A hopeful sign of religious liberality is to be seen regularly in the book-notices of the denominational weeklies. These notices are impartially bestowed, upon books widely selected. For instance: Zions's Herald, the Methodist organ, leads off with a notice of some Unitarian book, and follows that with a Universalist; while The Leader, the Universalist paper, is quite as likely to open its columns with a notice of a Baptist work; and this not for battery purposes, but in the interests of the Republic of Letters. Such notices do not commit these papers to the tenets of other bodies, nor do they involve any forfeiture of their own; any more than the literary notices appearing in this Journal involve any departure from its own religions standard, or any endorsement of all the opinions maintained in the volumes under consideration. This is one of the noble signs of the times. Illiberally in religion belongs to a bygone age. Only the Roman Catholic Church publishes an Index Expurgatorius, of books which are not to be read or quoted; and even that Church no longer burns the hated volumes with public ceremonial. That would do when a book was only a roll of manuscript, hand-copied and dear; but now, the printing-press rattles defiance at such bigotry, and, to the funeral of one obnoxious volume, sends a thousand more.
