innocent pleasures that rightly belong to the full tide of the physical powers that our Father has made a part of early life. You will never know your full capacity for enjoyment until you consecrate yourself to the service of the highest things in life, to the development of a noble manhood,-a manhood that shall despise meanness of all kinds, that shall feel the tingling blood quicken in the veins at the sight of oppression of any kind. A manhood that shall revel in mirthfulness and joy when the showers of blessedness and goodness fall, to refresh and fertilize the fields of life's daily duties, and can also put its strong arm around and underneath the weak and weary ones of earth, who have been overcome with the heat and burdens of life's struggles.

The new year ought to show advances all along Unitarian lines. Never before was there such a unity of purpose manifested in the churches. Never before such a thoroughly religious spirit conspicuous in all that enters into denominational life. Material prosperity ought to bring with it the means for a wider extension of our thought

and influence.

Let every one during the coming year do his "level best." Let us all stop mourning over other people's imperfections and shortcomings. Let us dry our tears for the sins of others. Let us spare others from our criticisms and fault-findings, and devote our energies to the development of all that is highest and best in ourselves.

So shall we make this a Happy New Year not only for ourselves but for everybody with whom we come in contact.

From REV. JOHN CUCKSON:

ences and realize that the religion of Jesus is a life rather than a creed, a spirit of mutual respect and good will and kindly service, and not a formal agreement where real agreement is impossible.

It is enough that we go on steadily and faithfully doing our part in this noble work, leaving the result with God.

The Unitarian continues to be a useful and effective agent of our liberal Christianity, and you and your helpers preach many a sermon which carries courage and comfort to laborers in the same field.

From REV. EDWARD A. HORTON:

The general outlook over American Christianity has a threefold encouraging aspect. Religion is becoming more rational, more practical, and more spiritual. And in view of this, I may heartily congratulate the readers of the Unitarian. We are naturally deeply interested in the spread of our own views; but even that result can only come by the wide and deep improvement of relig ious thought and feeling as a whole. To plant a particular shrub in an uncongenial climate is to invite disappointment. expect the healthy, permanent growth of our liberal views in a hostile soil is Utopian. This general advance, then, is my first source of congratulatory greeting.

To

The second reason for good cheer, as we enter 1897, is the abundant proof that Unitarians are themselves arousing, and more earnestly uniting. We are diminishing the number of objects which scatter our energies, and drawing closer in fervid loyalty to the central objects of our denomination. In this there seems to be no loss of freedom,rather does the individual member gain true liberty by wiser and closer union. The

Every year, it seems to me, adds new victories to the cause we love, and for which we are all co-workers.

Religious liberty is in the air, and old prejudices of sect and creed are slowly melting like ice before the sun. Perhaps the processes are slower than we like, but time is on our side and we can wait. Suffice it that by word and pen, and by a spirit of courtesy and catholicity, we are doing our best to make those who differ in religion understand and respect each other's differ

present time can always be answered most firmly "Yes." We, the American people, are still inconsistent in our civic and religious views. There is yet to arise a skilfully embodied religious system, which harmoniously fits our ideas of commonwealth administration. In bringing in this better adjusted state of things between religion and government, we have been pioneers. Our congregational view of church life, and our claims for the rights of the individual in religion, are similar to the same principles in our republic.

I may add a third source of New Year's congratulation. We behold from our various towers of observation, not only the preceding encouraging signs, but also the assuring sight of greater Christian unity. The mere fact that certain schemes have been broached and rejected is really encouraging. That they have been agitated and discussed shows how feeling is tending. The convictions of genuine leaders in religion are getting more and more settled on the basis of a working unity. Ecclesiastical uniformity is something that no sensible man desires. There must be a grouping together of kindred spiritual forces, working in freedom of interplay and self-respecting co-operation. Differences of administration, of liturgies, of organization, must be allowed. The spirit of toleration, which was good for a beginning, is not the true attitude for advanced Christians. Frequent interchange of ideas, and kindly interpretation of essential truths is much better than what has been known as "toleration." Those who differ from us in doctrines are often valuable instructors. We are in an age of reciprocity, in which we expect to learn something from all sources. This is true in religion. So, let us take stout heart in view of the larger hope which shines over us, lighting the way to a more living and more comprehensive union among all denomina

tions.

