as we are aware, no creeds have been changed, no codicils of concession have been annexed to them. They as before, are saturated with the fear that hath torment. But it is certain that a more amiable and beneficient spirit has infused itself into the very heart of Christian endeavor. Who will say it is not a mighty spirit, when it constrains the subservience of men to whose creeds it is alien, to whose religion it is an enemy?

Surely it were unreasonable to suppose that that spirit, in these latter days, was born of religions older in essence than the Egyptian Moloch. It cometh not by such a tardy and unnatural generation. It is of God! and was most signally manifested on earth, when "God was in Christ reconcilling the world unto himself." It is the spirit of the Gospel, of divine and universal love; and we ask those men who are so ambitious to show its mightiness in moral amelioration, while they yet hold on to faiths which repudiate it, to pluck the film from their eyes, and no longer attribute to Beelzebub the power that casts out devils. We lay no claim to their thunder; but we ask them to confess the appropriation of

the electric fire by which souls are warmed and won!

If it is with the heart that man "believeth unto righteousness," those reformers must be the most successful whose faith discloses and encourages the work of love. It is sad, this tacit quarrel between sectarian opinion and philanthropic impulse. One or the other must eventually succumb. Undoubtedly the latter will triumph. But this in earlier instances, has not apparently proved certain. Washingtonianism was suffered to die, because it was a too palpable rebuke of orthodox assumption and impotence. But Orthodoxy now furnishes too many unconscious allies to render such deaths contagious or alarming. Reforms every day become less liable to such ecclesisatical violence. Every day indicates that they will soon attain a position of safety, and if need be, of defiance.

Unlike most other religions, Universalism has no quarrel with itself-no accusations and denials bandied to and fro between the head and the heart. Benignant in theory and tendency, faith in its truths is ever suggestive of faith in good for Man. It is broader than all our wants

mightier than our sorrows and our sins. Based in infinite benevolence, it must necessarily become effective through the ministry of love. This is its source, its nature, and its end. It inculcates no doctrine, embodies no principle, applies no motive, encourages no hope, announces no result which is not instinct with love.

That a religion so constituted and endowed is competent and safe, as a regenerating agent, it belongs to us to demonstrate. We may not suffer others to come, in the natural current of popular aspiration, to the adoption of our fundamental principle, while they persist in the rejection of the religion whence it emanates. It is our business to resist and remove the encroachments of error; to rebuke the vain philosophies of men ; to be jealous of the glory of God and of his truth; to preserve, unimpaired, the integrity and simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus. It falls to us, in the pursuance of our great purpose, as the chief burden of our labor, to show the sufficiency and safety of love, not only in redeeming for earth, but in sanctifying for heaven; that by this principle there is salvation, and that without it there is no salvation. To this must men come,

for there is no other name given under heaven by which they can be saved. It is, we repeat, the hope of the world, and without it the world were lost in darkness and despair.

In accomplishing this work, the Bible under God, and with God, is our strongest instrumentality. Thankful for the intimations of his works and the encouraging testimonies of reason, we still cling to the Bible as the light of our faith and the guide of our practice. Respectful to the discoveries of progressive mind, we still hold to the Bible as the only divine and authoritative utterance of truth. It is the ground of our confidence, the warrant of our hope, the shield of our defence. It is the weapon which we have found mighty, through God, to the pulling down of the strongholds of error. It is our attendant shekinah. It has led us through the conflicts of the past; it has brought us to behold the glory of this day; and the glory or the gloom of the future shall not turn us from its guidance. It is from this sacred fountain of truth that we draw our rational system. It is in this revelation of the Father's goodness, that we are taught the supremacy of love. We cannot qualify the im

plicitness of our respect for it. By it we have won, by it we shall triumph.

"Trust in God and keep your powder dry!" was the language of a reliance upon Providence, which would admonish to the use of corresponding means for the attainment of the desired purpose. It is not enough that we have a satisfying system. It is not enough that our system is vital with a principle which must conquer. It is not enough that we find every requisite sanction in the Oracles of the Living God. It is not enough, that our past career has been marked by the most encouraging success. This enhances our obligation to trust in Divine Providence none the less, but in our own providence all the more.

The day of small things is passing away. The seed sown in tears, returning in first-fruits, give promise of an ample harvest. All around us there are signs of a propitious era: and among them all, that whose significance rises to the assurance of good, is the foretoken, no longer regarded as equivocal, of the founding of an institution which shall give to our ministry the advantages of a liberal education, in halls consecrated to the genius of Universalism. It is not