highest places of intellectual attainment. With the culture there must be developed a freedom of the widest and most unlimited kind. It is not license cultivated women will seek for or accept; but the freedom which will permit them to be perfectly loyal to their own natures. There must be freedom to gain culture, freedom from narrow social demands, freedom to live one's own personal life, and freedom to think to the fullest limit of one's capacity. Woman should be free to be herself, as man is free to be himself. Woman will not become man; there need be no fear of that. She must be free, however, to be woman after the pattern of her own soul, and not after the fashion of man's caprices. She is now largely what man has made her, through the ideals he has given her; she ought to be free to become what God wishes, as he has manifested it in the constitution of her own nature. When that freedom is attained women will be original in literature, and they will produce masterpieces. The day of man has been. The day of woman is now coming. When the day of man and woman has arrived, when this king and this queen shall reign as equal sovereigns of the world, then will come the true day of humanity. That such a day may not be too far away, and that the hearts of those who seek the morning light may not grow weary by hope too long deferred, women should be given a true culture and a true freedom. GEORGE WILLIS COOKE. CHILDREN'S HYMN TO OUR SAVIOUR. FOR A CHILDREN'S SERVICE. To him who held the children, And touched their heads in blessing, O Father! tune our voices, To Christ, Thy holy Son. Dear Jesus! what we owe thee, The half we ne'er shall know: But life's best joy and gladness From thy sweet spirit flow; And if, when tired or troubled, We meet with words of cheer, If hands are clasped to shield us When sin or harm is near,— If friends are glad to teach us, One gracious hand we see; In earnest, grateful love, Be always at our side; Athol, Mass. CHARLES E. PERKINS. WHAT DOES THE UNITARIAN At the meeting of the New Hamp. shire State Unitarian Conference, held in Manchester, in June last, Rev. George W. Gallagher, of Keene, read an essay, entitled "What the Unitarian Church Needs." The substance of his essay was made up of responses received from inquiries sent, some of them to leading members of his own congregation, and some to prominent Unitarians in different parts of New England. The replies of the latter we give below. They are very suggestive and it seems to us on the whole most encouraging. They show after a larger, stronger, deeper, religious a widespread reaching out among us, life, and an increasing sense of our obligation to give our Gospel to the world. Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, of Boston: We need an enthusiasm which shall be willing to trust the historical tendency of Unitarianism to broaden into principles and methods. Acknowledging these as essentials of Unitarianism, we will also rejoicingly declare what we believe as doctrine. Mrs. H. L. Wentworth, of Danvers, Mass., until recently one of the board of directors of the American Unitarian Association: Do we not fail to appreciate how really blessed our faith is, particularly those of us who have grown up in the light of it, and have taken it in as we take the sunshine and our mother's love as something of course? We need more personal consecration, more living and active faith, more of the burning zeal of those with whom we do not agree in many things, whose doctrines we shrink from as injustice to our loving Father, yet who set us an example we may well follow in their enthusiasm for carrying to others that which they so earnestly believe. We need to believe that our religion is something to be imparted, not selfishly enjoyed. We need more faith in the power of our faith to believe that our message of love is better for God's children than the message of terror. When we each and all live so near to the dear Father that we can find no greater pleasure than working for him in the spirit of the dear Master, and believe that we have a work to do that no other people can do as well, then we shall find that our children will grow up so full of this spirit that there will be no lack of warm and earnest workers for this special fold of Christ. Hon. George S. Hale, president of the American Unitarian Association, says: should say what, in different phrases and forms, great men have said of their work or the work to be done. Demosthenes "Action, and the second thing action, and the third thing action." Spenser "Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold." Gambetta-"Du travail, encore du travail, et toujours du travail." The interest of each one who has interest enough to work will increase, and his work will increase with his interest. The work which interests him is the work to be done, whether it is called religious or not, while it is associated with the Church and is a good work. Col. S. A. Carter, State Treasurer of New Hampshire: The briefest reply I can give to your question is Zeal. Hon. John D. Long: I think what the Unitarian Church needs most is to convince a very intelligent and progressive people that it has a definite, beneficent, and vital work to do, and is doing it. People always respond to a cause that demands, deserves, and does something, and are very quick to lay and leave on the shelf anything that is interesting only as a relic or a suggestion. I believe that the Unitarian belongs, and should belong, to the activities. Rev. M. J. Savage, of Boston: The Unitarian Church needs most a clear comprehension of the changed conditions of modern thought and the courage of leadership. Rev. Francis G. Peabody, D. D., of Cambridge, Mass.: The Unitarian Church, in my opinion, needs what all other churches need, and in about the same degree. It needs faith in its vocation, and men of faith to fulfill its vocation. It suffers from the lack of living and compelling religious life, and from the lack of men who have been led through the spirit of the times into the spirit of eternity. But, then, that is what all churches feel that they lack, and perhaps always will feel. Rev. E. A. Horton, of Boston: I should hastily specify these three needs of Unitarianism just now: (1) A deeper sense of responsibility and loyalty. (2) More centralization of organization, and thus a better denominational condition of things. (3) An improvement of our average service by mild liturgical features and practical sermons, and an increased hospitality to the public all round. Of course, I could men tion better Sunday-school instruction, teaching of our beliefs, etc.; but the preceding are inclusive of all that. Rev. Brooke Herford: I think the Unitarian Church needs very much:-- (a) More spirit of discipleship to Christ, more hold on the sense of his leadership and of the "rock found," which his words give to our faith in the great essentials of religion. (b) Simpler, direct, more religious preaching. We have the simplest faith of any, but we manage to preach it so as to give an impression of its being a high intellectual system. It is all coming, but one wishes sometimes it would come faster. Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D. D., of Boston: I am quite clear that we do very well in our home churches, but for assault on the devil we have no organization worth a pin. Suppose Paul had waited till the Thessalonians sent to hunt him up at Tarsus, while he was eating his heart out there? Instead of that, the church at Antioch determined to send out some missionaries-sent Barnabas to Tarsus to hunt up Paul, and then sent them off-of which one consequence is that I am writing this letter to you now. Suppose the Unitarian Church put, say, George W. Gallagher into Montana, and said, "We make you bishop of Montana. We stick by you till you die there, and maintain you. Do you, on your part, found churches there. Do you send right and left for old friends to man them and woman them. We put on you the responsibility. Something would happen which does not happen now. Dr. C. C. Everett, Dean of the Divinity School of Harvard University: Without attempting a final absolute answer, the word that comes to my mind in answer to your question is the courage of their convictions. Dr. F. H. Hedge, of Cambridge: In answer to our inquiry, What does the Unitarian Church need most? I hasten to answer, What, in my judgment, the Unitarian Church most needs is humility. Dr. C. A. Bartol, of Boston: My church is independent, not in the Unitarian Association. I should say that the Unitarian Church needs most faith in and baptism by the immediate outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In summing up the results of the inquiry, Mr. Gallagher says: I have closed with Dr. Bartol's words, because he seems to me to have most completely solved the question. Faith in the Holy Spirit and baptism by the Holy Spirit were the powers which at its origin made Christianity a success, a comfort to human hearts, and a blessing to the world. The early believers in the Christ are said to have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. They prayed for the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon them. If we have a faith in a living personal God, in the truths of Jesus the Christ, in divine influences to help us and to inspire us, we shall have spiritual life, and have it more abundantly. But according to our faith it will be unto us. The first requisite for a living, growing Church is a living faith in the living God. The second requisite is a desire to seek His help. The third requisite is to put our faith in a form that we can teach and present boldly to the world. The fourth requisite is to re-organize our Church on a basis that is both practical and spiritual. The age in which we live is one of intense action. The people at large care very little for doctrinal distinctions; but they love life, spirituality, and active benevolence. We should endeavor to live for the great purposes of the age. We should have a warfare, and fight the battles of God and humanity. We must recognize the life in the old truths dear to the orthodox churches, and make that life our own. Thus the point of this whole paper is that we need to re-organize our Unitarian Church, prejudice that may exist against them. One of our denominational writers has recently said, "Let us have creeds that describe, not creeds that proscribe.” This sentence pretty well distinguishes between the old creed idea and the new. We do want creeds that simply describe. But (and this is not to be overlooked) we want them to describe truthfully. The creed that satisfies us will not, for example, describe Unitarianism as Romanism, or Calvanism, or any form of orthodoxy however much diluted, still less will it describe it as merely free thought, or even ethics. This is the trouble with some descriptive creeds that have lately appeared among us,not that they describe, but that they describe falsely-in ways to make Unitarianism appear to the world as something it has never been and cannot be without changing fundamentally its character and lapsing into a movement no longer necessarily even theistic, not to say Christian. Hence we say we want statements and to re-state our fundamental beliefs (creeds if one chooses to call them such) clearly, bravely, and at once. CREEDS THAT HURT AND CREEDS THAT HELP. that describe simply, graphically, attractively, but above all truthfully, the great, simple, indestructible, self-eviIn a late number of the Christian dencing faiths for which Unitarianism Register, Rev. T. C. Williams, of New stands; and these statements should not York, has an excellent article on "How only be circulated widely among our to Use Creeds." He carefully draws the own people and taught to our children, line between creeds that hurt and creeds but they should be sown broadcast over that help; between creeds of the old the whole land. Every church owes it type, which are imposed on a church by to itself to publish such a statement and some outside ecclesiastical authority, circulate it generally in the community and which are unchangeable, and creeds where it stands; every conference and of the new type, that are simply the association, especially every one organconcise expression of the living faith of ized for missionary purposes, owes it to the church which adopts them, and are the world to do the same. We can do no therefore capable of change and growth better service to men than to let them with the coming of new light. It is see what our principles and faiths are, only creeds of the latter class that Uni-how simple and reasonable and wortarians have any interest in. But in these we do have, or at least ought