He will spend his summer working upon a new book to be published in the fall, entitled "Problems in Modern Society."

Meadville, Pa.-Rev. W. P. Tilden gave a very interesting and inspiring course of lectures before the Theological School just before commencement, on "The Christian Ministry." The commencement exercises occurred on June 20. The graduating class numbered ten. The names of the graduates, with the subjects of their addresses, were as follows: Martha Chapman Aitken, Boston, Mass., "Noble Dissatisfaction and Ignoble Discontent"; Harrison Delivan Barrett, Canaan, Me., "The Moral Outlook in America"; Orrin Judson Blood, Petersburgh, Ill., "What is Evangelical Christianity?" Anson Bartie Curtis, Rives Junction, Mich., "Symbolism in Religion"; James Henry Dickson, Philadelphia, Pa., "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles""; Henry Montesquieu Green, Mottram, Eng., "The Anglican Church Congress of 1888 Fritz Wm. Nicholas Hugenholtz, Grand Rapids, Mich., "Religious Freedom in Holland"; Blanche Pentecost, London, Eng., "Some Historic Centres of Unitarian Thought and Influence"; George Edward Spring, Unionville, Canada, "Dr. William Benjamin Carpenter"; Watson Weed, Huron, Dakota, "Moral Factors of the Labor Problem."

Minneapolis, Minn.-The Second Universalist church has secured Rev. S. W. Sample, of Chelsea, Mass., for its pastor. Mr. Sample was formerly a Unitarian, but is of the kind to whom the name is little either way. He is an earnest and able man and will do strong work in his new field.

North Platte, Neb.-Mr. Leslie W. Sprague, of the Meadville Divinity School, is to work with the Unitarian Society here during his summer vacation. Mrs. Coggswell will soon leave for her Eastern home.

Pomona, Cal. Referring to the departure of Rev. O. Clute, to enter upon his new work as president of the Michigan State Agricultural College, the Pomona Progress says: Mr. Clute has built up a good congregation here, and the interest in his work is attested by the increasing audiences that have been present at his Sunday morning discourses. We are, one and all, sorry to

lose Mr. Clute from Pomona.

Rochester, N. Y.-Rev. W. C. Gannett has accepted a call to the pastorate of the Unitarian church here.

San Diego, Cal. The San Diegan prints in full sermons from Rev. B. F. McDaniel on "The Religion of Love and the Religion of Fear"; and "The Truth about Sin."

San Jose, Cal.-In a recent sermon printed in part in the Daily Times, Rev. N. A. Haskell gives an interesting review of the first year's work of his church. The so

ciety has grown in numbers and influence, and is now firmly established. The membership of the Sunday-school has increased from nine to sixty. The Woman's Auxiliary has done well and promises better work in the future. The Cosmos Club which works independently of the church and has among its workers many of the teachers and professors of the schools, has proved a successful as well as a pleasant enterprise. The outlook is bright for securing a lot and getting plans, at least, for a church building next year. Mr. Haskell said the work of the year had been satisfactory, but it must be kept up to be really successful; and he urged the necessity of close organization and harmony.

Seattle, Wash. A correspondent writes: The contract for our church has just been signed and excavation commenced. The material is on the ground, and we hope to occupy both auditorium and parlor before the first of October. Under the faithful ministration of our pastor, Rev. E. C. Smith, the congregation has grown steadily though slowly even under the discouragements of a weary climb every Sabbath to a third-story hall. The near prospect of a neat and pleasant church home gives joy to all. [The above was written before the recent terrible fire, which we earnestly hope has not seriously marred the encouraging prospect before the church. -ED. UNITARIAN.]

Sharon, Mass.-The literary editor of one of the Boston dailies, who has been

spending a Sunday here and attending service at the Unitarian church, writes to the paper: "We are prone to suppose that the city gives us the best preachers, but this idea has often been dispelled when one has attended worship in a village sanctuary. It was so last Sunday here. I listened to a philosophic, logical and yet poetical sermon on the subject of Life.' The theme was not treated in the common way-we were not told, as is usual, how few days we really kind about it;-but it was pointed out with live in a long life; there was no cant of this beautiful diction in what things natural, philosophical and poetical life was. Listening to this discourse was like hearing a strain of delicious music on a soft spring day when the gentle murmur of the trees around the church in responsive whispers seemed to say 'amen' to the preacher's utterances."

