majestic innocence of Jesus has lifted to their portentous eminence in the world. Every moment that innocence becomes more majestic, more awful to the traitor. He hears the malicious, captious, mocking question; he hears the calm and patient answer. He hears those pointed and penetrating words to Pilate, "Thou couldst have no power at all against me unless it were given thee from above," - none but a judicial power from Rome,-"therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin." He hears this, and he trembles. He looks around, but nothing meets his fearstricken eye that can re-assure or comfort him. He sees the infuriate populace, the angry priests; he sees the spitting and the blow upon that sacred brow; he sees the meek sufferer led away to endure the agony of crucifixion. It is too much; he can bear it no longer: he rushes to the temple, and says to the chief priests and elders, in a horror and torture which martyrs might pity, "I have betrayed the innocent blood." Now, mark a circumstance that often comes to complete the misery of guilt. "What is that to us?" say the priests. "See thou to that!" That is what many a fallen man has heard from those that lead him into evil. Many a time has the tempter, the seducer, the companion that led astray, said that to his victim. "See thou to that. Lift not your complaint and your outcry to us, fool! Your guilt, what is that to us? See thou to that!" Ay, Judas must see to that. He could cast the burden, the blame, upon no other. The crushing weight fell upon his single head. He flung down the accursed price of blood upon the temple floor, and went away and hanged himself. And now his tomb in the world is a name of everlasting horror and infamy: through all ages, base and black betrayal is synonymous with Judas, the Iscariot!

If I were to add anything, in fine, to the account of this dread example of guilt, to make it still more practical, it would be to fix a more distinct attention upon that phrase fraught with fearful admonition, "See thou to that!" We must settle the account with our faults, our vices, our falsehood, dishonesty, guilt, for ourselves. None can relieve us of that awful reckoning. Item after item have we put down

in the account: item by item must we pay the debt to avenging conscience. If there is anything in the universe that will find us out, it is the guilty deed. Companionship in evil there may be but there is no copartnership in remorse. It is single; it is solitary; it comes alone. Let us, then, lay the charge upon ourselves to be true; to be loyal to conscience, whatever tempts us to treachery; whatever evil seductions, whatever false pleas assail us, to be true: true to the right, to the highest authority, to the word of Christ, to the law and hope of heaven!

RESIGNATION.

FROM THE GERMAN OF FRIEDRICH RUCKERT.

A FLOWER in the garden,

I must in patience wait
Thy time and way of crossing
The circle of my fate.

And com'st thou as a sunbeam,

I'll silently unfold

My bosom to thy beauty,

That look of thine to hold.

Com'st thou as dew or rain drop,
I'll catch it in love's cup,
And keep the precious blessing
Where nought shall drink it up.

And sweep'st thou softly o'er me,
In zephyrs gently blown,
I'll bow my head before thee,
And say, I am thine own.

A flower in the garden,

I must in patience wait

Thy time and way of crossing

The circle of my fate.

S. C. R.

INCONSISTENCY.

BY ALICE M. WELLINGTON.

WITH Sir John Ellesmere, who wished when he had gained his client's cause to rise in court and argue it again for his opponent, we have strong sympathy. It has always been a rash desire of ours to review severely our own articles; believing that not only the intellectual pleasure, but the practical value of searching our own inconsistencies, has never been sufficiently appreciated.

The Unitarian, crossing some day a Trinitarian threshold, listens surprised to the echo of his own broad principles, and affirms solemnly, "In all except believing the Trinity, that man is a sound Unitarian; you will not find him long in the pulpit where he is now." We ourself were once asked by a loyal churchman why we kept the Christian festivals, since we believed Jesus was "nothing but a very good carpenter;" and answering proudly that we kept his birthday as we did our mother's, out of loving remembrance, we were met by the rejoinder, as he turned lightly away, "You yourself, I think, are more than half Trinitarian."

