see no reason why our national denominational life (strictly speaking) should not be poured wholly through the ample channels of that Association, leaving the National Conference to broaden out and become really what seems to have been in Dr. Clarke's

recounted by Secretary Reynolds without feeling anew the greatness of the mission which God has intrusted to the Unitarians of this country, or without being stirred with new zeal and consecration. We repeat, let every reader of the Unitarian read this

Christian churches of America. That in some form or other there ought to be an organization to bring together in large num

Week was crowded with interesting meetings; but this report was the central thing of all, because amid all the delightful and

representatives of all phases of liberal Christianity, we feel increasingly sure. Surely, the time has come for the different divisions of the great (great and strong, if united) Liberal Christian army to know each other, and to discover that they are

only divisions of one army. Nothing do

Unitarians and Universalists more need than plans and aims that look beyond sect lines. While we give due diligence to the smaller things, let us not be blind to the larger. It grows increasingly evident that there are larger things to plan for than we have yet ventured.

We commend to the Council of our National Conference the question whether they cannot with good results open the doors of the coming meeting in Saratoga much more widely than usual. For ourselves we should greatly like to see in prominent places on the programme some of the leading brethren of the Universalist Church, and other representatives of Liberal Christianity outside of our own immediate fold.-[EDITOR.]

THE BOSTON ANNIVERSARIES.

We delay the issue of this number of the Unitarian to allow us to give our readers a glance at the Boston May meetings, and especially to enable us to print the Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the American Unitarian Association. This report is one of the most interesting, encouraging, and stirring ever made by that Board. Let no one fail to read it. It is a graphic picture of what our national missionary organization has done the past year, and the far greater work that opens. Does any one think we are dead or asleep or standing still, let him look into this report and see. Does any one think our mission is accomplished and that there is no more for us to do, let him read these pages and find his mistake. We see not how any one can place himself face to face with the facts

done, and, perhaps still more important, what there is still to be done.

For the most part, the weather of the week was fine. The Common and Public Garden were at their loveliest. The Unitarian Headquarters were as full of attraction and hospitality as ever. The representatives of our churches, East and West, were out in good numbers.

Many meetings of great interest are held on this week besides those of a distinctly Unitarian character. Our Universalist brethren had several, which were well attended and full of earnestness and hope. The Boston Young Men's Christian Union, one of the noblest and most influential institutions of the city, celebrated its anniversary with a large attendance of friends of all denominations. The American Peace Society, the Social Science Institute, the New England Woman Suffrage Association, the Moral Education Society, and the Free Religious Association, all held important meetings with attractive speakers.

Our own Unitarian gatherings consisted of a devotional meeting each morning of the week at 8.30 in King's Chapel,— these were well attended for so early an hour, and were very uplifting and delightful,- followed by meetings of the American Unitarian Association, the National Alliance of Unitarian and Other Liberal Christian Women, the Unitarian Sunday School Society, the Temperance Society, the National Bureau of Unity Clubs, the National Guild Alliance, the Ministerial Union, the Berry Street Conference of Ministers; also the anniversary of the Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute, the annual meeting of Lend a Hand Clubs and Orders based upon the Wadsworth Mottoes, the annual reception extended by Rev. Brooke Herford to all visiting ministers, and the Unitarian Festival at Music Hall.

The great day of the week was Tuesday, which was all devoted to the American Unitarian Association. Tremont Temple was full morning and afternoon, and crowded in the evening. The morning was devoted to business, the election of officers, and reports and plans of work. There was a division of judgment as to the new director to be elected from the West. A few members of the Western Conference strongly urged the election of Rev. J. R. Effinger, secretary of that conference, as the distinct representative of that conference. Others urged the name of Rev. S. M. Crothers of St. Paul as quite as ably and acceptably representing the Western Conference (twentynine churches) and all the rest of the West (sixty-five churches) besides. Mr. Crothers was elected, and the denomination, alike East and West, is to be congratulated that he was; for his election means increasing harmony in the West, whereas Mr. Effinger's would have meant continuing and deepening antagonisms. The afternoon and evening meetings of the Association were given to addresses, and some earnest, able, and stirring ones we had from eight or nine of our best men, representing all sections of the country.

The social meeting of the ministers at Mr. Herford's afforded the best opportunity of the week for the preachers to meet each other. They were very appreciative of the kindness of their host in giving such an opportunity.

The intellectual high tide of the week was reached at the Berry Street Conference, where Rev. J. C. Learned of St. Louis gave an able paper upon "Three Distinctions in Worship." The discussion which followed the paper was particularly strong, constructive, and helpful.

We have not space to report the Sundayschool, Unity Club, Temperance, and Guild. meetings, but hope to do so to some extent in our next. They were not so large as they ought to have been, yet they were all interesting and excellent. They represent very important movements. Our churches everywhere should give earnest heed to them.

In popular interest and enjoyment the climax of the week was, as usual, the Thursday evening Festival at Music Hall. Some eight or nine hundred persons sat down to dinner, after which we listened for two

hours and a half to speeches which, for combined practicalness, point, humor, and moral earnestness, are rarely excelled. Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University, presided.

