tead a British and Foreign Free Christian Association, on
the plea that the Christian Church consists of all who desire to be the
children of God in the spirit of Jesus Christ His Son, and that,
therefore, no association for the promotion of a doctrine which belongs
to controversial theology can represent the Church of Christ. To this
Unitarianism has attained in our time. This is the teaching of Foster,
and Ham, and Ierson, and Martineau--a teaching seemingly in accordance
with the spirit of the age. Unitarian theology is always coloured with
the philosophy of the hour, and consequently it is now spiritual and
transcendental instead of material and necessitarian.

As regards London, the statistics of Unitarianism are easy of collection.
In their register we have the names of fifteen places of worship, where
Holy Scripture is the only rule of faith, and difference of opinion is no
bar to Christian communion. In reality Unitarians are stronger than they
seem, as in their congregations you will find many persons of influence,
of social weight, of literary celebrity. For instance, Sir Charles Lyell
and Lord Amberley are, I believe, among the regular attendants at Mr.
Martineau's chapel in Portland Street. At that chapel for many years
Charles Dickens was a regular hearer. The late Lady Byron, one of the
most eminent women of her day, worshipped in Essex Street Chapel, when
Mr. Madge preached there. In London the Unitarians support a domestic
mission, a Sunday-school association, an auxiliary school association,
and a London district Unitarian society.

AGGRESSIVE UNITARIANS.

It is not often that Unitarianism is aggressive, or that it seeks the
heathen in our streets perishing for lack of knowledge. Apparently it
dwells rather on the past than the present, and prefers the select and
scholarly few to the unlettered many. Most Unitarian preachers lack
popular power; hence it is that their places of worship are rarely
filled, and that they seem tacitly to assume that such is the natural and
necessary condition of their denomination. It is with them as it used to
be with the old orthodox Dissenters in well endowed places of worship
some thirty or forty years ago. Of them, I well remember one in a
leading seaport in the eastern counties. I don't believe there was such
another heavy and dreary place in all East Anglia, certainly there never
was such a preacher; more learned, more solemn, more dull, more
calc