ON CALLING YOUNG MEN TO THE MINISTRY, Page 337 348 352 355 362 365 370 378 380 380 380 381 382 382 383 386 TERMS. This work is published at Boston, in monthly numbers of forty. eight octavo pages, forming a volume of five hundred and seventy-six pages, original matter, for two dollars per annum, payable on the delivery of the first number. No person will be considered as a subscriber, who does not distinctly make known his wish to that effect. His subscription will be continued on our books, till a discontinuance is ordered, and all arrearages are paid. Any person remitting to this office nine dollars, shall receive six copies of the Christian Observatory for one year. Clergymen will be supplied with the work at one half the subscription price, or one dollar per annum. Clergymen in whose congregations six copies are taken, will be furnished gratuitously. Subscribers, indebted for the work, are requested, if they please, to send the amount to our office, by mail, at our risk. Communications relating to the editorial department may be directed to A. W. McClure, No. 21 Cornhill, Boston. Communications relating to the business of the office should be directed to the subscribers. JOHN V. BEANE & CO., PUBLISHERS, No. 21 Cornhill, Boston. THE tactics of the Unitarians, in their warfare against orthodoxy, are both curious and simple. The whole policy seems to consist in ringing all possible variations on either of two tunes, according to the immediate object to be attained. If it be the present purpose to make some new inroads upon us, they loudly proclaim and magnify the differences between us and them. All the talk is of our creed-bondage, our dislike of free inquiry, our bigotry, our exclusiveness, our gloominess, and our ignorance. These, and the like repulsive traits are largely imputed to us. We are spoken of, as certainly worshipping three separate gods, as fatalists, as believers in the damnation of infants, and as mortally opposed to all the joyous affections and innocent delights of life.* All this is contrasted with the liberality, the mental freedom, the simple belief, the refinement and literary cultivation, which are assumed as the manifest attributes of Unitarianism. But when, on the contrary, the object is not so much to steal anything more from us, as to keep what they have purloined, and prevent it from relapsing into our rightful possession, then the strain is reversed at once, as easily as the notes of the lyre can be changed from one tune to another. The differences between us and them dwindle almost to nothing. We are entirely agreed as to the main truths of the gospel, the necessity of practical goodness and godly living. There is no As one confirmation of this statement, we refer to the numerous slanders of "Crito," the New York correspondent of the "Christian Register," and to the more recent calumnies of the editor of that paper. VOL. II. 29 diversity except in unessential points, matters of mere speculation and private opinion. They strive to talk as evangelically as possible. They artfully use orthodox phraseology, and by mental reservation employ our customary religious diction, which they used to call our "cant," in some constrained Unitarian sense. The morality of this practice has even been elaborately defended by Dr. Dewey and others. It pleases them mightily to fancy that they exactly hit the tone of orthodox discourse, like the Frenchman who vain-gloriously boasts of speaking English "like one native," wholly unconscious how absurdly "his speech bewrayeth him." Alas! to think, that they can drown themselves in such a shallow delusion as to imagine, that the vocabulary of spiritual religion can ever serve as a substitute for piety; or that it can be naturally uttered, except as it comes from the fulness of a heart which grace has turned from depravity and emnity to love and devotion. While in this mood, they will profess to believe in the scriptural doctrines as to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, salvation by Christ's death, regeneration, and the necessity of faith. They harp upon the close approximation, almost amounting to identity, of the two opposing systems, and follow the fashion set by the late Dr. Holley, who, we believe, first applied to these systems Butler's famous couplet: With all submission, however, the difference may amount to as much as, in the nature of the thing is possible. The names Rehoboam and Jeroboam might jingle quite harmoniously in Hudibrastic rhyme; but for all that, as the Bible has it, "there was war between them all their days." It is a great object with Unitarianism to "get in " as much as possible with other denominations. It hopes, in this way to impregnate all about it with its leaven. It has never been fond of marching forth into the open field, to uplift its standard, and to gather under it all who can be enticed or constrained to enlist. It prefers to creep in by side-cuts, to insinuate itself into religious establishments already existing, and to slily seize into its possession all it can before suspicion is aroused. It has no sympathy with the noble disposition of the apostle, "not to boast in another man's line of things made ready to his hand." Rather than found its own seminaries, it will furtively manage to get the control of some orthodox institution, such as Harvard College originally was. Rather than build its own tabernacles, it will, if possible, by all the concealed arts of policy and management, obtain the legal control of the temples piously dedicated to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Thus of the one hundred and sixty-four Unitarian churches now existing in Massachusetts, only fifty were originally planted by Unitarian enterprize. The others were founded by the Orthodox; but were subsequently manœuvred into the hands of their wily opposers. Some of these spoliations were attended with circumstances of aggravated moral cruelty; and many a "house of prayer" has been made into a robbers' cave. This wholesale plundering is varnished over with the polite and taking title of "progress of liberal sentiments." And even now, in public addresses and sermons, the Unitarians console themselves for the slow growth of their denomination as a recognized sect, by asserting that they are accomplishing their "mission" still better by the silent and sure process of corrupting the orthodoxy of the evangelical bodies around them. It is inconceivable how they can glory in such shame; but, at some points, their consciences seem strangely void of sensibility. This besetting sin of theirs, this disposition to secure to themselves the exclusive control of religious and charitable trusts which were not originally designed for them, well entitles them to the name of the "Spoils' Party." Some very noticeable strokes of their craft and subtlety in such matters were developed at the last Convention of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts. At its meeting in 1847, this body, at the instance of the Pastoral Association, which comprises the orthodox ministry of the state, had appointed a Committee of twelve, half of them orthodox, and half of them Unitarian, "to take into consideration the relations and rights of the respective denominations in the Convention, and the Massachusetts Congregational Charitable Society." At the meeting this year, that Committee presented an elaborate and able Report, which had the sanction of all the orthodox, and of three of the Unitarian members of the Committee. This report gives a brief history of the Convention; of the manner in which it originated the charity funds for the relief of the widows and orphans of its members; of the steps taken by it |