Toledo, Ohio.-In the First Congregationalist church a sermon was preached recently aflirming strongly the old doctrine of hell. Among other things it said: "You ask if there is a hell? I answer you, yes. It is as much a place as heaven. It is God's prison-house in which the lost souls of men and women are shut up. It is where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. How do I know it? I will tell you; fifty-six times does the Bible say there is a

hell. Isn't that enough? I think that ought to settle it."

Mr. Jennings, of the Unitarian church, replied in a very telling sermon, which the Blade published in full.

- Mr. Jennings expects to spend his vacation mainly at Troy (Ohio) where there is a prospect that he may be able to establish a Unitarian Society.

Wichita, Kansas. Says the Wichita Journal: Rev. Napoleon Hogeland (Unitarian) preached a very eloquent and interesting sermon last Sunday night in the pulpit of the Rev. W. J. Tull, of the Dodge avenue M. E. Church. Under the circumstances a comment regarding the "lion and the lamb" might not be amiss if one could be sure which was the lamb. A Unitarian minister in a Methodist pulpit is an interesting combination at all events, and the liberality of both sides is to be commended. Some one should notify the Rev. Mr. Gates, late of the First M. E. church, who once made a remark in his pulpit that he would rather see a preacher of infidelity in a city than a Unitarian. But times have changed. -Rev. J. C. Kimball, late of Hartford, Conn., preached the same evening in the Garfield Opera House to a large audience, on "The Religion that is Needed." The Journal printed the sermon in full.

JOTTINGS.

At last Horace Greeley is to have a statue. It will be placed in City Hall Park, New York, nearly opposite the building of the great paper which he founded.

The recognition by large corporations, of the necessity of reducing Sunday labor is a most welcome sign of the times. People have not been breaking down so much from over-work as from under-rest. The New York Central and other railroads have voluntarily lessened their Sunday train service, to the relief of hundreds of employes. Every man on steam railroads and streetcars should have either every alternate Sunday, or the half of every Sunday.

The human heart is like heaven - the more angels the more room.-Frederika

Bremer.

In a recent letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes to Mrs. Ormiston Chant, the autocrat says: “One of my earliest poems began with these two audacious lines

I sometimes sit beneath a tree And read my own sweet songs. I have never been ashamed of these lines. There is a delight in the impassioned description of one's feelings in the excited language of poetry which sometimes amounts to ecstacy; and to read over what we have written in these incandescent moments kindles the blood and sets the heart beating."

"Suppose all the liquor in a town was in

one large cask, what difference would it make whether that cask was tapped in one, two or ten places, so that the liquor was all drawn out and drank? High license proposes to draw all the liquor the people will buy, but it proposes to have a few less taps that's all."-Dalton, Ga., Citizen.

The problem of the government of our great cities staggers us with its difficulties. At the heart of all these difficulties is the problem of the liquor saloons. No one can doubt for a moment that if you get rid of this pest you would have got rid of the worst and most serious obstacle to clean, honest and efficient administration. I am

not afraid of an ignorant man, merely because he is ignorant, much less because he is poor, but I am afraid of the ignorance and poverty that swarm about the saloons. I am not afraid at all of a Catholic because he is a Catholic, but I am afraid of a Catholic or a Protestant equally, who frequents the bar-room. I am not afraid of universal suffrage of both men and women provided they are sober, but I stand appalled before the perils of bribery and corruption which the last presidential election revealed, in which liquor saloons were the chosen agencies for the purchase of votes.-C. F. Dole. No man is borr into the world whose work Is not born with him; there is always work And tools to work withal for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil! The busy world shoves angrily aside The man who stands with arms akimbo set Until occasion tells him what to do; And he who waits to have his task marked

out

Little man Ted, not long ago, became the proud owner of a family of very new kittens. Now mamma looked coldly on the poor little blind squealers, and informed her small son that some of them must be disposed of at once. So away went Ted in search of a home for his pets, calling first upon the Methodist minister and there pleading kitty's cause with loyal eloquence-but in vain, alas! The minister only smiled and shook his head, whereupon the little fellow brought forth his last and most powerful argument. "But he's a first-rate Methodist cat." Even that failed. The next day, the same minister was walking on the street, and happened upon Ted in earnest conversation with the Universalist minister of the town. Somewhat interested, he paused, just in time to hear a coaxing little voice say in beguiling tones, "O, but he's such a first-rate Universalist cat!" The Methodist minister now thoroughly interested, stepped up and said in astonishment, "Why, my little man, what's this? Didn't you tell me yesterday that your kitten was a staunch Methodist?" "O, yes, sir," our Ted said, not a whit abashed, "but he's got his eyes open since then."

