the country who would tell you frankly in private conversation that they feel no need in their place of organizing a Unitarian church. "Why," they say, "our minister preaches just as liberal doctrine as the average Unitarian. Why, then, should we create a schism? Why should we make hard feelings? Why should we separate neighbors from each other? Why should we get up this dissension and discussion when we are practically having all we want just as things are now?" And this is undoubtedly true. I know, for example,— I shall not fear contradiction if I call names,- I know that in the State of Connecticut the one thing that has stood in the way of the organization of Unitarianism, of the creation of liberal churches, more than anything else, is that the average Orthodox minister there can beat the Unitarian, so to speak, if you will pardon the expression, at his own game. They preach so much liberalism, so much free thought, so much of modern humanitarianism, that the people feel that there is no need of any other churches. "These churches," they say, "are growing liberal as fast as it is healthy that they should grow. Why, then, interfere with this natural progress?"

Then one point more, and that is a thing connected with the very genius of Unitarianism itself. From the very beginning, Unitarians have been afraid, more than of almost anything else, that they should become a sect. Dr. Channing, for example, fought hard against the organization of the American Unitarian Association, lest it should result in turning Unitarianism into a sect. The old fathers of our Church never dreamed of organizing a new denomination in Christendom. They thought, rather, that it was a movement of thought and new life in the old churches, and that it would continue so; and that policy has not been abandoned yet. I have known within a year cases, I will not criticise or pass an opinion as to whether it was wise or not,- but I know cases within a year where ministers who were becoming liberal have corresponded with leading Unitarians, raising the question as to whether they had better come out as Unitarians or stay where they are; and they have been dis

tinctly and definitely advised to remain where they are, because it is said that they are exercising an influence there which they would lose if they came out. The people around them are gladly taking liberal thought at their lips, when, if they came out and labelled themselves Unitarians, these same people would be afraid; and the result would be a backward instead of a forward movement. I do not attempt this morning, I say, to criticise this: I simply mark it as a fact. Unitarianism has never put forth any great effort in the way of building up a denominational success of its own. It has cared rather for the spread of its principles and its ideas.

And now I wish to note a few points in illustration of the fact that these principles and these ideas are spreading, and spreading as they have never spread before. I have never had much sympathy with the ordinary talk of the Unitarians as to their being a leavening power, as though the growth of liberalism all over the world was to be attributed to them. Indeed, I do not believe anything of the kind. I believe that it is God, the great time-spirit, the movement of the age, that is liberalizing all the other churches and the Unitarian Church besides. It is something wider than any little puny efforts on our part to liberalize our neighbors. We are a part of the great forward sweep of God's own movement through and up the ages. It is the discoveries of modern science, it is the speculations of modern philosophy, it is this great new flood of light that has come to the modern world concerning the nature and destiny of man,-it is all these things that are at work modifying, softening, changing, lifting human thought and human life. But that this process is going on outside our own body I wish to make clear to you by noting a few illustrations.

I have had occasion heretofore to call your attention to the fact that I am in constant correspondence with men still in the pulpit of other churches,- ministers of the Established Church in Scotland, ministers of the Church of Eng land, ministers of the Episcopal Church in different parts of

this country. And, in all directions, it is the same one movement which is going on,—men thinking, men inquiring, men dropping one feature of the old creed after another, and accepting the new light and the new hope. They are questioning, indeed, as to whether they would be quite at home in Unitarian churches, questioning as to whether these churches of their own are not growing so fast that they had better remain with them, and help on their natural unfolding and development. I attempt not to answer these questions for them I merely note them as facts. But these changes are going on in every direction in these old churches; and, in the Congregational Church, the old Puritan Church of New England, the process is more marked and more rapid than perhaps in any other in the world.

