ny priceless blessings which have accrued to the world from that great struggle, have mainly been wrought out by this element. And by far the richest boon of the Reformation to later times, is, if we esteem things rightly, this doctrine of the rights of conscience of spiritual allegiance to the truth only, and only as truth of freedom in religious in quiry, belief, and worship. This was the gem found at the bottom of the crucible, when the fires were at last quenched and the seething elements had subsided into peace. And for these the world is indebted to the Puritans of that and the follow ing age.

Even they did not at first see both sides of this doctrine. For a long time the toleration aspect of it was hidden from them, or faintly descri ed, even after they had asserted for themselves the supremacy of conscience, and practiced the right of dissent. In all the first stages of its history, Puritanism was pressed rather to the assertion and defense of its invaded rights, than to the consideration of contingent duties. But the discovery of the one ensured that of the other. Their nonconformity necessitated the devel. opment of toleration. But its development and annunciation were all that age could produce. It was embraced by no considerable party of that period. It had dawned on many Puritan minds; but its first signal declaration and effective advocacy before the world were reserved for such men as Eliot and Vane and Cromwell-men whose highest honor it will yet be counted, that they discerned and boldly uttered, what had all along from the first been the drift and purport of Puritanism, that in matters of faith the conscience had no master but God.

But in this they outstript the age. England was not yet ripe for the reception of this doctrine. The temper of all the great religious parties was undisguised-tolerant of

anything more than of toleration. The churchmen hated it worse than they hated the kirk-the Presbyterians worse than they hated the lit urgy. In the Westminster Assembly it found advocates only among the Independents, and was bitterly denounced from every other quarter. "Toleration!" cried one of the members, "it will make the kingdom a chaos, a Babel, another Amsterdam, a Sodom, an Egypt, a Babylon : Toleration is the grand work of the devil, his master-piece and chief engine to uphold his tot tering kingdom. As original sin is the fundamental sin, having the seed and spawn of all sin in it, so toleration hath all errors in it, and all evils." That venerable body was occupying a position such as no other ever occupied. It had for its work to organize the religion of England-to give it something in place of the prelacy that had been uprooted. In this spirit they were doing that work, and Presbyterian state-churchism, instead of Episcopal, was the best it could find the heart to offer-absolutism under this form, instead of that! Evidently there must be more Stuarts in England. There was need of a Restor ation, and "healing declarations," and Savoy Conferences issuing in another Bartholomew's Day-need of campaignings by Jeffrys, and dragoonings by Claverhouse, and all too little to complete the discipline of England by evil unto good. It is not yet completed. It was the vocation of that stormy age only to work out and heave to the surface the doctrine of toleration; not to reap its blessings, but to cast it forth as bread on the waters, to be found after many days.

Yet in this progress of things the doctrine of intoleration became necessarily modified. There was not more tolerance; there was the same wish and effort to enforce on all consciences the faith once delivered by law. But there was a great change

going forward during this whole period, in respect to the means deemed available to this end. Happily, the taste of the age had lost its relish for fire as the test of orthodoxy. The "turn or burn" decree could no longer go forth. Persecution must abate its savagery, and mingle discretion with its madness. Yet as we look back over that whole event ful century and a half, from the Reformation to the Revolution, and compare the methods of persecution which successively prevailed, we scarce know which to prefer, the horrible rigor of the Tudors, that sent its hundreds to the flames, or the equal bigotry of the Stuarts, which reached with modified terrors as many thousands through the nation-that never tired of the detail of cruelty-that threw into jeopardy all but the life of every man who chose in religion, and hunted its crowds to the prisons, or hurried them out of the land.

Since the period of the Commonwealth, a new power has wrought to modify still farther the methods by which uniformity of faith shall be enforced. The doctrine of toleration had now found utterance in England too-and though never espoused, though abjured to this hour in that country in any but a partial and mutilated form of it, it has nevertheless been there as a presence and a power ever since. "Small by degrees and beautifully less," is the history of persecution for the last three centuries, certainly in respect to its popularity and the severity of its measures. But the decline is more rapid from the time of the Commonwealth. The new element then took effect. Charles II. could return to defend the faith by betraying all who trust ed him, reversing all that liberty had gained, and heaping indecent abuse on the dead Protector and his compeers-thus doing into English what is written, that "a living dog is better than a dead lion;" but

