retary travels a hundred miles where his predecessor did ten, and writes ten letters where he did one, and receives from distant parts far more visitors. Still the fact remains: the work has outgrown any one man's personal supervision. So we have five superintendents,-one for New England, one for the Middle States and Canada, one for the South, one for the Central West, and one for the Pacific Coast,-besides several of what may be called sub-superintendents, who are in part, at least, supported by local conferences, as indeed is the case with the superintendent for the Middle States. All these officers have more calls than they can answer, and more work opens before them than they can do. The only complaint we can make is that they are too efficient, that they create too much interest in our cause, that they make possible too many religious societies. For, however plain our duty to preach our gospel to every creature who wishes to hear it, that duty must be limited by the means intrusted to us. Twenty-five new societies within a few years have sprung up in the East, ten more in the Middle States and Canada, twenty-five or thirty in the Central West, twenty on the Pacific Coast; while in the South there are clear signs of an awakening life which in the next decade must add many societies to our list. Ought we not to be willing to sustain such work far more liberally than we do?

The Association is interested in two branches of work abroad,-first in Hungary, and second in Japan. Some years ago the British and Foreign Unitarian Association and our own agreed to pay each five hundred dollars annually to aid in the establishment of a Unitarian church at Budapest, the ancient capital of Hungary. This year what we might call a syndicate has erected in that city, on land granted by the government, a large block, in the centre of which is a fine church building. Mr. Ierson, the secretary of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, who was present at the dedication of this building, gives a cheering account of the condition and prospect of the society. Not only has the parish at Budapest steadily grown in numbers and strength, but it has gathered in the country immediately around it no less than five of what they call "sister churches." Rarely, we can say, have such moderate appropriations achieved larger results. In addition, this annual gift keeps bright a pleasant bond of union be

on.

The mission to Japan involves far larger financial considerations. It was entered into for various reasons. We had unused a fund dedicated to Oriental missions. Α considerable number of our largest contributors were deeply interested in the plan. Last, and chiefly, the condition of the Japanese mind seemed to furnish an especially good opening for efficient work. Two years ago Mr. Knapp made a very encouraging report, showing that our word had been received with friendly interest by people of the most intelligent and influential classes. From ill health and other reasons, Mr. Knapp has been obliged to return; but the work which he so admirably began has gone Mr. MacCauley has taken his place, and Rev. William I. Lawrance has been selected to fill the vacancy, and is probably now in Japan. The stage of preparation and introduction has passed, and the stage of organization has succeeded. A Japanese Unitarian Association, not unlike our own in its aims and methods, has been formed, and many of the people have become members. Several religious societies akin to our parishes have been gathered. Three educated Japanese have already become preachers to their own countrymen of the liberal faith. The Harvard graduates who are engaged in college work there have rendered excellent service. Everything points to large progress in the future. Having put our hand to the plough, we cannot turn back. Mr. Knapp, who is here, and Mr. MacCauley, by his full report, will furnish accurate information.

The prosperity of established churches and the success of missionary work depend upon the accession to our ministry of welltrained young men. Your directors have not overlooked this, or failed to do their part to produce such a result. Every year they have appropriated a considerable sum to enable four or five young men from each of the divinity schools to preach to new or feeble parishes during the summer months. This accomplishes two results. It enables the young men to earn what is necessary for their support during their vacation, and it gives them that form of training which contact with real life can alone supply. In addition, a sum is appropriated which enables many students who could not otherwise do so to remain in the school. The

liberality of our people has given Cambridge a fair endowment. The same thing ought to be done for Meadville before the year closes.

To build new societies, and to diffuse more widely the truth for which it stands, is not the only work of a religious body. To maintain and increase the moral and spiritual life of the parishes already existing, and to make them rich in good works, is equally important.

To promote such life, unity clubs, guilds, and church temperance societies have been formed in many, if not most, of our parishes. The Association has gladly furnished an office for the secretary of these various organizations, and has voted a small sum for the furtherance of their work. It feels that

to make strong the Christian churches now established, to fill them with the power of true religion, to adorn them with practical righteousness, and to deepen in them the fountains of human kindness, so that they shall help every good cause, is to promote the diffusion of pure Christianity.

