which has come to him direct from the hands of God, and of his solemn purpose to set it apart to the Christian faith and a holy life, what act can be more significant, or can be rendered more valid by our holiest feelings, than this of infant baptism? When to this we add, that the rite has been handed down to us through long and distant ages, and that it brings to mind one of the most beautiful acts in the life of Christ, - his laying his hands upon little children and saying, "of such is the kingdom of heaven," we are sure we do not err when we say, that for this custom the heart does not ask for any other defence, or any other authority whatever.

A

We shall close with a few words upon the other topic alluded to, the duties of Christians in relation to this ordinance. sad day will it be for our churches, when rites, of no obscure origin, traced to the Founder of our religion himself, so venerable in their age, so impressive in their significance, so touching in their simplicity, so beautiful in their associations, shall be suffered to die through our neglect. With hardly rites enough to present the great truths of our faith at all to the imagination and the senses, we should hold on, with a firm and loving hand, to such as we have. Let the believer come, and mark by its appropriate act this, the highest fact in his experience,

his separation to a pure faith and a spotless life. Let him ever remember what the meaning of the ordinance itself is, and the meaning of the words used when it is observed, — that he is set apart to a religion which came from the Father, was revealed by his Son, and confirmed by the influences of his Holy Spirit. The three leading truths of our holy faith are linked together in this sacred rite, that he may be at once and forever separated by them from a world where there is error and sin. And to this sacred rite let the parent bring his child. It is the most solemn testimony he can give of his wishes in respect to it, his prayers and everlasting hopes. These outward ordinances, as monuments of our duties and visible helps of the spirit, we all need. As ministers, we should enjoin a more careful and faithful observance of them; and the people cannot but be blessed by acts which they come forward to do for themselves.

H. A. M.

DR. CHANNING.

A GREAT and good man has been removed from among us. A great light in our moral and religious firmament has set. With pain more than we can express, we write the words, Channing is dead! We cannot allow the event to pass without some immediate notice, however brief and imperfect; without some attempt to estimate the amount of the loss we have sustained, and measure the extent of our obligations to his life and labors. We cannot now do this fully, nor in the spirit of criticism. We intend not to delineate his character, or assign him his intellectual rank, his exact place among great men, nor analyze his powers of mind. That is a work for other hands, and for a later hour. It cannot be done worthily, till the mind is calmer, and can take a more dispassionate survey of the work he has done, and the way in which he did it. All that we now pretend to do is, to endeavor to feel ourselves, and make others feel, the debt that we owe to him, looking at what he has done for us from a single point of view,— a debt that not his private friends and his parishioners only owe him, but we, and all around and abroad, near and far, in the community. We owe him a great debt, which it is good for ourselves to appreciate and acknowledge. He has been the benefactor of our minds, more probably than we are well aware. Our slight tribute of acknowledgement could not have flattered him while he lived, nor can it avail him anything now that he is dead. But it is just, it is due, and therefore it avails us something to pay it.

Probably no man has lived among us, who has exerted so large an influence upon the tone of theology, the style of preaching, and the general tenor of religious thought and sentiment, upon our serious literature, as Dr. Channing. Those who knew of him only as an able and celebrated man, standing apart, as it seemed, on the tranquil heights of contemplation, aloof, as it were, from common life, apparently little engaged in the practical details even of his own profession, seldom preaching out of his own pulpit, and not there even regularly, at least of late years, those who knew him only thus, and they are many, may wonder to hear him spoken of as having accomplished so much. He is one of the last men they would think of as having accomplished anything. But it

would be difficult to designate the man, who has accomplished so much in his day, in his sphere, and that a broad and most important one. Of the early part of his career we know nothing, except the current tradition of the interest and admiration he excited as an earnest, solemn, and effective preacher. Had he died thirty years ago, only this tradition would have remained of him, with perhaps a volume of good practical sermons; and the young would be asking of the old, as is usual with respect to volumes of sermons, how it was that they produced such an impression as they did in their day; and the old would reply, you must have heard him in order to solve that mystery. That is the way we ask and are answered respecting Buckminster, who died young. But Channing lived to furnish the fruit which the rich bloom of his youth promised.

