oundings of the ancient chapel are less
attractive. It stands, it may be, in some poverty-stricken corner or
court of a town or city. Whatever picturesqueness it may have had once
has long since vanished. Unlovely decay, an air of desolation, symptoms
of neglect, present a mournful sight, and one wonders how much longer
the poor relic will remain. Many places of the kind have already been
swept away; others have been renovated, enlarged, and kept more worthy
of their use. Not all the Meeting Houses are of one kind. Independents,
Baptists, and Friends, each possess some of them. Now and again the
notice-board tells us that this is a 'Presbyterian' place of worship,
but a loyal Scot who yearns for an echo of the kirk would be greatly
surprised on finding, as he would if he entered, that the doctrine and
worship there is not Calvinistic in any shape whatever,
but--_Unitarian_.

A similar surprise awaits the visitor to New England, it may be even a
greater. For if he should tread In the footsteps of the Pilgrim Fathers
and find the 'lineal descendants' of their original places of worship at
Plymouth, Salem, or Boston, he will find _Unitarians_ in possession. So
it is in many of the oldest towns founded by the American colonists of
the seventeenth century. In their centres the parish churches, 'First,'
'Second,' or otherwise, stand forth challenging everybody's attention.
There is no lack of self-assertion here, nothing at all like the
shrinking of the Old English Presbyterian into obscure alleys and
corners. Spacious, well appointed, and secure, these _Unitarian_ parish
churches, in the words of a popular Unitarian poet, 'look the whole
world in the face, and fear not any man.'

The object of the present brief sketch is to show how these landmarks
have come to be where they are, to trace the thoughts and fortunes of
Unitarians from their rise in modern times, to indicate their religious
temper and practical aims, and to exhibit the connections of the
English-speaking Unitarians with some closely approximating groups in
Europe and Asia.

Before entering upon a story which is extremely varied and
comprehensive, one or two important points must be emphasized. In the
first place the reader must bear in mind that the term 'Unitarianism' is
one of popular application. It has not been chosen and imposed as
sect-name by any sect-founder, or by any authoritative assembly. There
has never been a leader or a central council whose d