Two branches of our denominational work will be fully presented in separate reports, which will be printed with this; namely, that of the Church Building Loan Fund, and of the Montana Industrial School. Both of these valuable organizations were created by your Board of Directors. Both have their trustees appointed each year by the same body. But the action of both, by the very terms of the votes creating them, is absolutely independent of the Board which appoints them. This latter point needs to be much more fully understood than it appears to be. The Board of Directors of the Association, we say emphatically, does not interfere with the action either of the trustees of the Building Fund or of those of the Montana School. It does not think it desirable that it should. By its own action it has made it impossible that it should. It is not easy to exaggerate the worth of the Loan Fund in putting on their feet and lifting to self-support new societies. An anonymous gift of twenty thousand dollars and the contributions made by others during the year have raised the fund to about eighty-five thousand dollars; but every cent of it is already devoted to societies now engaged in church-building. To meet needs absolutely sure to confront us, at least ten thousand dollars ought to be added to the principal this year.

The Montana Industrial School among the Crow Indians has been pronounced by the United States Inspector of

At

Schools to be in an excellent condition. last accounts it had fifty-four pupils. The parishes during the last twelve months have raised nearly, if not quite, enough for its support, and to enable some improvements which were very much needed to be made. What will be required hereafter will be eight thousand dollars each year, punctually paid. Only a moderate sum, therefore, is asked from each of our societies. This is a duty which especially belongs to us all as Americans, and ought increasingly to commend itself to all. During the year considerable sums of money, and a large amount of books for work among our colored people, especially at Tuskegee School, have been received and forwarded. Every year a communication comes from the United States Commissioner of Education, commending in highest terms the work of Rev. A. D. Mayo, and earnestly requesting us to keep him in the field. Private communications to the same effect have been made by presidents of Southern colleges and others interested in the intellectual and moral elevation of the South. So, despite the depletion of our treasury, and notwithstanding Mr. Mayo's work is somewhat off our usual line, we have so far felt it to be our duty to help to support him in his mission; for his labors can hardly be described by any other term.

Your directors have sought to place before you with unusual fulness and in consecutive order the whole work of the Association. They desire to make it clear to every mind how vastly that work has increased in variety, in amount, and in importance. No one who has not noted how the Association has slowly crept from a little back room in a bookseller's shop, through the restricted quarters in Chauncy Street and Tremont Place, up to the noble building it now occupies; how its correspondence worthy of preservation has increased from one thin volume a year to a half-dozen portly folios; how two or three scattered and sporadic cases of missionary effort have been succeeded by at least twenty times that number, conducted in an orderly and efficient manner; how the few thousand tracts of the fathers have become the half-million of the children,--can rightly comprehend to what a position of large usefulness, true moral dignity, and solemn responsibility we have been advanced.

A few words as to the future. In that future we must use substantially the methods which we have found to be good in the past, perfected and made more efficient by

the lessons of experience. Wide distribution of our literature wherever it is craved; clear presentation of our views to young and thoughtful minds in our universities; the establishment of new societies in all places of influence, if the material is at hand; the careful supervision of our work by competent persons, that such work may be prudently and efficiently conducted,-what other means can we employ? What better ones can be suggested? But, if we continue to use such means, inevitably our work will grow in extent, in usefulness, and in cost. Theological opinions are no longer chains that cannot be broken. Men are ready, as they were not of old, to cut loose from their moorings in some little sectarian harbor, and to sail out on the broad ocean of truth to encounter its many perils and to enjoy its wide prospects. Increase, therefore, by any methods the knowledge of our rational and humane views of truth, and you will increase alike the demand and the need for its ministrations. Already we are feeling the effect of plentiful seed-sowing. In the future we shall feel it yet more. For the last six years it has been simply impossible to do our proper work with the gifts of the living. For nearly one-third of our resources we have had to employ the benefactions of the dead. But we cannot always depend upon them. And certainly we ought not to be forced to depend upon them. That is the wiser policy which reserves bequests for those times of mercantile distress which, at no very long intervals, are so sure to come. Sooner or later our people will have to face the question whether they will materially increase their gifts or undergo the shame of abandoning work which legitimately belongs to them. To be absolutely practical, your Board would say, This year the parishes have contributed $54,000: next year they must add one-half to that sum,-that is, if from their own resources they propose to pay the year's bills. In brief, nothing less than $80,000, and that prudently husbanded, will meet the need. Can it be obtained? Anybody who knows what our resources are sees that it can easily be raised. If, indeed, the generosity of one-tenth of our parishes were emulated by the other nine-tenths, the task would be achieved. What we are waiting for is the discovery or the invention of some method by which the duty and the rich privilege of giving shall be brought home to every minister, and to the individual mind and heart of every parishioner.