For the rationalist to find liberality in a dogmatist, and the dogmatist to discover reverence in a radical, excites a mutual surprise, of which we gladly avail ourselves to fill men with longing for the one fold and one shepherd, when all may hold the faith in unity of spirit and the bond of peace. But still more useful do we hold it to consider carefully the points on which by profession we most widely differ: some striking inconsistency of our own will be sure to lead us prisoner straight into the enemy's camp; a pet theory of any denomination, pushed to its extreme, forces them to surrender some other just as dear: so true it is that

"Jede Strasse führt ans End der Welt,"

(Every road leads the world's end), and that all are forced at last by logic and philosophy to yield their favorite theories

about things, a..d stand in simple, reverent awe before the "mysteries of the star-sown depths of space and the human consciousness of right and wrong."

To name the two religious' parties dividing the world is not easy. Between the terms Unitarian and Trinitarian, Radical and Conservative, Rationalist and Dogmatist, lie such delicate distinctions of Liberal and Calvinist, Evangelical and Broad Church, that a Rubicon which shall fairly separate the two is difficult to define. We may be understood, however, if we refer to them as Unitarian and Trinitarian.

The former, for the honor of his Creator as well as selfrespect, clings to the dignity of human nature. At first he acknowledged that "every good thought comes into the heart of man by inspiration of the Divine Spirit;" but being told that to call Shakespeare and Beethoven no less inspired than Jeremiah and John was "a loose way of speaking of inspiration," he chose to give up the word entirely and hold the human soul too sacred a home for even the Holy Spirit to enter, till man himself draw back the heavy bolts and welcome it as his guest.

The Trinitarian, however he may profess to believe in freewill, tacitly holds every soul at the mercy of its Creator. Not only does he believe that the poor wretches of the New Testament were literally possessed by demons, but also that the patriarchs and prophets, suffering a like annihilation of self, were possessed by angels, "intoxicated with God." The grandeur of Isaiah, the music of the Psalms, the sublimity of Job, the earnestness of Paul's epistles and the faith of John's, were due to no purity of soul or keenness of mental vision in those who penned them: they are nothing we may hope to attain by living the high, pure life they led, and throwing ourselves into the channel of spiritual thought which they pursued; their judgment was not true "because they were obedient:" simply, God forcibly entered their souls, took possession of their strong right arm, caused them to write burning words and gorgeous sentences which—

"On the stretched fore-finger of all time
Sparkle forever;"

But with which their own nobility of soul had as little to do as if the splendid periods had been the scribbling of a spiritmoved planchette.

Let there now arise in human destiny some grand, awful crisis, where the soul stands in deadly danger of going hopelessly astray. The Unitarian denies any such crisis: he is grateful, not that when the world was ruined Christ came and saved it, but that the world grew noiselessly in virtue till at last it blossmed out in Christ. Seeing reverently how the "thoughts of men are widened with the progress of the suns," he can but listen to the tread of the centuries as one grand, triumphal march through the realms of progress. In no boastful egotism does he hold his own age best; he does not claim that the people know more than their ancestors: he simply sees and rejoices that more people know. The lofty characters and mighty intellects that moulded the age and led its thought have perhaps disappeared forever; but in return the age falls naturally of its own accord into gracious form and lovely thought, and has less need of powerful guidance; so that perhaps Carlyle's theory may be true of the past, Buckle's of the present and the future. The valleys have been exalted, and stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing; the individual mountain-peaks have been laid low, but the little hills rejoice on every side. Instead of Socrates, we have the public school; instead of Raphael at the Louvre, we have Prang in Anderson and North streets; instead of Dante, no child but lisps in numbers; instead of Schiller, we have a continent of brains that can appreciate Schiller; instead of Christ, we have Christianity and Christians!

But the very word "Trinitarian" demands some terrible interruption in this onward march. The belief in total depravity has passed away; but redemption is one of those theories which, it has been wittily said, the modern Trinitarian labels, as he does old clothes, "Too bad to wear, but too good to throw away," Man must still be redeemed; and, in order to be redeemed, must be proved hopelessly bad in some way. The modern Evangelical, therefore, declares that he was not