to have, an interest, for they are reasonable, consistent with progress, useful. Mr. Williams shows how such creeds help us to make our principles known to the world, how they aid us in teaching our faith to our own young people, how they unify and make tangible the work of our churches, how foolish is any thy in their nature; how firm a basis they lay for a noble worship, while rejecting the superstitions which so often attach themselves to worship; how Christian they are, according to the simple Christianity of Jesus; how perfectly in line with the world's best religious development since Jesus; and how open and eager for all possible new light and life. Emerson says, "There is such a statement of religion possible as makes all skepticism absurd." The truth of this grows increasingly plain. It has always been found that there is no so powerful argument for Christianity as the simple declaration of its central truths, for example, as set forth by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. In the same way, Unitarianism has always found that a clear and candid statement of its principles and faiths is its best defense and propaganda. As we go forward, growing in vision and coming more clearly to realize the grandeur of our heritage and mission as Unitarians, we shall have more such statements (creeds of this new kind) adopted by churches, issued by confer ences, as parties publish platforms, as armies fling out banners. Our foolish fears of them will pass away. We shall come to see that they are things of wisdom and utility, and of the light, and not at all as some would have us believe, of folly or darkness. THE CHRISTIAN NAME. We often hear it said that, where there is agreement about things, it is idle to waste discussion upon names; and it has been pronounced a matter of indifference whether liberal-minded church reformers organize themselves in "Free Religious Union," or in "Free Christian Union." The remark has neither reason nor experience on its side. In the world of physical objects, it is true, things dominate over names, and can take care of themselves, while their vocabulary shifts. But in the world of ideas, in philosophy, in morals, in religion, words dominate over things, and in their significance are even identical with things, and are as much the living organism of thought as the wing and throat of the bird are the conditions of action for its especial nature. Cynicism is seldom shallower than when it laughs at the "power of words" over what it contemptuously calls "the popular imagination." Power they certainly have. They are alive with sweetness, with terror, with pity. They have eyes, to look at you with strangeness or with response. They are even creative, and can wrap a world in darkness for us, or flood it with light. But in all this they are not signs of the weakness of humanity: they are the very crown and blossom of its supreme strength; and the poet whom this faith possesses will, to the end of time, be master of the critic whom it deserts. The word "Christian" is the casket which holds for human thought the supreme treasures of the inner life of man, and the most precious gems of his external civilization; and when all has been emptied out from it which zeal and mistaken piety have stored there for safe keeping, there yet remains, in the catholic genius of the religion, the richest historic deposit with which Providence has blessed the world. To part with that word, and throw ourselves upon philosophy to weave S a substitute, would be to interrupt the Past in its creation of the Future, and not only to migrate to unreclaimed countries, but to sink the old native land that we might do so. Part as we may with what once was demanded by the Church, there is something and that, too, the very holiest influence in life-that is still with us; and this residuary truth, this Divine spirit, which emerges from the mixed inheritance of Christendom when all that is perishable has been discharged, does but own its descent, and look up with fitting reference to its fountain-head, when it claims the name of Christian. Possibly, the same truth and the same affection may be reached by the meditative thinker as the fruit of a devout philosophy; by the Indian Theist, as a purification of his native faith; by the Mohammedan, as the inner meaning of his sacred oracles; by the Jew, as the natural development of the Law and the Prophets. If so, may God speed them all! But each will find his mission best among his own spiritual kindred. Here, in our land, we have to do, not with Mohammedans and Hindoos, but with Christians. We ourselves have been moulded by a Christian literature and civilization. We love the Christian hymns and memories and prayers. We must appeal to Christian influences and susceptibilities. We must avail ourselves Take my life, and let it be Take my hands, and let them move Take my feet and let them be Take my voice, and let it sing Take my silver and my gold,- Take my moments and my days,— Take my heart, it is Thine own,— Take myself, and I will be I do not own an inch of land, The orchard and the mowing-fields, Richer am I than he who owns Great fleets and argosies; I have a share in every ship Won by the inland breeze To loiter on yon airy road Above the apple-trees. I freight them with my untold dreams, Each bears my own picked crew; And nobler cargoes wait for them Than ever India knew, My ships that sail into the East Across that outlet blue. The sails, like flakes of roseate pearl, Float in upon the mist; The waves are broken precious stones,— Sapphire and amethyst, Washed from celestial basement walls Out through the utmost gates of space, Yet loses not her anchorage, Here sit I, as a little child; The threshold of God's door Glad, when is opened to my need O God! I thank Thee for each sight O God! I thank Thee that I live. And ever as the day is born, Another day in which to cast Some silent deed of love abroad, That, greatening as it journeys past, May do some earnest work for God. Another day to do, to dare: To tax anew my growing strength; To arm my soul with faith and prayer, And so reach heaven and Thee at length. Mrs. C. A. Mason. WEDNESDAY. Father and Child. I mean her well so earnestly, I also am a child, and I Am ignorant and weak; I gaze upon the starry sky, For all behind the starry sky, Behind men's hearts and souls doth lie |