Meadville Theological School is in the field asking for an additional endowment of $115,000,-$50,000 to found a James Freeman Clarke professorship, $50,000 to found a Frederic Henry Hedge professorship, and $15,000 for general purposes. Will the dawn of the year 1892 see this endowment completed? Do our people thoroughly comprehend the problem which is before them? The question is not, as some seem to think, whether Meadville will continue. With its buildings paid for, and its small endowment in hand, it is sure to do that. Neither is the question whether Meadville will have students. With its greater nearness to some, with its greater cheapness of living for all, in the future as in the past it is likely to put into our ranks quite as many as Cambridge. The only question is, What advantages do we wish it to give to the pupils which it is sure to have? In these days, when the great need of parishes that are and of those that are to be is strong ministers, -well read, well educated, and well trained, -there ought to be no doubt that the money will come, and quickly.

Your Board would report with gratitude the following bequests: from J. Story Gerrish, Concord, Mass., $200 additional; Mrs. Sarah L. Ames, North Easton, Mass., $10,000; Mrs. Serena Ayer, Peabody, Mass., $500; Miss Charlotte F. Blanchard, $200; Miss Eliza Ann Potter, Portland, Me., $500; Miss Harriet A. Wilder, Lowell, Mass., $2,000 additional; Mrs. Elizabeth M. S. Tolman, Boston, Mass., $50.

We cannot close without reference to one who gave his last public efforts to the establishment of the Montana Industrial School, Gen. James F. B. Marshall. His perfect dignity of bearing and character, his absolute simplicity of purpose, his kindness of heart and speech, his interest in all good causes, secured him the respect and good will of all whom he met; while his consecration to whatever he undertook, his power to persevere amid difficulties, and his sound business ability enabled him to succeed in enterprises of the most varied character. Few people will be remembered with more tenderness, more reverence, and more gratitude than Gen. Marshall and she who was his helper in life and his companion in death.

In behalf of the Board of Directors, GRINDALL REYNOLDS, Secretary.

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG.*

The question as to how and what we shall teach our children of spiritual truth is so important that Sunday-school societies and unions are organized for the purpose of answering it. A wise, good woman said to me once: "Shall you dare to put your child in a Sunday-school? Don't you think it rather a dangerous experiment?" Certainly a sad comment on the results of Sundayschool teaching generally. Yet I do not think she was altogether wrong. It seems to be a generally accepted idea that any member of a church can teach in the Sunday-school. This, I think, is a mistake. Love of goodness and truth takes different modes of expression, and its possession does not necessarily imply the power in a person to impart it to others, especially to young minds which need peculiarly delicate treatment.

Children differ totally from each other in many ways, and neither the same physical, mental, nor spiritual food is alike adapted to them all. Unlike adults, who can extract from any discourse that which seems reasonable to their own comprehension, and discard the rest if not suitable for their individual needs, children can exercise no judgment whatever, and depend for authority entirely upon those who hold it over them.

One child might be taught a certain simple belief, like the guardianship of angels, with happy results, going to sleep, perhaps, in the blessed consciousness of their presence; and I just as fully believe that to another child of nervous, morbid temperament the presence of something not tangible, real and yet unreal, present and yet absent, might be a kind of terror which would make the dark pregnant with fears. So, also, as to the doctrines of immortality and Sabbath-keeping and of the Father. They can be much better inculcated by the mother who studies her children's natures than by the Sunday-school teacher who has ten or a dozen of these little, impressible minds before her about an hour at a time once a week during a part of the year.

The basis of Sunday-school teaching for young children should be, in my opinion, after the pattern of the following little talk: *Read before a Branch of the Women's Alliance.

"And, seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain."

"What are multitudes?"

"Crowds of people," answers a child.
"Yes.
Who saw the multitudes?"

"The Lord," all say.

"What did he do?"

"Went up into a mountain." "Why did he go up into a mountain?" No response.

"Isn't it something like the minister's going into his pulpit, children? His thought was higher than theirs. He spoke from above, and his living words flowed down to them.

Don't you sometimes go up on mountains, children? Does not the air seem brighter and clearer there than it does below?" (Here call for little narratives of mountain seeing and climbing.) "But there is another way of going up mountains, isn't there? We said, you know, that Jesus' going up a mountain meant that his thought was higher than ours. We can go up in our thoughts the same way he did into spiritual life, and try to live there; that is, when we find him on the mountains of Unselfishness and Thoughts for Others, and the multitudes,' or the many less kind and unselfish thoughts, are just below us."