Inspired by the outlook of this hope, I wish the many readers of the Unitarian a Happy New Year.

From BROOKE HERFORD, D.D., London, England:

I want to send a line, if only to tell you that I am afraid it is too late for any thing for your January number. If I were in time, I should want to send loving greetings, to all the many friends who read your pages.

This has been a year of strain to many, both on your side and on ours,—most of the strain happily over now,-though, with us, the Armenian horror hangs over our hearts and consciences still, very heavily. To have done nothing, and always with the doubt upon us, whether, if we had tried to act alone we might not have brought greater horrors upon Europe! Oh, how one does long sometimes to get away to a world

much

which will not require quite so struggle and heartache to keep it straight! I watch very eagerly everything you are doing on your side. I read my Register and my Unitarian, and the Pacific Unitarian and the New Unity very diligently, noticing the new places opened, and the conferences, and all new efforts; and then I feel like Paul, when he met the brethren from Rome, and "thank God, and take courage" as I turn back to the work about me here. It is slow work, however. The Liberal Faith has a harder battle here than in America! "But it moves,"-though slowly.

From REV. JOSEPH MAY:

It is a pleasing privilege which the Unitarian offers one of greeting the scattered members of our household of faith. In these pages, as around an old hearthstone, we will meet for a little while as the New Year opens, as the children of a family gather for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

What shall our greeting be? Surely one of congratulation on the amelioration of sentiment and progress of thought all about us, which is justifying so abundantly the principles we have trusted. The old theological system is far from dead. It has generations of vigor in it still, I fear. But its spirit is wonderfully changed; and it is beginning to seem like one of the grim fortresses we are shown in ancient countries which are now only museums, and the next stage will be that of picturesque decay. It is lapsing as fast, probably, as it is wholesome that forms of faith should decline. It is not so much being overthrown as softened, humanized, and made moral and reasonable, as the spring airs melt away an ice palace at Montreal.

Hear Mr. Moody exclaiming, "There is no salvation without righteousness !" It is the echo of Channing and Dewey!

Let us be especially glad that the same process has gone on among ourselves. As I recall our honest leaders of thirty years ago and compare their spirit with that of to-day, the time seems too short to have so emancipated men from the dogmatism which ostracized Parker and exiled others of our most precious minds. In reasonableness of thought, too, we have made a progress quite as great as that of the orthodox world.

I think we see clearly, now, that religion is simply the natural relation of the soul with God, itself, or its fellows; that is, conditions could not be at once arbitrary and true; and thus that the whole apparatus of a supposed revealed system is impracticable, and necessarily false. Nature simply means truth, ever expressing itself in the order of the universe; and there can be nothing super-natural unless there can be something higher than God.

Because this question of the nature of religion is so implicated, for Christendom, with that of his own nature, I rejoice that modern thought is gently, but quite surely, releasing from the integuments of myth the great personality of Jesus, whose birthday we are just celebrating,-as Unitarians, with peculiar heartiness, can do. The suggestiveness of that great man's thought and character can freely appear only to one who has measurably succeeded in dispersing the mists of superstition which so early gathered about him. The true career of Jesus, friends, is still to be lived.

To prepare his way for such a second coming is peculiarly the service we may render to our time. This is part of that larger work of vindicating the naturalness (that is, the absoluteness) of religion. I wish we had a more clear and hearty confidence in our position. We have the truth, dear Unitarians friends! The liberal principle is sure; and, if religion has any validity, there is no mistake about those great ideas,-God, the eternal life in humanity, the sovereignty of right, the brotherhood of man. Our interpretation of them shall go on, forever expanding and refining, but these great truths can never be impaired or dislodged or exhausted. Compare the elaborate system of doctrine which is accepted about us as the sum of religious truth! So artificial a structure, depending on conditions of revelation and testimony so improbable and insecure; introducing absurdity as mystery, and violating the moral sense in its central alleged fact, which has so displaced the Infinite Father, and substituted a secondary and limited conception of godhead! The fact is, that this whole system of ideas is as strictly mythical as those of ancient Greece or Scandinavia. It is passing, as they passed.

Yet its believers are confident, eager, en

thusiastic. I will not say that we are hesitating. But we seem not quite aroused to feel, as we ought, the preciousness of the truth we have attained, and which we might, by common zeal, do so much to promote.

