welcome this substantial Quarterly, which for nearly sixty years has existed, with little change in its outward form, and has had a steady influence in connection with the most important subjects of literature, politics and affairs. There have been times in recent years when we have feared it was growing plethoric and must give place to some of its fresher rivals, but, with this number before us, such a fear can no longer be entertained. For interest and variety in the choice of subjects and for ability in their treatment it may challenge comparison with its predecessors under the charge of the Everetts and Dr. Peabody and the others who make the honored list of its editors.

We have received the following periodicals for May: The Atlantic Monthly, Hurd & Houghton; Scribner's Monthly, from A. Williams & Co.; The Eclectic, from A. Williams & Co.; The Sanitarian ; Harper's Magazine, from A. Williams & Co.

Death and the Resurrection. A Sermon preached on Sunday, March 15, 1874. By C. O. Bradlee, Senior Pastor of the Christian Unity Society, Boston. A Sacred Tribute placed upon the graves of Millard Fillmore and Charles Sumner.

A Discourse on Charles Sumner, delivered at the First Congregational Church, New Bedford, March 22, 1874, by Rev. William J. Potter.

An Address delivered before the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, on the evening of Feb. 22, 1874, by Andrew P. Peabody.

In Memory of Charles Sumner. Sermon preached at King's Chapel, Sunday, March 22, 1874, by Henry W. Foote, and Services at the Funeral, March 15, 1874.

Senatorial Character. A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, March 15, after the Decease of Charles Sumner, by C. A. Bartol.

Sermon on the death of Hon. Charles Sumner preached by Rev. John Wills at the Congregational Unitarian Church of First Parish, Mansfield, Mass., Sunday, March 15, 1784.

THE UNITARIAN STANDARD.*

THE distinctive feature of Unitarian Christianity is the emphasis which it puts on the character of Christ, "the Spirit of Life in Jesus," or, in still other Apostolic phrase, "the Mind of Christ."

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Jesus," says Martineau, "is the type of the pure religious life; all its developments being crowded, by the rapid ripening of his soul, into his brief experience; and we read in the gospel a divine allegory of humanity, symbolical of those profound and silent changes of passion and speculation, of faith and love, through which a holy mind rises to its most godlike power." "Nothing," said Dr. Channing, "has wrought so powerfully on the human soul as the mind and character of Jesus Christ. Among all means of civilization and improvement I can find nothing to be compared in energy with this. The great impulse which is to carry forward the human race is the character of Jesus, understood ever more

* Standard: “A staff with a flag or colors." "That which is established as a rule or model, by the authority of public opinion, or by respectable opinions, or by custom and general consent." — Webster.

clearly, and ever more deeply felt." "We have," says Dr. Furness, "in the personal character of Jesus an all-inspiring revelation of what is, of what is in the nature that we all share with him. Not from any theological propositions, however logically sound, not from any verbal precepts, however wise and pure, can we draw the strength that we greatly need amidst the impenetrable mystery of life. It is in the being of Jesus that the saving power of our Christianity dwells." "In Jesus," says Theodore Parker," the Godlike and the Human met and embraced, and a Divine Life was born. . . . As the result of his virgin purity of soul and perfect obedience, the light of God shone down into the very deeps of his soul, bringing all of the Godhead which flesh can receive. . . . And real Christianity gives men new life. . . . It would lead us to form Christ in the heart, on which Paul laid such stress, and work out our salvation by this; for by the Christ we form in our hearts, and live out in our daily life, we save ourselves, God working with us both to will and to do." † By this consensus of representative voices, Unitarian Christianity is shown to have a standard, though it may have no creed; to furnish an adequate basis for the religious life, though it can offer no tenement-house of theology "To be let" to those who cannot build for themselves. Orthodox Christianity also has its common standard as distinguished from the differing creeds of its various sects. This standard of orthodoxy is very clearly stated in the paper read at the session of the Evangelical Alliance, in New York, by Dr. Theodore Christlieb, an eminent German divine. "Our central position or citadel," says Dr. Christlieb, "is the redemption and atonement accomplished by Jesus Christ. This central dogma of the atonement," he continues," requires certain presuppositions, in respect both of God and man, which are absolutely indispensable if it is to stand. The presuppositions are these: Our naturally lost condition by reason of sin . . . and the saving will of God

* Sermon on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity. †M. Albert Reville, the distinguished French Protestant of the Liberal School, says, in a recent notice of Max Müllers Lecture on Missions, "The essential element in the Christian character and the Christian life is the religious and moral disposition of the soul, whose fundamental traits are visible in the historic personality of Jesus."

caused by his merciful love which carried out the atonement by means of the God-man, Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen."