VOL. IV.

FAITH.

With the text, "They wondered at his words of grace, and said, 'Is not this Joseph's son?" I propose to consider the Unitarian's faith in Jesus and approach in so doing a truth which is to us of sublimest meaning, yet that for allegiance to which we endure most reproach. The character of Jesus, his personality, Unitarians regard as the inestimable heritage of the world; and we think the greatest injury that comes from wrong doctrines concerning Jesus' nature, is that they impair the true image of that character. Unitarians recognize in Jesus Christ, not the second person of the Trinity, incarnate in a human soul, but the life of a perfect man in communion with God's will. Our short formula is, "Jesus by his

No. 8.

And

word and life proved human nature to be divine." Jesus is that son of the Father, and brother of all mankind, who of moral right can hold the loving discipleship of the whole human race, and under whose leadership chiefly, God is uplifting the entire world. The inspiration and immense impulse given to the world in the life of Jesus, we believe to have been primarily and always, the faith, the belief, in his real humanity; the faith that all he said, did, suffered and aspired to, is a human experience, a human discovery of the riches of goodness, love and truth in God by the channel of obedience and filial trust. why do we emphasize this truth? Why do we resist a statement of the nature of Jesus which separates him from essential humanity? I pass by, for the present, the evidences which are found in his own words and in the express spirit of his life. There is evidence enough in plain scripture if we but read it without preconceived prejudice; but I would now rather seek the reasons based on the very consciousness in you and in me, and in the unity of the universe, in which we are. Does not the unity of the universe require us to believe that all moral and spiritual growth is alike? For example, in physical things, the unity of Nature brings us the conviction that the law of gravitation is one-its formula and method the same in Sirius as on our earth; and the spectrum of the light of Sirius, light which takes three years to travel here, evidences the same laws of chemistry and optics which affect matter in our laboratories. Faith in the unity of law is the absolute postulate, or basis of all science. Is there no such unity of law in spiritual life, in questions of identity, consciousness,

merit or demerit, will and reason? Must not goodness, in order to be good ness, always have the same quality of growth, overcoming the limitations of sense, subduing temptation, asserting the will in noble choice? Now Jesus' life, in the gospel, is a record of such a growth, choice and victory. Does not its very ground of approval, however pre-eminent he was, consist in the fact that it was life under the same conditions, the same laws, as other human life? May we not go further, and say that the very honor of Jesus' preeminence is due, because his was life under the same conditions and laws as other human life? But suppose, as has been the deep error of Christian history, that we assert a different law for the life and growth of Jesus' character. Suppose that we assert that his very nature was altogether different from yours and mine? What if we claim a superinduced nature the Godhead indwelling, not by a law of possibility which applies to human nature as such, but only in Jesus, constituting him infinite God and man; then what becomes of character in Jesus, and of his whole experience? Is it any longer really like man's, or can it throw any light on human destiny and human nature as such? By the very terms of such a definition of Jesus, must not human consciousness in any man be a different thing and supply a different problem of existence to that of Jesus? When we dismiss mechanical ideas of salvation; when we believe with the Apostle, who said, "Be not deceived, he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as Christ is righteous;" when we recognize no other law of the universe for goodness than becoming good, must we not then believe Jesus' experience was veritably like ours, and under the same conditions, if indeed that experience is to help us? For help us it can, only through the avenues of faith and confidence, inspiring our own moral purpose, awakening aspiration prophetic to every man of the things God has prepared for those who love him. But if Jesus' essential nature was different in kind from that of those he called his brethren, and

whom he invited to be children of God; if while he so called on us to be like himself, he knew there was a distinction as wide as the universe between his lifeplan and that of any other man, what a mockery his invitation becomes! As though an eagle should invite a blind worm to fly! Do you not perceive, in that instant in which you set up such a difference as a supposed glorification of the Christ, that the real Jesus is lost his saving example is gone?