But this is no time for complaints or reproaches, even mild ones. Rather let us all rejoice in the visible deepening of faith in the essentials of religion, and in the closer sympathy which is drawing together men of all shades of opinion.

And so, to all "good Unitarians," to all faithful seekers after truth, to all "men of good-will," heartiest congratulations, and a happy (and holy) New Year!

THE UNITARIAN CHURCH IN AMERICA.*

BY JOHN H. HEYWOOD.

American Unitarianism had its earliest or

ganized expression in New England. This was natural,-inevitable, indeed,-for the prevalent, the dominant form of ecclesiastical organization and government in New England from its very settlement was Congregationalism, with its emphatic assertion of the independence of the churches and of the sacredness of the right of private judg ment; and Unitarianism was a daughter of Congregationalism. With one notable exception the older Unitarian churches in Massachusetts and the other New England States were Congregational in government and in forms of worship. They were, in fact, liberal Congregational churches. The exception, which is alike interesting and noteworthy, is that of the "Stone Chapel," or, rather, "King's Chapel," organized in 1686. This, as all thoughtful visitors know, is one of the most venerable churches in Boston, and originally was not Congregational, but Episcopal, and represented the Established Church of England. As stated in Rev. E. E. Hale's very interesting life of Rev. James Freeman Clarke: "This chapel, as its name implies, had been founded by and for the crown officers in Boston at the time when Andros was the royal governor. It continued as the 'King's Chapel' until the last royal governor left Boston in 1776. 1782 the proprietors asked James Freeman to be their reader, chose him pastor in 1783, and in 1787 ordained him without the help

* Written for the History of Louisville, Ky.

In

of a bishop, there being, in fact, no bishop who could have helped them. Mr. Freeman and they alike understood that he and they were not to be bound by the articles and creed of the English Church; and thus it happened that the King's Chapel, after the king ceased to reign in America, became the first Unitarian church known under that name in America." Mr. Hale adds, "It seems worth while to say this in beginning the life of the grandson of James Freeman, as the grandson was to become a preacher and leader widely known in the Unitarian communion of this country." And it has given special pleasure to the writer of this sketch of the history of the Louisville Unitarian Church, to quote the suggestive passage, because Dr. Clarke, the namesake as well as the grandson of Dr. James Freeman, was its second pastor.

This conversion of King's Chapel makes a rare event, unique and phenomenal, in ecclesiastical history. It became a thoroughly independent church, its society accepting and acting upon the Congregational theory that a congregation has the right not only of choosing, but also of ordaining, its pastor. In further exercise of its right and prerogative as an independent church, it made a wide and most significant doctrinal movement or departure. King's Chapel had, of course, the formularies of the English Episcopal Church, and its people were strongly attached to its impressive liturgical service. This they desired to retain, but so modified as to accord with their changed religious ideas and convictions; and on April 12, 1785, they adopted the Revised Book of Common Prayer as arranged by their minister, Rev. James Freeman. King's Chapel has been greatly favored in its pastors. Dr. Freeman's pastorate continued for nearly fifty years, and his successors' names, with his own, stand high in the records of Liberal Christianity for fine scholarship, for beauty of spirit and life, for noble, Christlike characters. The memories of Rev. Francis W. P. Greenwood, Ephraim Peabody, Henry W. Foote, are very precious and fragrant; and the able man who now fills that venerable pulpit stands there worthily.

The conversion of King's Chapel into an independent Unitarian church was certainly a very significant event, and rendered all

the more striking by the time of its occurrence just at the close of the Revolutionary War, which had not only tried all American souls to their depths, but had also roused all American minds to their utmost activity.