Observe now these opposing standards of Liberal and Evangelical Christianity. The former is a "rule or model" for the religious life, the latter a fortress in which religion is intrenched. The former is self-poised, like the globe, which swings freely as it moves on in its well-defined orbit; the latter is extensively fortified and well-bastioned, like a citadel whose own walls are confessedly inadeqate for its defense. To, me says the Unitarian, Christianity is the life manifested in Jesus, the life which ever was and ever is "the light of men," which shows me how to live and how to die, how "to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God." And this life I accept as the rose or the lily takes in the sunshine, with absolutely no presuppositions about

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it. It finds me. It feeds me. It inspires me. By its shining I

see at once the actual defects of my character and the exhaustless possibilities of my nature. This life of perfect love awakens in my own soul that twofold love which toward God is affectionate trust and toward man is brotherly kindness. So far as this force of Christian love possesses me I am enabled to make the most and the best of myself that it is possible for me to become, while "the stature of the fullness" of Christ is the clear height forever beckoning me to rise to the perfect manhood. This revelation of divine goodness in man which comes through Christ, culminates in his death on the cross. That sacred emblem,

"Lifted high among the ages,

Guide of heroes, saints, and sages,"

sets the seal to the character of Christ. The life was not lived for the sake of the death but the death was the crowning act of the life, in solemn attestation of the truth he had taught and had lived. The cross of Christ is, therefore, the convincing proof that the love which suffers, enduring all things and never failing, will forever win. It assures us that our sorrows, if borne as Christ's sorrows were borne, will ever lift us nearer to God; that what we sow in tears we may reap again in joy; that the light of Calvary can make our common griefs and frequent trials to shine with a glory like that which sunset clouds take on when the dying day

robes them in hues of crimson, purple, and gold, such as the noonday sun could never paint. This theme - the power of Christ's cross cannot be adequately set forth in this connection. It is like a rich melody of Mozart, almost exhaustless in the varied harmonies we may set it to. The point which I wish to make is simply, that Unitarian Christianity takes away no lustre that rightly belongs to the cross, while it regards the cross as marking the culmination, the highest point, of a life on whose lower slopes, radiant with the beauty of active holiness and a loving Spirit, our souls find their ordinary pasturage, the refreshing nourishment of a Christian's Faith and Hope and Love.

In thus making the mind of Christ, the Spirit of Life in Jesus, our standard, we neither take anything from, nor add anything to, that great historic personality which has so powerfully influenced the life of man, and entered so deeply into the civilization of the race, for almost nineteen centuries. It is true we pass by unnoticed the theological puzzles and philosophical enigmas which men have propounded concerning a double nature in Christ; and we pay no heed to any of those presuppositions on whose precarious foundation so many creeds of churches and systems of theology have been built up. But our conception of the character of Christ takes in all that is real in his life and work, including the death on the cross, and all that constitutes that pure Ideal which like the poet's "light that never was on land or sea," is the glow that transfigures earth and the dream anticipating heaven. Not the shifting shadow of an ancient myth, not the outgrowth of an ingenuous fanaticism which the wisdom of after ages can rightly condemn, but historically true, so that we feel sure it can be realized within the conditions of our common humanity, the life of Christ is at the same time the ideal of the Perfect Manhood, preceding and pointing our best endeavors, suggestion and prophecy of that which we yet shall be.

To the adequacy of this standard as the rule, and as an inspiration of the religious life, the testimony is very much stronger, and represents a much larger proportion of the best minds of the age, than without inquiry we might suppose to be the case. I need only refer to the noble utterances on this point of Maurice, Robertson, Stanley, and Brooke, and the other representative men of the