he could no longer persecute like his father, still less like his grandfather, least of all like the Tudors. He had a new force to contend with, which he could neither understand nor resist, and which was henceforth destined to baffle every scheme of enforced uniformity. The unremitted attempt for more than a century to crush down every aspiration after civil or religious liberty, had been as so many incantations, and had sufficed to raise at last a spirit that would not down. Almost as an involuntary groan, the crushed heart of England had at last uttered the doctrine of the right of all men to freedom and protection in all purely religious matters. From that day a new restraint is apparent on every attempt to employ the old enginery of ecclesiastical despotism. There was persecution still, as there yet is; but it was rapidly becoming possible only by a negative plan— by the privative process of denying rights and curtailing privileges-by the invention of disabilities, and cunning test-oaths, instead of open and direct inflictions. A little later we begin to find bills of compre hension and acts of toleration discussed in parliament, very imperfect in kind, and still more in their issue; and yet they testify that a new thought was at work in England-that a new principle was feeling its way toward ultimate prevalence. It has thus far had progress, but not victory. For the last fifty years, the new tendency toward free religion has accomplished not a little in outward and visible results; and shadows are thrown up of events yet to rise, certifying us of a greater than all visible changes in the thoughts and intents of English hearts.

It is a deeply interesting problem now in process of solution in the British Isles, and it has significance for other lands and for all coming time: What-with a church, on

the one hand, allied to the state, embedded changelessly in the forms and modes of the sixteenth century, absolutism the law of its being, never having for a moment forgot ten itself so far as to adopt the principle of toleration, but simply sunk its constraints from the exterminating to the exasperating point-with a population, on the other hand, more than half dissenters, annoyed, disqualified, and alienated by an intolerance that persecutes as it can, and is perpetually grasping the sword it dare not draw-with a question of Ireland, and of the Catholic claims still pressing for settlement, and full of the elements of dissension and peril-what is England about to do with all this? It looks like the fifth act of the English reformation.

In our own country little remains to be wished for on the score of freedom from civil constraints in religion. In the very earliest period of our history, toleration was, for a time, no better understood here than in England; but we far sooner and more perfectly cleared ourselves of the evil.

We have thus far contemplated toleration in the common acceptation of the term, meaning by it freedom and protection to every man in forming, practicing, and propagating his religious faith, secure from all let or molestation, so long as he observes the rights of others. Such freedom is one of the greatest blessings enjoyed in our country. We have only to look back on the past, or around on other lands, to find affecting proofs of the greatness of our privilege in this respect. Looking at the thing in itself, and especially in the light thrown on it by modern views of the rights and responsibility of conscience, nothing, we know, can be more self-evident than that no man has a right to coerce another in matters of faith. In this view, it is even an impertinence for one

man, or body of men, to talk of toleraling another's religions senti ments. Forsooth, he'll bear with my believing so, will he! He'll put up with my convictions! In his forbear. ance, he'll keep his hands off me for frequenting the mass and praying to the virgin! He'll endure that I exercise my own judgment and conscience, and will patiently tolerate opposite conclusions from his own! Let the man, all men, all bodies of men, all states and all churches, know their place and keep it. There is a vicious implication in the term itself, as if the conscience were in some sort amenable to men, and they might take upon them gracious. ly to license its action, or pardon its delinquencies, and receive grate ful acknowledgments for the same. And yet, as the world has been, and still is, we will be thankful for toleration.

But this is only the gross and outward view. There is a toleration more interior and spiritual. Let us trace it within the pale of admitted piety, and inquire what scope it finds, what obligations it imposes on Christians differing among themselves in the views and practice of religion.

Wherever religious freedom exists, there diversity of religious views will be found. Unanimity and uniformity are possible in such matters only when darkness and despotism completely enthrall the minds of men. We have to choose, therefore, between such a condition of things as renders intelligent faith an impossibility, and such a condition, on the other hand, as renders diversity inevitable.

Neither ought such diversity to be regarded as of course, and in its own nature, so great an evil. At first view it seems painful and lamentable that men should differ on subjects of such vital concern as those of religion; and inciden tally great evils do attach themselves to this diversity of minds.

But these evils, which thus result from spiritual freedom and activity, are, at their worst, more than counterbalanced by benefits from the

same source.

But in order that this inevitable diversity may not prove an inevitable source of distrust, division, and bitterness, it becomes a necessity that we be of a generous and tolerant spirit. It is our only salvation. And this is onc, perhaps the highest virtue that is to find culture in this school. We must have toleration-not by any means merely in the gross sense of not laying hands on those who dissent from us, but in the infinitely higher sense of a catholic spirit among all the good, the spirit of unity in the midst of diversity, of fraternal acceptance among dissentient Christians. We can not entirely agree in our religious opinions. Searching diligently and prayerfully after truth, with an equal though imperfect desire and love of it, we come to very dif ferent conclusions. Within a certain very limited compass, we do agree; some few greatest truths we in common accept and hold. But these are often as an island in an ocean of diversities. Debatable questions encompass us on every hand. Two men, loving truth, able to think, and actually thinking for themselves with vigor and earnest ness, ranging thus over the whole field of religious inquiry-including truths, modes of truth, relations, statements, justifications and philosophies of truth-will probably as often differ as agree. And these disagreements may not always be limited to indifferent and trivial points. It is a very difficult and delicate matter, after all, to run that line of which we so often hear as something plain and well known-the line, namely, between essential and non-essential truths-between the matters which Christians must agree in holding, and those in which they may differ. For such a line of de