But the main development of Unitarianism in New England was, as already stated, in the Congregational churches. And its development there was natural, we may say normal. Those churches, being either of "Puritan" or of "Pilgrim" origin, laid immense stress on ecclesiastical and personal independence; and not only that, but the immortal utterance of the heroic and saintly John Robinson, that "more light is yet to break out from God's sacred Word," had been alike a cheering prophecy of mental and spiritual progression and an enkindling incentive to it. The early Unitarians in New England, it will be remembered, did not seek nor desire to form a new sect. So unsectarian, so anti-sectarian, were they that some of them-like Rev. Dr. Lowell, father of James Russell Lowell-positively refused to take the name "Unitarian." They did not wish to leave the Congregational Church any more than did John Wesley wish to leave the English Episcopal Church. Their desire was to see that Church, that communion, freed from certain dogmas relating to the divine character and government and to human nature and destiny which seemed to them harsh and heart-rending; and to see it freed from some tests of character and some conditions of fellowship which they felt were at variance with right reason and with the explicit teachings of the founder of Christianity in his Sermon on the Mount, in the Lord's Prayer, in the two great Commandments, and entirely alien to the spirit which pervaded the life of Jesus and made it divinely beautiful. Not separation, but a continued and stronger union, based on the principles of what they regarded as pure, unadulterated Christianity, was their aim and earnest aspiration. The divergences, however, in thought were too many and wide, the influence of temperament, of inherited tendency, and of environment was too strong and deep to permit of the fulfilment of their desire; and separation became inevitable. It was not instantaneous and formal, but gradual and natural. The discussion lasted long, and was at times

sharp and even acrimonious; but it was marked on both sides by great spiritual energy, mental power, and fine scholarship. It was a continuation of the unending discussion of that mighty differentiation which has gone on through the centuries, as between Arianism and Athanasianism at one period, between Augustinianism and Pelagianism in another, between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, between Arminianism and Calvinism, between Ecclesiasticism and Individualism, with its doctrine of the "Inner Light,"-a discussion and differentiation doubtless to go on with ever-enlarging scope and reach; for

"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns,

until in the Divine Providence shall come, through co-operation of all the mental and spiritual powers, the analytic understanding, the intuitive reason, the pure heart, the consecrated will, the grand synthetic generalization and union, foreshadowed in the sublime prayer "that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, they may be one in us," the real and perfect union, whose keynote and vital essence the Beloved Disciple has given us in his deathless utterance, "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him."

The memorable sermon preached by Rev. W. E. Channing, D.D., in Baltimore, Md., in 1819, at the ordination of Rev. Jared Sparks as minister of "The First Independent church" of that city, did a great deal toward crystallizing the views of the Liberal Congregationalists. In May, 1825, the American Unitarian Association was organized in Boston and has done admirable work for Liberal Christianity.

At the suggestion and under the auspices of the American Unitarian Association a national conference was organized in the city of New York in April, 1865. Its character and purpose are thus stated in the preamble to its constitution: "The Conference of Unitarian and other Christian churches was formed in the year 1865, with the purpose of strengthening the churches and societies which should unite in it for more and better work for the Kingdom of God. These churches accept the religion of Jesus,

holding, in accordance with his teaching, that practical religion is summed up in love to God and love to man. The Conference recognizes the fact that its constituency is Congregational in tradition and polity. Therefore, it declares that nothing in this constitution is to be construed as an authoritative test; and we cordially invite to our working fellowship any who, while differing from us in belief, are in general sympathy with our spirit and our practical aims." The Unitarian denomination is relatively a small one. According to the last "Year Book" of the Association its societies in America number four hundred and sixtyfour, with ministers. But, small as it is numerically, if we recall a few names of Unitarian men and women who stand high as historians, philosophers, poets, philanthropists, statesmen, jurists, preachers, and teachers, such names, for instance, as Bancroft, Prescott, Palfrey, Sparks, Parkman, Fiske, Draper, Bryant, Longfellow, Pierpont, Tuckerman, Howe, Miss D. L. Dix, Mrs. M. A. Livermore, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Justice Story, Daniel Webster, Channing, Dewey, Parker, Savage, Chadwick, Abbott, and Walker,- -we see and feel that the body, however small, has not been without power in the worlds of thought, science, and literature, and of moral and spiritual life, and of beneficent activity.

WHAT TIME I AM AFRAID.

What time I am afraid, I will trust Thee.-Ps. lvi. 3.

There is much within the heart to affright it; there is much without it to set it a-tremble. The evil that defeats the full life fosters fear in the weakening of the righteousness whose happy bravery knows no fear. When guilt troubles the soul, the birds in the woods where the shadows of hawks fall know more of peace than the troubled heart, startled sometimes when nothing is near to affright it, save perhaps its own unfaithful beating. From the shadow of a friend it flies affrighted, as some startled bird might fly from a fellow singer of peace into the very claws of the cruel hawk havocking in war. What a confusion, to fear and fly the blessed, to turn from it to fellowship (as in joy) what is evil