The Boston Post says of the occasion:

The festival held in Music Hall last evening was the fiftieth anniversary of this annual banquet. The distinguished character of the audience may be inferred from a glance at the list, printed elsewhere, of some of the distinguished persons who were present. Among them were the presidents of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the vice-president of the Society of the Cincinnati, the president of Harvard University, the chairman and members of its Board of Overseers, past and present preachers to the university, and members of its faculty, members and exmembers of Congress, the Sub-Treasurer of the United States in this city, Mayors and ex-Mayors, prominent members of the bench and bar, and private citizens identified with the various charitable and philanthropic institutions of Boston.

The ringing speech of Congressman Williams upon the duty of maintaining ideals in public life was received with enthusiasm and applause. It was an earnest and courageous appeal to the pulpit to do its full share in moulding public opinion and in attacking public abuses. The speech of Rev. Mr. Crothers of St. Paul, Minn., was one of the happiest after-dinner speechesfull of wit and wisdom-that has recently been heard in Boston. All of the speeches were good, and there was not a heavy one among them. Indeed, the festival was the best that the Unitarians have had for many years; and that is high praise.

President Eliot's opening speech in full was as follows:

I do not see how any body of Christian believers can have a better right than we to keep an annual festival of thankfulness and good cheer. Our simple and hospitable church seems to us the most cheerful in the world. It has rejected all the depressing fables and myths and the cruel imaginings which, until lately, have made part of a cepted Christianity, such as the fall of man, birth-sin, the devil, and hell. It accepts with enthusiasm the uplifting doctrine of the Roman Catholic church that inspiration and revelation are perpetual. It has emancipated itself from all authority in religion, science, from the authority alike of a theoexcept the authority of reason and concratic priesthood, of ecclesiastical councils, and of traditional dogmas. Our ministers

have no peculiar sanctity in our eyes: they are our comrades, friends, and teachers. If they are a little better than laymen, they are only what the laymen might be and ought to be.

We Unitarians try to follow reverently the transparent thought which the founder of Christianity cast upon the breezes of Judea, without having pen or type, or leaving any record except in the memories of his hearers; and we try to make just applications of his thought under the new conditions of our time. But we care nothing for the decrees of those semi-barbarous conventions which centuries ago mystified and perverted his thought. We take no interest in time-hallowed formularies. Mysteries we find all around us. We cannot imagine how one blade of grass grows. We use familiarly electric force, but we cannot conceive what it is, or even find words to shadow forth its nature; we know that moral and mental qualities are hereditary, but we cannot form any idea of the mode of their transmission. So in religion we find mysteries; but we do not try to formulate them in human speech, and then worship the formulæ. These are unspeakable deliverances from bondage, fear, and gloom. They make daily life for all of us the brighter and the sweeter.

We are not at war with modern scholarship, or in dread lest the objects of our worship undergo sudden and apparently destructive transformation. Not to us can be addressed that startling statement which Prof. J. Henry Thayer-one of the leading New Testament scholars in our timeaddressed to an evangelical audience in this city three months ago: "The critics are agreed that the view of the Scripture in which you and I were educated, which has been prevalent in New England for generations, is untenable." Heresy trials, revisions of confessions and standards, and elections of large-minded bishops have no terrors for us.

But we Unitarians are in number a feeble folk, an insignificant minority in the total population. The number attached to this anniversary (fifty) reminds us forcibly that among Christian churches the Unitarian is very young as well as very small. Our opinions do not commend themselves, as a rule, either to the luxurious classes or to the stationary mass of the people. Indeed, they are shocking to the great majority of Christians. Nevertheless, our churches slowly increase in numbers in the Eastern States, and they have now been planted all over the Western and North-western States, and even in the Rocky Mountains and on the Pacific Slope. The movement which began here in Eastern New England has been propagated all over the continent. I would

not imply that our doctrines are new in the world. They have been held and taught by scattered individuals, or small groups, all through the centuries; but our organized communion and our liberty are new.

How thankful we should be that we are free to hold and proclaim our heretical opinions! It seems to me that we Unitarians should never meet to rejoice together without remembering, in loving gratitude, the countless heroes and martyrs of civil and religious liberty through whose struggles and sufferings we are free. Within the Christian body we are the extreme Protestants of to-day, just as the exiles who settled Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were the extreme Protestants of their earlier day. As we value our own birthright, as we cherish our own privileges, let us never forget the hospitality which is due, on these New England shores at least, to exiles for conscience' sake, no matter of what religion or what

race.

Freely we have received: what shall we freely give? We must give to the present and future generations the bold, fresh, candid thought which we have received from our teachers and guides, from Channing, Emerson, and Parker, from Hedge, Clarke, and Martineau; and this stream should flow ever wider and deeper. We must give this through our preachers and writers, and through our children trained in the doctrines which we hold precious. As present means for the conveyance of this thought we must provide presses and churches. And against the needs of the future we must provide for the raising up and the training of a constant succession of learned, devout, and devoted ministers of our faith.

The ministers of our church have no shields or coverings, like ceremonies or rituals, no resources, indeed, but their intellectual powers and attainments, and their moral purity and vigor. No beaten paths are laid down for them to follow, no hedges keep them from wandering, no traditional or consecrated phrases can make up the bulk of their utterances. They must stand in the open, and contend for simple truth.

These principal duties of our denomination will be adverted to once and again this evening: they may all be described by the words teaching and preaching. This festival has for its primary object the honoring of those who are now teaching and preaching our faith.

Letters of regret and congratulation were received from a large number of persons unable to be present, among them Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, John G. Whittier, and George William Curtis.