universally, acknowledged. His exemplary life and his zeal for religion took from his enemies all cause to speak reproachfully of him. His piety was never doubted by his familiar friends, nor indeed by any but those who were hostile to his sentiments, or thought him deficient in the number or the construction of the articles of his faith. His opinions on religious subjects were formed on the most independent inquiries, and were embraced in the full integrity of his heart.

His literary attainments were scarcely less distinguished than his theological. In his own country, at the period at which he lived, he had certainly not many equals, and few, if any, superiors. To natural talents very far above mediocrity, he added by his industry an uncommon stock of acquired knowledge; and, in the language of one of his panegyrists, it would have been an honour to Oxford to have it said-" This man was educated there." As a writer, no American author ever obtained a higher reputation. Many of his works, as we have seen, were republished-some of them more than once-in England, and in a form which showed the high estimation in which the author was held. Of one of them, on the subject of Episcopacy, the biographer of Hollis remarks, It is, perhaps, the most masterly performance that a subject of that kind will admit of;' and the venerable President Adams, senior, who admired his spirit, and caught from him, while yet a youth, his enthusiasm for freedom, has said, To draw the character of Mayhew would be to transcribe a dozen volumes. He threw all the weight of his great fame into the scale of his country, in 1761, and maintained it there, with zeal and ardour, till his death.'

It cannot be questioned, that the writings of Dr. Mayhew, with the acknowledged weight of his character, essentially contributed to the great political results which attended the American revolution, and still more to the progress of religious liberty, which has ever since that event been gradually advancing. It was said of a celebrated production of one of his cotemporaries, that it breathed into the people the breath of life.' Scarcely less can be said of some of the works of Mayhew. The last letter which he wrote discovers the solicitude he felt for his country, and suggests a plan of correspondence among the colonies, which was adopted, and conduced much, it was thought, to the successful issue of their struggle for independence. He was not permitted to witness the full effect of his labours, or the answer of his prayers. He was taken away in the meridian of his life and glory. But multitudes of his cotemporaries lived to rejoice in them; and generations, who were then unborn, have not failed, nor will they ever cease, to hold in veneration and gratitude the character of one, whose gifts and virtues, love of truth and freedom, whose intre

pid courage, never permitting him to fear the face of man, and whose hearty charity, disposing him to consume life itself in advancing the interests of man, have given him a name with the best and wisest of his race.'

*The above is the first of a series of articles on eminent Unitarian Divines of America, which will exhibit sketches of the origin, progress, and present state of religious opinions in that country, in connexion with characteristic biographical notices. They are furnished by the Rev. Francis Parkman, of Boston, U. S.-EDITOR.

OPINIONS OF VINET AND HAGENBACH COMPARED, ON THE SUBJECT OF NATIONAL RELIGION.

IN 1826, the following work appeared at Paris: Mémoire en favour de la liberté des cultes, ouvrage, qui à obtenu le prix dans le concours ouvert par la Société de la Morale Chrétienne; par Alexandre Vinet.' The author of this able and eloquent piece is or at least was-Professor Extraordinary of Philosophy, and Public Teacher of the French Language and Literature at Basle, and, as his production shows, a man of high cultivation and various acquirements. In the work referred to, he submits the subject of religious liberty to a most searching and complete analysis, and follows out his fundamental principle to its utmost extent-discriminating, with great precision, the distinct provinces of religion and the state, and showing, that they ought never to interfere with each other-he does not pause in his reasonings till he arrives at the result, that religion will then be in its purest and most perfect state, when secular inducements of every kind, to its profession or its teaching, shall be wholly removed when the preachers of the Word shall cease to be hirelings, and men shall find their vocation to the work of the ministry in the inward impulse of the Spirit alone. Aware of the difficulties that must attend, in the Old World, the transition to such a state of things, and desirous that relations, which are deeply rooted in historical recollections and usages, should be gradually and cautiously reversed-the author, nevertheless, coincides in the speculative conclusion with the principles which have been so energetically asserted by our own great Milton, and which have been realized, and have led to a new form of religious society, in the United States of America. His opinions, therefore, constitute the extreme point of opposition to the doctrine of those persons who contend for the necessity of a dominant church invested with exclusive privileges, and merely tolerating those who dissent from it.

