Satan

entered Eden, we will delay the reader only with the briefest mention of a few particulars, chiefly for the purpose of calling special attention to them. And we will begin by referring more specifically to that unwillingness to make, or allow of, faithful examination, which was strongly hinted at but a little above. If the ministry and churches are all abiding substantially in the Old theology, why is the alarm so readily and violently taken so soon as the proposition for faithful investigation of doctrines is made? How easily the whole Church might be convinced and satisfied by encouraging and facilitating the inquiry, if there is felt to be really nothing to conceal. Is it not the surest sign of the incipient demoralization of an army in an enemy's country, if they not only refuse to be watchful, but also pour contempt and ridicule upon, and even forcibly silence, those who would be watchful? It was Flatterwell that led the pilgrims, by a road which turned away by small degrees, until they fell into a net, and then "the white robe fell off the black man's back, and they saw where they were.' "A man that flattereth his neighbor spreadeth a net for his feet." (Prov. 29: 5.)

But there are other and more positive signs of the New theology in the Church. It is well sometimes to consider what the avowed opposers of the Calvinistic faith think and say of us; for they, standing on the outside, have advantages and are often keen observers of important tendencies and changes which are hardly noticed by the busy actors within the Church. According to the Arab proverb, "It is better to have a wise enemy than a foolish friend." From a score of similar extracts we select the following portion of a letter by Rev. Thomas Starr King, written in San Francisco, on the first of January last, to the Hollis Street church of Boston, on the occasion of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the dedication of their church-edifice.

"But the need for our movement is obviated just as fast as a more rational and savory interpretation of the Gospel is furnished from the popular Church. Where the Westminster Confession is commended in its grim strength and dreary symmetry, there is pressing need of a distinct liberal organization. But where Henry Ward Beecher preaches, there is surely far less need of it. In a community where the Puritan Recorder furnishes the type of theological teaching

and the mould of character, there must be a liberal Christian Church; but not so certainly in a district where a spirit, as in the junior pastor of the Old South, is the medium of Orthodoxy. Let the Athanasian creed be poured into the community through the soul of an Episcopal clergyman warped into its likeness and a vital organ of it, and a Unitarian Church will spring out of the ground near it; but let a man like Rev. Mr. Maurice fill the Episcopal structure with his thought and charity, and there will be very little pressure to organize a hostile theological demonstration. And it is because

the methods of interpretation within portions of the Sacrificial Church have been changing, and the mould of character enlarging, that the Unitarian and Universalist movement has not met a far wider visible

success.

"There is need for us yet, as a distinct, and to some extent combative party. But our mission is to hasten the time when the Church in general shall modify her creeds, and grant more freedom to thought, and organize more charity, and receive again into fellowship the needful forces which her narrowness has spurned."

He could have given no higher praise of "The Boston Recorder" as an efficient agency in withstanding infidelity, and the friends whom it represents should take note of it and be multiplied by thousands. But what must we infer in relation to two opposite papers of the denomination? Surely they, and the ministers mentioned, are, in his opinion, but representatives and leaders of a large class in the Trinitarian Congregational Church, who are furnishing "a more rational and savory interpretation" of the Gospel, and making progress towards the so-called Liberal, or Broad Church. And we have very many proofs that Mr. King is but imprudently speaking out the convictions of hundreds and thousands of the haters of what he calls the Sacrificial faith.

It cannot fail to be seen that many of the Arminian "notions," which Edwards found it necessary in his day to combat so boldly, and which were thought to have been forever refuted, are now again finding numerous, and more or less outspoken, advocates among the leaders and instructors of the Church. Then, as commonly in these periodic struggles, the battle raged around those great doctrinal centres of original sin, and efficient grace as related to free will, which bear so direct and necessary an influence upon all our views of the Atonement, Regenera

tion, and Decrees. So now, a minister boldly assaults and claims to have overthrown the positions of Edwards's great work on the Will. And straightway he is promoted to a Theological Professorship where he may secretly, that is, unobserved by the Church, instil his peculiar and divisive notions into the minds of our future ministry. And here we are bound to take warning from the immediate past. For, though Taylorism, as a system, may now be said to have been repudiated, yet it has left its poisonous influences in the minds of a multitude of pastors, tinging all their preaching with the un-Edwardian and preposterous opinion that, after all, God foresees conditions in certain individuals, or at least conditions ab extra to his own mind, on account of which He elects them; and also, that a heart alienated by nature, as the leopard's skin is spotted by nature, can be changed, new-created, by merely suasory power!

more savory

Again, it cannot be denied that new and " interpretations" were desired when two were desired when two new congregational papers were forced into being at vast expense and sacrifice, and a divisive and sectarian movement was thus inaugurated, filling the churches and the land with bitterness and strife. The editor of one of these papers has frankly confessed his position to be that of a compromise between Arminianism and Calvinism. And the editor of the other, in his recent lecture in Boston, on Jonathan Edwards, as we understand him, attributes the peculiar theological views of that great man very much to his deep piety and peculiar education !

Moreover, the strong and clear views of Edwards and Calvin on Original Sin, the satisfaction of divine justice in the Atonement, and the source and ground of Faith, seem to be stumbling-blocks in the theological instruction which was thought once to have been so strongly and doubly committed to the Westminster Confession and unequivocal Calvinism. Many of the old terms, so much employed by the great men of former times, such as Imputation and Substitution, are greatly qualified, set aside, or ridiculed. And if the professor emphasizes the expression, "Sin consists in sinning," it is not wonderful if the young preachers sometimes go forth apparently with the high ambition of convincing the churches that they have been