ands who had the privilege of listening to them. He
was returned to Parliament by the electors of Oldham, and a monument
erected to his memory there still perpetuates his name. He died at a
ripe old age, ever having preserved the character of an independent and
honourable man. As a religious teacher he was no extraordinary success.
It was rarely indeed that South Place was very full. Of course, the
hearers were the very _elite_ of the human race. Wherever you
go--especially among sects not particularly orthodox or popular--the men
and women with whom you come in contact are no ordinary men and women.
By a happy dispensation of Providence they fail to see themselves as
others see them, and are as firmly convinced of their own intellectual
superiority over a benighted British public as they are of the truth of
their principles and of their ultimate success.

"There is a religion of humanity," said Mr. Fox, "though not
enshrined in articles and creeds, though it is not to be read merely
in sacred books, and yet it may be read in all wherever they have
anything in them of truth and moral beauty,--a religion of humanity
which goes deeper than all because it belongs to the essentials of
our moral and intellectual constitution, and not to mere external
accidents, the proof of which is not in historical agreement or
metaphysical deduction, but in our own conscience and
consciousness,--a religion of humanity which unites and blends all
other religions, and makes one the men whose hearts are sincere, and
whose characters are true, and good, and harmonious, whatever may be
the deductions of their minds or their external profession,--a
religion of humanity which cannot perish in the overthrow of altars
or the fall of temples, which survives them all, and which, were
every derived form of religion obliterated from the face of the
earth, would recreate religion as the spring recreates the fruits and
flowers of the soul, bidding it bloom again in beauty, bear again its
rich fruits of utility, and fashion for itself such forms and modes
of expression as may best agree with the progressive condition of
mankind."

It was in accordance with these ideas that the Sunday morning services in
South Place were carried on.

After Mr. Fox came Mr. Ierson, and a nearer approximation to regular
Unitarianism. But the place did not prosper; there were far too many