markation is to include the good, all the genuinely good; and no straight line will include them; for character refuses to follow the lines of theological systems with absolute accuracy. Good heretics are, alas! as possible as orthodox sinners. Figure for a moment a congress of the good yet in the flesh, all heartily loving the truth with an obedient spirit; and how large is the number of truths that can be stated in human language, for which you can carry a unanimous vote among them? What doctrine will you propound, in terms so unexceptionable, that no considerable section of those having in them the soul of goodness, will file off in the nega live?

Some such truths, in some mode of statement, are held by all; but, stated in the loosest generalities, the number is not very large. These diversities are attributable to a great variety of causes; but account for them as you will, their actual existence among genuinely good men, on almost every conceivable question of a religious nature, is undeni. able. Charity must have a place here, and may well cover specula. tive crudities as well as sins.

It follows that doctrinal tests of goodness must often prove imperfect, fallacious, and unjust. You can not discern a good man by simply meas. uring him with a creed. Goodness dwells in many souls, to whom any thirty-nine articles are full of incredibilities-to whom the Calvinistic pentagon is very horrible, and whom neither your creed nor any creed can contain. For character does not consist wholly or chiefly in a man's speculative views. It lies deeper than any system of opinions. And if we are to do any justice to men, if we are to estimate one another at all rightly in this world, we must bear in mind that goodness is quite distinguishable from systematic orthodoxy, quite compatible with some sorts and degrees of heterodoxy. The love of God and of man

-the honest heart toward truth and duty-the obedient spirit-in a word, that right-heartedness which all would pronounce pleasing to God, is to be found in men denying, one after another, points, that to us seem clear and indispensable. It is very inconsistent in them, but still many great errorists escape perdition.

Now the first working of a truly tolerant spirit will be to recognize and fellowship goodness wherever found. It will teach us to look beyond speculations to the spirit, and to perceive and love substantial piety, dwell where it may. Often it will call on us to honor real goodness only the more highly, for the environment of hostile errors and prejudices and false theology in which it has had strength to live. Honor and love the good. Even when they follow not with us, seek to know them and to understand them. Go over to them, if you can, so far as to look at things from their point of view. Very much will thus be explained to you. They may be found to have not only errors which you have not, but truths also. At least you will see, if you look diligently, how they came to be as they are-how these errors presented themselves acceptably to their minds -how they are neutralized by truths -how even what you have deemed their errors, it may be are no errors, but truths which you lack.

Reason as you will that the denial of a certain truth implies a bad heart, we shall often be compelled to admit that the implication does not hold that, in spite of the logi. cal tendencies of an error, the heart sets logic at defiance, and retains its integrity along with the error. Tracing out implications and rely. ing upon them, the Calvinist will settle it that, clearly as election and its kindred doctrines are revealed, the rejection of these must imply a wrong heart. And as clearly his Arminian neighbor finds, that these fatal doctrines can not be held with

out involving ruinous arrogance and presumption. Each discovers a philosophical ground of certainty that the doctrine he opposes, if suffered to put forth its legitimate influence and assert its affinities, must materially affect the very foundations of character. For does not the man hold this? and this holds him to that-and that implies a third

and so onward, still more and more astray, till a point is reached that leaves no hope for him. Most true, if all this-but he holds that first, and even the second, but there he stubbornly refuses to follow the track of your logical necessity another step-blindly denies that the track leads that way-and inconsistently, at the sacrifice of all claims to metaphysical rectitude, he bolts aside from the precipice which you see before him, and clambers into the kingdom.

And what is true of multitudes who embrace systems of some error with much truth, namely, that they are good and salvable men, and deserve our acceptance as such notwithstanding their errors, is true also of fewer, doubtless, and yet not a few, whose systems are composed of some truth with much error. We make here the amplest admission of the intrinsic hostility of error to goodness. The influence of false doctrine is always to be suspected. A man's errors are so many indications against him, and demand a cautious estimate of his character. But we maintain that they are not decisive, and that Christian justice requires us to look beyond these, and weigh with a glad and liberal spirit every token that the heart has escaped the infection. Not seldom we might find the Unitarian so far resisting the tendencies of his system, as to bring himself really within the effect of that atone. ment which in speculation he denies. Say that the strict idea of the divine unity, excluding a second divine and expiating person, and a