is gazing. And, again, the Church is the Body of Christ, because each of us being imperfect, no one of us being more than, as it were, a single member, an eye, an arm, a hand, of that spiritual Body, only the united graces and action of the whole can represent the separate elements of the Fulness that dwelt in him.

Our Christian Profession, then, the end and aim of our faith in Christ, is to grow in the likeness of God, through the aid and attraction of that Son of his in whom, by the gift of his grace, we have the fulness of his Image in Human Nature. According to the Scriptures, to look on Christ as 'the Image of the Invisible God,' and to look upon Humanity 'complete in Christ,'-this is our Christian Doctrine. To strive after this in the single and solitary life of our spirits, to co-operate in this as children of one Father-this is our Christian Life.

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I shall be told that this is the end and aim of all Christian Churches-that this is no peculiarity of ours-that never did a Christian Church exist, that would not define, and find, its central life in the purpose to develop in Human Nature the Image of God given to us in the Man Christ Jesus. This is so. Christ is not divided. This is the common ground of Christian union. All Christendom agrees in this, that God reveals his Son in us in order that in each soul of Man the same Image of the Father may come into full lineament and life. This is no peculiarity of ours: in this we are differenced

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from no other Christian Church-and no other Christian Church is differenced from us. What then is our peculiarity? This simply: that we take this, this ground on which we do not differ from the rest of Christendom, for the whole of the Christian peculiarity that we suffer nothing more than this to enter into the definition of Christianity, or into the constitution of a Christian Church. Our peculiarity is this, that taking it as our aim to grow in the likeness of God after the Image of himself he has given us in the Man Christ Jesus, we pursue that aim under the conditions of absolute Liberty as to the views of God and of his Providence that may individually commend themselves to us, and by means of simple allegiance to our own convictions of Truth as God may show it to us: our object, the Image of God, to have Christ formed within us: the conditions, freedom to receive fresh help and light from the Source of all grace and knowledge: the means, personal fidelity to the measure of light given to each of us. Now all Christian Churches agree with us in our object, the reproduction in each of the Image of God as Christ has shewn it to us—and all real members of those Churches agree with us as to the means, personal fidelity to Truth, to our best conceptions of God and of his relations to Human Nature; but we stand alone as to the individual mental conditions under which this aim is to be pursued, these means employed-absolute Liberty, a Liberty never shortened, never bound, never

closed, to receive whatever fresh light God may give us, and to expect new light for ever upon his Being, his Providence, his Grace, his methods of applying that Grace, his personal relations to the human spirit, the mysteries of his infinite Nature. Upon these subjects we dare make no Articles of Religion: in these directions we dare not define the manifold immensity of God. To believe that God is the Father of every human spirit and that Jesus Christ is the pattern of our divine destiny up to the entrance on Heavenly life—we dare make nothing else essential to our Christianity. Other Churches recognizing the same object, employing the same means may grow in the Christian life, though in all other respects their views of the theory of Religion are different from ours; but if they grow, it is because they do employ the same, means, fidelity of confession and of life to their own perceptions of God. The only soul that is cut off from God is one that does not live in its own truth, that disguises or conceals its own discernments. You can have no personal vision through another man's eyes. You can have no living communication with God through a faith that is not your own. You may close the organs of sight, and live upon testimony as to the glories of the skies, and the richness of colour, and the wonders of the earth: but in so far you cease to be an independent witness: you have no testimony of your own to give. The only soul that is disabled from witnessing to

the manifold grace of God, that is disabled for bearing its part in the Church by reflecting its own ray of the infinite light, is the soul that conceals or disguises the revelation of God made to itself—that hides the portion given to it of the illimitable glory of the Father by substituting or outwardly accepting formulas of men not true to inward insight, for the living communication of the individual soul with the Eternal Spirit. We are all of us imperfect mirrors of the Father's brightness-the fulness of his presence in Christ is caught by none of us. Therefore, as the self-same Spirit divides to every man severally as he will, no soul has a right to distort itself, to defraud the Church, to hide the glory of God, to mar the countenance of the Lord, by bearing no witness, or by bearing false witness to its own 'manifestation of the Spirit.'

Personal fidelity, in profession and in practice, to our existing perceptions of Truth, and an ever open door for God to come in,-these, recognized, as the privilege and the duty of every soul that has personal relations with an infinite Spirit, are all that could be required to keep Christ from being 'divided,' to unite the whole Christian Church in a helpful and converging progress towards that one end and goal which, according to the Apostle, the Father hath predestined for us all, 'to be conformed to the Image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.'

IV.

THE CHRISTIAN UNITARIAN POSITION.

DEVOTIONAL AND PASTORAL.

'Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?'--GALATIANS iv. 16.

IN my

last Discourse I endeavoured to exhibit our

through the attraction of Jesus Christ, his image in Human Nature. Two questions remain for consideration :

What is our Devotional Character in relation to the standard and the treasures of Devotion which the Christian Church possesses?

And what modifications do our Doctrinal and Devotional characteristics introduce into the more private and personal portions of our Church administration, into our Pastoral relations?

Devotion is personal intercourse with God-the laying of our spirits to his that life may flow from the Fountain into the derived Nature: and this relation maintained not with a view to any ulterior