ing your survey over the present activity of the Christian Church. To what results are the efforts of religious zeal and Christian philanthropy tending? In what enterprises are they engaged? Laudable and noble are the purposes which they contemplate, but they fall short of a righteousness as extensive as human relations and as deep as human motives. I do not question, for I do not doubt, the propriety of the operations which Christian benevolence, though under sectarian banners, is pursuing; nor do I entertain any doubt that much good is done. But still it is neither the tendency nor the effect of these operations to implant in men's minds a persuasion, that the highest service to which the child of God can aspire on earth will be found in the daily discharge of duty under the familiar circumstances of life. The effect of much of what is said and done for the cause of Christ is, to turn away attention from the truth, that the cause of Christ is best promoted when character is formed and strengthened and perfected by the influences of his religion. How seldom do the audience collected at a Missionary meeting, or on the anniversary of any of our religious Associations, return to their homes with a deeper impression of the importance of habitual self-government, and calm but ceaseless improvement. How few are made to feel, in consequence of their sympathy with what are styled the great Christian movements of the age, that that which it chiefly concerns them to do is to "live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world" How many through this very sympathy are hindered from leading "quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty." I would not be understood to condemn or disapprove of these movements. Rather let me say, success attend them! But there is need of some.

thing more than has yet been undertaken. There is need of a movement that shall strike lower, and aim higher, and work with a wider influence upon character and life, than any that has yet been commenced. Let us see a movement that shall result in making Christians take up their cross daily and follow Christ, in the allegiance of true discipleship, through the cares and labors and trials and pleasures of ordinary life, through the passages of the soul's secret experience as well as along the ways that lie open to public view.

A work then remains to be done, an office to be undertaken, an idea to be practically unfolded, by some of those who bear the Christian name. On whom does it devolve if not on us, brethren, and those who with us are not ashamed to bear with the naine of Christian the farther designation of Unitarian? The inference which I promised to draw from the glance we have cast over the Christian Church is this, that we as a denomination must make it our business to spread righteousness through the land. This is the idea which must give stability and life and force to our denomination. To illustrate this idea, and to commend it to the understandings and hearts of others, must be the service to which we shall devote ourselves as the disciples of a crucified but exalted Master. This is our proper and peculiar service. Others, in their ignorance or their misguided preference, have left it for our hands to execute. Shame on us, if we let it lie without even attempting its performance! Shame and guilt! guilt heavier far than can rest on others who mistake the central principle of the Gospel. If we have taken a more just view than they of Christianity, we are bound, by the obligations of fidelity to ourselves and to them, to put

forth our best endeavors to make them see what we see of its divine proportions. I said just now that there might be one exception to the remark, that all existing sects had neglected to make righteousness the origin and end of their labors. This exception I would find among ourselves. Yet I fear that we have been so unmindful of the privilege which Providence seems to have cast upon us, and of the glory which others have left for us to acquire, that we must speak with hesitation of our discernment of the true basis on which a Christian denomination should raise the pyramid of its achievements. We believe that righteousness is the whole duty and the chief good of man. Here then is the ground which we must occupy. On this belief we must act, both individually, and in the use of our associated energies. Our present persuasions furnish us with just what is best fitted to make us a prosperous and effective denomination. Here planting ourselves, we may assail the strong-holds of error on the one side, and of sin on the other, with as sure a prospect of success as can ever be enjoyed by human foresight. The activity and zeal which environ us and spread round in constantly enlarging circles, supply a reason for our engaging in this work. With undeniable good that comes from the excitement which other sects delight to feel and to diffuse, this evil, it must be confessed, attends its diffu sion, that a false view of the nature of religion is likely to be introduced into the mind, or to be confirmed where it already exists. The decisive objection to revivals, when conducted in the least exceptionable manner, is, that they tend to strengthen the belief in the community, that religion consists in certain frames of mind or certain peculiar experiences, rather than in the conscientious and uni

form discharge of duty amidst the circumstances of familiar life. This error we must combat. It is the great error; worse by far than any speculation that may be entertained concerning the Trinity, or the connexion of the cross of Christ with the salvation of the sinner. We alone, of all Christian sects, can effectually resist its establishment in the minds of the people, because we stand alone in adopting a different conception of the religious experience. We must overpower the glare of a false theory by pouring forth the steady brightness of the truth.

Our conception, I say, of the religious experience is peculiar; because we make it to consist in a progressive obedience to the laws of God, rising from the imperfect steps of a new life to the perfection of a vigorous and uniform virtue. It has been the reproach which others have endeavored to lay on us, though in truth our honorable distinction, that we have made righteousness the great theme of our preaching and he nucleus of our religious associations. It has been admitted, by those who have made it an occasion of rebuke, that we have urged morality as the essential interest of man. I need not stop to vindicate Unitarianism from the censure with which it has been loaded for attaching such importance to character. It neither requires nor will it accept such vindication. When we shrink from acknowledging this to be its distinction, we betray our ignorance or we expose our fear. It is the distinction, and the glorious distinction, of the Christianity which we expound, and which alone we believe is taught in the Bible, that it makes character the essential, and the only essential requisition. Let not its friends be ashamed of this distinction, nor afraid to avow it. Bring it before the people, and keep it before their

sight; and whether they admire or scoff, whether they respond to our appeal in words of sympathy or of warning, still let us be faithful in asserting this its divine claim to the attention of mankind. On this point I wish we might speak with a tone of decision, that is not common enough with us. Without imitating the dogmatism or the bigotry of other sect, we may demand for the great principle of righteousness the attention which it deserves. In regard to those opinions which fall within the province ' of theology, and in our adherence to which we differ from other Christians, we may not feel ourselves justified in using such positive language as is familiar on their tongues; for, however clear may be our faith, we must still confess our own as well as their fallibility. But in regard to the importance of personal righteousness we may not be silent, nor speak doubtingly. Firmly and fearlessly, and from a spirit of kindness towards the souls of men, we must lay open the solemn and weighty import of the commandment, which calls us all to purity and integrity of life. Whether they whom we address, I repeat, will hear or will forbear, will deride or will consent, we must, if we love their souls, or our own, or the truth as it is in Jesus, we must exhort, and charge, and beseech them to clothe themselves in the righteousness which is through faith, as the only garment that will admit them to the presence and joy of the Lamb, the judge of quick and dead, when he shall say, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

That this is the true and natural basis on which we must build ourselves up as a religious denomination, I trust, is placed beyond dispute. And now I add, that it