Such teaching as this I would begin with, and then I would love best of all to lead the children into knowledge of divine things by teaching them to wonder,--not the wonder that they are always wondering about, the thousand and one details of daily living, but the wonder that stands awestruck facing the mystery and unspeakable beauty of the creation. Carlyle says: "Wonder is the basis of worship," and also, "Is not God's universe a symbol of the Godlike? Is not Immensity a Temple; is not man's history and men's history a perpetual evangel? Listen, and for organ music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the morning stars sing together."

It is into this temple that I like to lead the children. In this history I like to suggest to them the Father, and in this organ music help their souls to hear his voice. There are so many ways of entrance that one has only to choose. Begin with a flower. The lesson of the violet's modesty is trite; but how many, even of older minds, know that even the little hood-leaved violet often misses its greatest use, and that

the same plant produces, later in the season, after the blue blossoms have passed away, a tiny, whitish flower, close down to the roots, which is never known to fail of producing perfect plant-making seeds? And this greater lesson has been overlooked because our wonder has not gone deep enough into the violet plant's life.

Borrow a strong microscope and show some common quartz crystals in it, and explain, through them, window frost-work in winter nights. Bring leaves under it, and show the branching veins and tell what they do toward making the flowers and toward building the plant up in beautiful unity to produce more plants. Show (with tender gentleness, for the mischievous boy's benefit) the circulation of blood in a frog's foot, and explain, very briefly, how it is like their own.

Draw a lesson from such an incident as Emerson tells about in such a delicious way, -how he went out in a very excited frame of mind from a meeting of stormy discussion, one clear, still winter evening, and the grand, steady stars overhead said to him suddenly, "Why so hot, my little man?" Or from this that happened to myself when I went out from the house in an anguished state of mind one dark evening in early summer, and stooped to touch the moist, cool grass and my hand closed over some little white clover blossoms. Into my inmost heart those little blossoms spoke, surprisingly, the message was like a new one: "Why, what's the matter with you? We and the birds and all growing things are very happy. We are only doing what God tells us to do. Why don't you do what God tells you, and then you won't worry so?" "But," you will say at once, "this microscope work might be done by a mother, provided she had time to devote to it; but it would be wholly impracticable in a Sundayschool." Very well, then invite your class to your home, and do it there, giving, afterwards to each member a task,-to think up some little thought upon the subject which must be told at the next meeting of the class in the school, so that you may know that every one has really seen and understood what you have shown. Is not this practical enough?

Next, your objection will be, "But this is only secular teaching for the daily schools."

But, I say, not so. The daily schools are obliged to teach only the beginnings of knowledges and to omit their crown, altogether. I tell you that when, after dwelling in primer language upon the beginnings and unfoldings of life in all its kingdoms, organic and inorganic, when, after striving to show a child a glimpse of the glory beyond that shines through the opening doors in every apartment in Nature's workshop, you look with deep eyes into his, and say, your own heart swelling, "Oh! isn't it wonderful?" when you can draw from him, with eyes deep as your own, the answer, as I have done: "Ah, yes! How do you suppose it all began?"-in that moment you have opened his heart to the entering Deity and your work lies straight before you, to give that Deity shape. How can any thinking mind doubt that the child, thus prepared by ever so inadequate a vision of limitless industry and loving care-taking, would come in a natural way into a love for that great Love that so entices rather than commands? I would like to see a book, well written, with the title "Evolution for Babes." The babes would not read it, but their teachers could teach God from it, - always on one indispensable condition, that they have first themselves found God there, and then enthusiastically desire to show him to others.

If you tell me that this is pantheism, I deny it. "Nature is not named God, but the living garment of God; and he, in very deed, ever speaks and lives and loves in it, and lives and loves in me."

Boston.

ELIZABETH WHEELER.

THE SILENT HOUR. "Be still, and know that I am God."-Ps. xlvi. 10.

Be still, my soul, and know. Be hushed thy noisy speaking, Cease from thy constant seeking, Pause in thy aimless wanderings to and fro: Be still, and know.

Be still, my soul, and know. Whose is the hand that leads thee, Whose fostering bounty feeds thee, Beneath what shelter dost thou daily go? Be still, and know.

Be still, my soul, and know. 'Tis He, the Blessed, guideth, And all thy needs provideth:

"Tis God in tenderness that sheltereth so. Be still, and know.