Spiritual principles can only be recognized by means of external manifestations; but the principles and the manifestation are not the same thing; nor can they have a lasting connexion, as every thing external is mutable, while the principles of truth are immutable. As long as mind is connected with body, as long as the intellect can only be reached through the senses, and the heart through the intellect, truth must be invested with a form, and realities be accompanied by shadows. But that form is changeable, and those shadows are fleeting: the proximate cause of which is the constitution of all material things; and the final cause, the ultimate universal recognition of the principles of truth. We have already described how these principles were communicated to the Israelites by means of ordinances which the mind of man has long since outgrown. The principles of Christianity were, in like manner, embodied in institutions, some of which are obsolete, while others remain; but, since Christianity is destined not to be superseded by any other scheme, it appears to follow necessarily from the principles on which we have been reasoning, that none of its institutions were, like the Jewish, positive, but avowedly adopted from motives of expediency. It is therefore the belief of a portion of the Unitarian body, that Christ himself appointed no ordinance for permanent adoption, and that those which were appointed by the Apostles, and sanctioned by their practice, were established on the ground of expediency alone. They were not therefore the less obligatory upon their disciples in those times, nor upon us, as far as the original ground of the ordinances remains; but as some apostolic practices have, through the revolutions of human affairs, become obsolete, it is desirable to to search into the foundation of all. Baptism cannot be called a Christian institution, since the rite was practised long before the mission of the Baptist; but some of our body adopt it as a Christian ordinance, because it was countenanced by Jesus and administered by his followers: while other Unitarians, deeming the practice of baptism inexpedient in their circumstances of age and country, decline the rite themselves, but recommend its use in cases analogous to those in which it was first adopted, i. e. in cases of conversion from Paganism. There are others who wish to abolish it altogether, from a fear of encouraging superstition by an ungrounded attachment to external observances.