Note one or two illustrations of the fact. The American Board has been holding its session in New York the last few days. You are aware of the fact that during the last two or three years the policy of the management of that Board has been what is called a very narrow and exclusive one. It is simply the old policy, and the only one consistent with the old faith. The management of the Board have said what? Why, they have said, "The one thing that led us in the first place to send missionaries to the heathen was the belief that the heathen were lost unless we sent them the gospel." And so they have naturally claimed that any man who went out to preach to them this gospel ought to be one who believed they were lost and therefore needed it. That certainly is logical; that certainly is consistent. If they are not lost, why go save them? Or why send to them a man to go through the form of saving them who does not feel sure at all that they are lost? I note this simply as indicating the great change that is coming over this body: for, as a matter of fact, the great seminaries, the training schools of its ministry, that at Yale, that at Bangor, that at Andover,have changed and liberalized to such an extent that hardly a single one of their graduates in the last two or three years has been considered a sound enough man to be sent abroad

as a foreign missionary to the heathen. They have surrendered their belief in the doctrine of eternal loss, which, if you stop and think of it, you will recognize to be the very foundation stone of the old faith. For it is the belief in this loss that has led the churches to organize themselves as they have for the work of saving mankind. The change has gone to such an extent that one of their own number, a prominent clergyman in this region, stated within two years. that there were not more than one or two Congregational ministers in the city of Boston who were sound enough to be sent out as missionaries to the heathen. And a wide conversation and correspondence with prominent men in that denomination lead me not to think but to know that more and more is questioning increasing as to the infallibility of the Bible, as to the Trinity, as to everlasting punishment, as to some of these great central dogmas that have been practically unchanged in the belief of the Church for ages.

One more striking illustration of this change I must refer to. I wrote an article last spring which was published in the North American Review,-written at the request of the editor, the late Mr. Rice, he furnishing me with the title, and being in thorough sympathy, as I had reason to know, with my views,-on "The Inevitable Surrender of Orthodoxy." This article, however, and this is what I had in mind to say, called down upon my head the severest criticisms of the Christian Union, one of the leading Congregational papers of the country; and the main point of its attack was that I had misrepresented and maligned orthodoxy by the definition of it which I had given. I still think that the definition I gave was historically accurate, neither admitting nor excluding one single relevant point. But what I wish to do now is to read you what the editor of the Christian Union says in response to an inquiry on my part as to his own definition of orthodoxy. Here is the definition of orthodoxy, as given by one of the leading Congregational papers of this country:

"The catholic faith of the Church Universal is in the

reality and terribleness of sin, not in a theory of its historic origin; in the forgiveness of sins, not in a theory of the atonement; in Jesus Christ as the manifestation of God in the flesh, not in a theory of the Trinity; in future rewards and punishments dependent upon character, not in a definition of their nature; and in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man."

The striking thing about it is that I was certainly surprised to discover that, according to this definition, I was no longer a heretic. For there is not a single point in it that I do not believe. Only I believe a good deal more than that.

This, then, as indicating the great change of thought on the part of the great religious bodies of the world. There is no sort of question, then, no matter whether our little organized Unitarian churches are increasing in number or size,— there is no sort of question that our principles, our ideas, are in all the air: they are permeating the life, the thought, the literature, the newspapers, the reviews, the lecture platforms, the sermons of the civilized world. And they are so definitely, so distinctly, so logically, the necessary outcome of the intelligent growth of the modern world towards a higher civilization that there can be no more question as to their ultimate dominance and triumph than there is as to whether the sun will rise and make it light to-morrow.

In the midst of this condition of things, then, what is the present duty that devolves upon us? I can only hint it, putting it into two or three brief suggestions. The one great work, in the first place, for us to insist on and be about continually is the assertion of the permanence, the eternal nature of the religious life. Religion is the great fact of God in human history, of God leading and lifting human life. Theology is only the changing theory that men have concerning this great, deep fact.

We need to insist, in the next place, on this religion as a necessary part of every perfect, rounded, complete human life. Friends, a man is nothing but an animal a higher kind, I grant, but nothing but an animal without religion.