We subjoin the concluding part of a review of this work, in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken,' for 1829, p. 432, by

Professor Hagenbach, also of Basle, as exhibiting a view of the subject which may be new to some of our readers, and as affording a specimen of the candid and friendly criticism of opinions judged to be erroneous-mortifyingly at variance with that spirit of party violence which too often disgraces our own periodical literature.

We cannot,' says the reviewer, lay down this excellent work, without first expressing our heartfelt thanks to the author. We may be permitted, perhaps, to make a few slight remarks, which occurred to us during its perusal. From his whole mode of treating the subject, it is obvious that the author regards the State purely in the light of an institution for the maintenance of justice between man and man, and, under this point of view, estimates the relation to it of the Church and of religion. We will not contest the propriety of this representation, but view it as characteristic of a certain school. We would merely suggest the following considerations. The ideas of State and Church, however much we may extend or limit them, are sheer abstractions, unless we conceive them in relation to a higher idea, which is implied in boththat of the People. States and Churches gradually assumed their form under the moulding influences of a progressive civilization; nations, in their most general features, proceeded-so to say-like Nature herself, directly from the hand of the Creator. But the earliest circumstance which, in every age, has given to a people coherence and character, is its religion; every nation has fought for its Gods. And though Christianity, considered as an universal faith, extends itself far beyond the narrow bounds of nationality; yet, on the other hand, viewed historically, it appears as the great fashioner of the popular mind-as the great pervading and animating principle of our modern European civilization. It has moulded nations which before possessed no proper nationality. No doubt, subsisting as a mere popular faith, it did not exert its purest influence. It represented the authority of the law rather than the freedom of the Gospel; and, resting for centuries on the blind power of usage, served merely as a restraint upon the multitude in the hands of the priesthood. When, in the progress of civilization, reflecting men raised themselves above the conceptions of the multitude, religion began to assume in their minds a strictly individual form. As free inquiry increased, the discrepancies of various dogmatic systems became more apparent; and an unhappy fluctuation between superstition and infidelity was the disastrous, but for the time perhaps the unavoidable, consequence of civilization. Two methods have hitherto been devised for obviating these evils-one, that of Europe, by means of an Established Church, with a greater or less limitation of religious freedomthe other, that of perfect indifference on the part of the State, which has been adopted in North America. But there is yet a third course to be tried; and, in fact, for a long time past, the best and most enlightened men in some parts of Europe have already commenced it. It consists in giving to the religious sentiment of individuals, by means of philosophy and history, such a direction as will for ever prevent it, though associated with the highest cultivation of the intellect, from losing the consciousness of its relation to that popular faith which binds the whole community together, and, on the other hand, in raising the people by means of education, till they gradually acquire the capacity

