ral one. It is soul and body made regenerate. It is the ascent upward, here and hereafter.

This is God's work, not ours. Repentance is our work, and faith is our work; but regeneration is God's work. He makes us new creatures by a divine power. He commands repentance, but bestows regeneration.

ART. VI.- I believe that the evidences of the new life are both inward and outward. I believe that the "fruits of the Spirit" are "love, joy, and peace," good temper, good nature, thinking of others, loving good things, doing good things. They are honesty and conscientiousness in conduct; living to do good to others, not merely to ourselves; faithfulness, sincerity, purity. Especially it is a sign of new life, to be doing what we can, be it more or less, to advance Christ's kingdom.

ART. VII. I believe in the Bible. I believe it was written by inspired men. I believe that the Old Testament was inspired by the sight of the law; that Moses and the prophets were teachers of law; and that the New Testament was inspired by the sight of the gospel,- by love.

The New Testament is our gospel; though we can get good from the Old Testament too. But our faith is not Judaism, but Christianity: therefore it is in the New Testament.

I do not believe that inspiration is infallibility: it is sight, but a sight mixed with the seer's own thoughts and private opinions. Inspiration is not infallibility; yet it has authority. I believe that those whose writings are preserved in the Bible speak, and will for ever, with a commanding authority, to the instincts, consciences, and hearts of men. No other book ever has or can have such authority as this. It is pure water from the Spring itself. ART. VIII. Finally, I believe in heaven and hell. I believe in heaven here and hereafter,—in a life which

consists in knowing, loving, and being loved by, God and man. It is a state of soul,- of the mind seeing truth, the heart loving beauty, of the hand doing good. It is not a mere place for hymns and prayers; but a holy state of active good.

I also believe that hell is the same thing. It is in not loving truth, but falsehood; not loving God, but avoiding him; not serving God and man, but leading a selfish life.

Heaven and hell I believe to be both eternal: that is, I believe in an eternal connection between good and joy, between evil and sorrow. This is rooted in the nature of God, and nature of things; and is, therefore, eternal. But I believe that good is stronger than evil, and will overcome it at last, in the day when every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess Jesus to be Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This, then, is my creed, or a part of it. It is mine: I did not have it made for me by St. Augustine, or Wesley, or Calvin, or Luther, or Channing; not by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, or the Synod of Dort, or the Council of Trent. They could make, perhaps, a much better creed; but they could not make my creed: I must make my creed myself. I therefore made it for myself, in my own study, out of my own thought, my own experience, my own knowledge of Christ and of myself. And I believe that every one else must do the same: a creed cannot be emptied out of one man's head into another.

Also, it is my present creed. I shall not agree to believe exactly so for five years, nor for two years, nor even for a single week for, as I am not infallible, I may discover that I am mistaken in some points; and then I ought to change.

CIVIL WAR.

SINCE our last number was issued, civil war has commenced in the United States. War has come to us, - to us, a generation who have only known it at a distance. War is in our own land, in our own cities, at our own doors, among our own friends and brethren. The people of this great Christian nation, in the middle of the nineteenth century, have caught each other by the throat. War has begun, bloody, terrible, as all wars are; cruelly and bitterly terrible, as all civil wars are. Who can see the end of it? who can tell what is to come out of it? The beginning of strife is like the letting-out of water. When men have once tasted blood, they become like tigers. When brethren fight with brethren, the battle is especially terrific.

A deep trouble comes over us at this commencement of battle in our own land, "the confused noise; the garments rolled in blood;" buildings on fire; forts knocked into pieces; shells flying through the air, freighted with horrid death; explosions of magazines; conflagration, torture, death. This in the nineteenth century, we say; this here; this among those, who, six months ago, belonged to the same nation, brother-officers in the same regiments, fighting under the same flag, going to the same church, claiming the same heritage of glorious memories from the past, boasting of the same national glory and greatness! "O madmen!" we are disposed to cry, "stay your fratricidal hands. Shall this nation commit suicide?" All the old lamentations and arguments against civil war, which we learned at school from Roman poets, come up in our memory. "Even wolves and lions do not fight with their own species," they said: "why

will Romans destroy Romans? Are there no Britons, hitherto untouched, to be led chained down the Sacred Way?" But we cannot explain our civil struggle as they did, as the long result, the late punishment, of the slaying of Remus by his brother Romulus. We are Christians, and do not believe in any such dark destiny, following with its vengeance in the footsteps of a race, as the Indian tracks his foe.

But it seems so strange! We thought we had outgrown war. Our peace societies, peace congresses, orations and sermons about peace, - have they done nothing? Is there no progress at all since Genghis Khan and Attila? Is the day never to come, when the sword is to be beaten to a ploughshare, cannon melted into steam-cylinders, and riflebarrelled muskets worked up into sewing-machines? That is our chief trouble,—that Christianity seems so ineffective. If we could hope that by and by war was to cease, we might take courage; if we could see that some progress had been made. But such a fighting in a Christian land is a worse argument against Christianity than all that was ever written by Tom Paine, Strauss, or Feuerbach. It takes away our hope, our sense of the progress of man. Man seems, after all, only the same wild animal he always was the same beast is there, ready to grind his teeth, and glare with his eye. We have only taught him a few external habits, a few tricks of politeness; but the old ferocity is below, ready to show itself on any occasion. And this is the hardest trouble in hearing of this siege and storm of Fort Sumter, we seem to see in it such a deep-seated moral disease, such a blackness of darkness in the human soul.

But with every evil there is a consolation; and war, which looks so black on one side, is all light on the other. The old national heroism has revived. We are not a

nation of shopkeepers only: we love something better than money. Old Massachusetts throws herself, as of old, in the van,-puts her three thousand men into Washington within a week from the time they are asked for. The whole North rises, as on a great tide of enthusiasm ; and all are lifted together into a lofter condition of soul. Farmers, barbers, politicians, women, children, all are equally filled with the desire to make some sacrifice for the good cause.

War, then, like death, is both a sad and a glad thing: on one side, awful; on the other, noble and divine. Happy those who live to see this day,- a day in which selfishness seems almost to have disappeared from the common heart, a day of great things! War, horrible and evil as it is, is only a symptom of a deeper disease. The disease has come to the surface. It was always there: now it is seen.

Let us pray, that, before another monthly issue of our little journal, blessed peace may have returned; or, if not, then that this war, when it ends, may end in a durable peace, based on truth and justice and God's holy will.

MAY MEETING OF THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION.

THE public meeting of the Association will be held this year, as usual, on Tuesday morning, May 28. The names of the speakers, and the subjects, will be announced in the daily papers and the weeklies.

The business-meeting of the American Unitarian Association, for choice of officers and other matters of importance, will probably be adjourned, as in previous years, to Wednesday afternoon, May 29. The business to be acted