Early in the present century, a division took place among the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts, the Orthodox ministers renouncing all fellowship with the liberal ones, so called. The way had been preparing for this division long years before the crisis occurred, which disclosed, not created, its depth and extent. The separation was accompanied and followed by doctrinal controversies. In these Dr. Channing bore a conspicuous part on the liberal side, and did his share to define and settle the doctrinal theology of the liberal churches. But this was by no means the greatest service he rendered us. Other men could have done this, and did it, as well as he. He was not foremost in this work. He was most wanted after the controversy had subsided. In the doctrinal discussions of that time, the liberal party were of course much occupied in denying, refuting the points of the Calvinist and Trinitarian, reducing their arrogant pretensions, and rebuking their exclusive spirit. It was necessarily for a time, mainly a work of denial, and of pulling down. And when it was time to rest from this, their position being defined, and they came to consider more at leisure what was the state of their own theology, what was it? They had denied and put away a great deal, and what remained? Alas, but an unpromising aspect of things. They had, it is true, a system of morality, very beautiful and discriminating in its details of duty and virtue, and by the cultivated men of that day set forth richly with literary elegances, and the nice polish of the essay style, but rather cold, not very vital, not based on the highest conception of God or of

man, not on the loftiest principles, and therefore, not the most quickening or elevating, a system which both sides alike inherited from the old theology, and the old philosophy. And as for a creed, what was it? The old doctrines, trinity, total depravity, original sin, election, decrees, all that used to constitute the creed, or any creed, was swept away; what was left of which they could make strong points? It is said, we know not how truly, that the preaching of that time was singularly cold, dry, and barren, — preachers retaining the old phraseology in which they had been brought up, but the life of it gone out along with the Calvinistic faith, dull, common-place generalities, or a frigid, denying doctrinizing, and a not very soul-stirring moralizing. We should think it must have been so to a great extent, not at all from any peculiar defect in the intellect or characters of the men of that day, but from their position, from the nature of the case. It was a transition state from the old to the new, a transition which had been in progress for many years. It was like the Israelites going out of the bondage of Egypt, they were going to a fairer, freer land, flowing with milk and honey but what a waste wilderness between. So with the men of the time we are speaking of. They were passing from an old theology to a new; or rather, from the errors which men had for ages been interweaving with Christianity, back to the simple, original, and genuine faith, once delivered to the saints; and it is not strange, if for a while they lingered with uncertain steps in the desert between. They had not yet fully discovered the inherent riches, the life-giving power of their renewed and purer Christianity. They wanted it, and they would arrive at it, but how? under what guidance? The name of Channing answers that question more fully than any other earthly name or word.

Here lay his true field, the mission he was called to. He was the man, and here was his work. He took up the liberal creed if creed it can be called, which has no more the form and systematic method of a creed, than the Gospel of John has, or the teachings of Christ - but such as it was, he took it into the embrace of his clear, capacious intellect, his elevated, ardent soul; he fixed upon it the heaven-beaming glance of his spirit's eye, and with his vigorous pen, and his simple, but glorious eloquence, he made it a creed indeed, — no, not a creed, but a religion, all one with the very Gospel of Christ. He unfolded the divinity that lay wrapped up in it; breathed into it the

breath of its original life, disclosed the hidden power that lay in it, and did more, we verily believe, to reproduce the original, unmixed Christianity on the earth, the knowledge and conception of what it really is, than any other man since the apostles' days.

The creed of the Unitarians, as they have since been called, - their creed, indeed! it is so unlike what creeds have generally been made up of, that no one thinks of calling it a creed; but whatever it is, Channing, more than any other man or men, has been its modern restorer, the spiritual Moses, called and endowed in God's providence, to smite the rock in the parched wilderness, and draw from it the life-giving waters. The simple doctrines of Christ, which men were hardly able to regard as doctrines, they were so unlike trinity, depravity, election, and various metaphysical points, to which the word doctrines had long been appropriated, those simple doctrines of Christ, hard to be recognised as doctrines, because they were so simple, he made them doctrines, as Christ did, the doctrines, the essential ones, the Gospel, God's paternal character, his love to man, - the love and service which man is capable of rendering to his Maker, man's spiritual nature and endowments, his power under God of unlimited improvement and self-elevation, the moral capabilities that are wrapt up in a human soul, the inexpressible worth of the soul, its preeminent and unapproached importance and dignity among all God's works; and then, moral principles, as viewed from this great height of such a religious faith, disinterestedness, selfsacrifice, justice, purity, progress in holiness, these and such principles raised up from the low ground of expediency and casuistic calculation, and made principles indeed, absolute, unlimited, sublime, like the very Gospel ethics; and then Christ, the Father's messenger, revealing God and his love, and man and his power, and duty and destiny, redeeming man by purifying, strengthening, elevating him, communicating his own spirit, and becoming to the disciple the way and the life, truth and inspiration, the helper, the comforter, the forerunner within the veil of the spiriual world, all this wide, unlimited, undefined range of Christian doctrine, was the sphere of Channing. These doctrines so meagre and unsatisfying in the naked statement, what riches did he disclose in them! What great and beautiful conceptions of them did he express and inspire and spread abroad! What power he had to bring down the Father in