for a more spiritual religion. Such an end can certainly not be attained by a narrow-minded adhesion to the letter of this or that dogmatic system. So long, indeed, as people cannot free themselves from the persuasion that the essence of religion is to be found in dogmatic ideas, it is far better that, in the spirit of the proverb, quot homines tot sententiæ,' opinion should be left to multiply by the side of opinion, and sect to propagate sect-than that the arm of secular power should attempt to constrain all into one prescribed form. But such a state, though it is called freedom, is, after all, a diseased and imperfect state; that sincerest -that most individual religion-which lies deep in the feelings of the heart, which finds no satisfaction in any dogmatic sect, and yet yearns intensely after religious sympathy and communion-is here least of all considered and provided for. Revolted by the rugged forms of severed and exclusive societies, the freer and more Catholic spirit of deep religious feeling, is in danger of being wholly mistaken, and of sinking finally into indifference. This spectacle is exhibited by North America. Undoubtedly, the eye of philanthropy reverts with delight to the Western hemisphere, when it has been sickened with the spectacle of the inquisitions and cruelties of a bloody fanaticism in the Old World; but it searches there in vain for a nation; it finds only United States, bound together by no higher idea than the necessities of their outward existence. What elsewhere should constitute the soul of a people, is here private interest. Venerable symbols of religious communion are here altogether wanting; and people have to make their choice between unbelief or a narrow sectarianism. Religious enlightenment, the fruit of sound theological education, would here be looked for in vain. And yet it is our firmest conviction, that the diffusion of sound theological knowledge-and that religious enlightenment which springs from it-is the only means by which a common and national faith can be made to penetrate through all classes in an advanced stage of civilization. This alone can teach men what is really essential in religion, and enable them to separate the kernel from the husk. This alone, making men truly rational, solves the apparent contradiction between reason and feeling, and renders possible a mutual sympathy between the individual and the general faith. After a long period of sceptical indifference throughout Europe, but more particularly in France and Germany-during which the educated classes thought they must distinguish themselves from the vulgar herd by infidelity— and whilst now, in the season of reaction, many put themselves on a level with the uncultivated multitude, by the unconditional surrender of their minds to an irrational belief, some of the best men have been labouring to provide the means of a truly Christian education for the whole mass of the people; the feeling of a community of faith has been again awakened, where it was extinct; and men's minds have been prepared for a truly enlightened Christianity, that shall become, as it were, the marrow of a nation's life and activity.

'Whether by this provision for the religious-but, at the same time, perfectly free-development of the national mind, so widely different from that of ecclesiastical constraint and authority, the noblest fruits of popular virtue and intelligence will not more richly unfold themselves -than where, left wholly to their own working, they run the risk either of being trodden down and destroyed in the press and bustle of worldly concerns, or of shooting forth dwarfed and distorted in the hot-beds of a

perverse enthusiasm, is a question which further experience can alone ultimately decide. By these observations we mean not to oppose the views of the excellent author, who, on the contrary, has admirably solved the question proposed to him under that particular point of view in which he has chosen to consider it: only we would venture to suggest, whether another question-"How far, without any limitation of the natural rights of man, a national provision for the Christian education of a whole people is an attainable object"-be not worthy of equal consideration, and its realization in practice entitled to equal praise. From the author himself we part with the sincerest respect and obligation.'

In translating this extract, we by no means intend to express our accordance with all the views of the writer. On some points we think him mistaken and uninformed. He could

hardly have pronounced so unqualified a judgment on the religious condition of North America, had he been acquainted with the writings of Dr. Channing, and other authors who belong to the same liberal and Catholic school. Much, too, it appears to us, which it is usual to ascribe to the institutions of North America, is in reality due to the period of her civilization. Her peculiar form of society is not yet perfected. She is still but the infant Hercules; and what her gigantic resources shall ultimately enable her to accomplish for the intellectual and spiritual development of the human race, future centuries must unfold. So different, however, are the conditions of society in the Old and the New Worlds, that we can argue with no certainty from the one to the other; and it is our persuasion, that no better wish can be entertained for the progressive amelioration of European institutions, than that, by the diffusion of historical light, the application of abstract principles may be guided by the analogies of the past and the lessons of experience. In the writer's views of the supreme importance of the diffusion of sound theological learning, we entirely concur; we see no other means of attaining to that central and universal truth which lies hidden in the Scriptures, and from which we believe all sects have more or less deviated, and of ultimately binding together the whole Christian world in the bonds of a free and intelligent unity. Sectarianism has its root in ignorance and prejudice. So deep is our conviction of the necessity of meeting this great social want, that, if we had the hope of seeing it effectually obviated, we would willingly postpone to a somewhat remoter period the realization of more theoretical views. We give the opinions of this writer, not as being our own, but as a subject for reflection. Valeant quantum valent.'

We cannot, however, deny that, when we met with the passage, we were greatly struck by it. It supposes a state of things which many a friend to human peace and happiness would wish to see accomplished, if it were attainable, without