And having lost his real example, there was left to the church a new problem, to show how Christ shall save men, and the answer soon provided was a doctrine of substitution. Jesus, as man and God, says theology, saves us by imputing his righteousness to us. What else was left but that? According to the scheme, human nature was a failure; God came on earth as a man, and lived a perfect life; then, somehow, in dying, agrees to impute his "Godrighteousness" to any one who will accept it! If you will but think seriously, righteousness or badness is the one thing that cannot come by substitute; the consequences of good or evil may fall on others, but character-think candidly - how can that be "imputed," how can one be righteous except as he has been and done right? See how inextricable a web of unreason the system of substitution leads to! And all to adjust us about the supposed fixed point, that it is impossible for man as such, for human nature per se, and under the orderly grace of God, to begin the life of righteousness and grow in goodness. But what if we reverse all this, and see in Jesus himself the perfect human life, the proof that man can become Godlike, the realized type of humanity? What if we credit his own words when he called on his disciples to realize the same Divine Presence that he did; what if we credit him with the faith that the poorest form of sinful humanity still bears the divine image, and may arise and go to the Father! At one stroke. are we not rid of the phantasm of imputed righteousness, and born into an almost incredible hope? Incredible indeed, had not Jesus believed it. In

credibly incredible, had he not lived out his own faith; but as certain as the sun in heaven to him who interiorly apprehends Jesus and his gospel! He did indeed come to save mankind. He came to save us from skepticism, from unbelief in ourselves. He came to make discovery for us of the measureless treasure and dignity of the immortal soul, and he made this discovery for us, by making it in himself. "Believe that you are a child of God, and live like one!" is his message. "All things are possible to him that believeth." Now when we read the story of Jesus thus, and realize it as a veritable human experience, he becomes the source of moral inspiration to the whole race. His method becomes the typical method. He is, in a profound and spiritual sense, the way, the truth, and the life. Believing in him as real, his experience is felt to be real, and it means something that stirs the very depths in us, when he says, "Follow me."

Are we indeed created as Jesus, in the very elements of our nature? Is God our Father, in the same sense as he is his? Does the universe stand pledged by the immutable law to answer faith in degree and kind as it did to his? Is the law of moral growth, of spiritual increase, the same for us as it was for him? Is the same law of exultant service, of companionship with God, of love like God's, given to us as an invitation, an allurement, that was given to Jesus? So we reverently, triumphantly believe. We believe it first, because Christ believed it; because it explains for us so much more than any other conception of the moral universe. We believe it because it is worthy of God. We believe it because, when once interiorly and lovingly apprehended, it is a truth, immeasurably affecting and personal, drawing us, if I may so speak, to the very bosom of infinite Love, in an abandon of trust. That the God and Father of Jesus is our God and Father, ready in all the plenitude of a universe to be our lover and friend, is indeed an infinitely affecting truth.

And here it is, that the right apprehension of Jesus' experience has vital

significance. In a different tone from that of the Nazareth people, we may ask the question, "Is not this Joseph's son?" Did not one of our mortal race find God so dear, so faithful, so true a lover? Did not one such grow from trust to trust, and receive the very fulness of the divine intent in man into his breast? And does he not tell me that his is in verity the path, the law of the spirit for every one willing to enter it; and that the Father of the universe answers each trust and effort by the omnipotent laws of grace and help; that there is a heavenly conspiracy of Truth with the true, and of Love with the loving?

It

Tell me, friends, does not such a conception bring thoughts too deep for tears? For myself, under an inconceivable burden of gratitude and adoring reverence, I can say that it seems to answer to the very springs of my being. It is a justifying faith. I mean it adjusts itself so simply, so grandly to all else I know and see of the universe. It is interpreter of so much that dimly stirs my heart, and answers my thought, as I look out or in, upon the solemnity, the mystery of life. I exult to feel this conception of the religion, the experience of Jesus, fit to the unity of the universe. I exult with tenderest thankfulness, not with pride, to see this larger faith displacing the provisional one. is rising outside of our body in the great minds of England, India, Germany, and America. I rejoice, and believe that Jesus rejoices, in that hour which is coming and now is, when the world shall enter upon the real meaning of his experience, and receive from it a springtide of moral enthusiasm, masterful, and passionately deep. I exult, yet as one humbled under the gift, that the trust of such a truth is committed in part to us, of the Spirit, in hope that as Jesus' ministers we may impart it to others. And I yearn for the day when our loved church throughout this land, when Unitarians in name, shall have awakened to all the meaning of this trust. Surrounded by the thick columns of orthodoxy, driven in on ourselves, forced to a defensive attitude, fiercely watched