tain town that seems to belong to the sixteenth century, has a silver model of the cathedral, which weighs one hundred and forty pounds. In this silver casket is the altar-cloth of Bolsena, upon which the blood from the host miraculously fell while an unbelieving priest was performing mass. The cathedral of Orvieto was built to commemorate this miracle, which is also the subject of one of Raphael's finest pictures in the Vatican. There is a great deal of enterprise and progression in the Italy of to-day. The large cities are comparatively clean, and are very orderly. "A cross everywhere, and everywhere nastiness at the foot of it," is no longer true of the Eternal City. The present government is striving to make education general. There are municipal schools in all the cities of Italy; and in the north of Italy attendance is compulsory, but the law is not thoroughly enforced. The school-houses in the towns and even in the cities are most miserable buildings. It seems a pity that some of the wealth hoarded up in the churches could not be used for the schools. Luke. It is a great treasure of the Church of St. Maria in Ara Coeli. It is dressed in blue satin, and literally covered with gold and silver chains and diamond ornaments. It has seven gold watches. A carriage and horses, two footmen, and a driver are at its disposal when it visits the sick; for it is a miracle-working doll, and it is said even to have raised the dead. The Scala Santa is another anomaly in the nineteenth century. This is the flight of stairs which Christ ascended in Pontius Pilate's house in Jerusalem. It was brought to Rome by the Empress Helena. A papal dispensation allows a remission of sins for twenty-nine years for every one of the twenty-eight steps ascended on the knees and with a contrite and believing heart. During Holy Week these steps were packed with men and women, and I counted three children among the number. Martin Luther, when in Rome, ascended these stairs half-way, when he heard a voice saying, "The just shall live by faith," and he arose and walked down. Rome has become so modernized that it is hard for strangers in the fine new part of the town to realize that it is the old historic Rome. Florence, at least in her historic square, and in all of the streets radiating from the Piazza Signoria, is Florence of the Middle Ages. Venice is only a shadow of her own past. Bologna, Orvieto, and Siena are not of our century. The tide of modern life has not entered these old cities, and in them it is easy to form a conception of what the medieval cities of Italy were like. Italy-her cities, her art, her people, and, above all, the beauty of the whole country, But public opinion, and especially public religious opinion, changes slowly; and it is a great deal that Victor Emmanuel and his son have been able to take away so much of the wealth and power of the Church. More reforms will soon come; for there is a strong rationalistic party nominally inside the Church, and a stronger party outside which is avowedly hostile to the Church. In Genoa all public ecclesiastical processions have been forbidden within the city limits, because there is such a strong anti-clerical party in that city that there would be a dis--seacoast, mountains, lakes, and smiling turbance of the peace, were such processions allowed. During Holy Week this year at Rome there were no imposing processions, and very little ceremonial at the churches. A resident of Rome told me that the relics are very seldom carried in procession now, because a large party within the Church no longer believe in the relics, and it is considered wise to keep them in the background as much as possible. Still there remain a few of the old superstitions which seem very strange to the Protestant. That of the Sacred Bambino is one. The Bambino is a very ugly wooden doll, said to have been painted by Saint valleys-will long continue to be the land most attractive to travellers of all nations. But, on the whole, it is a land pleasanter to travel in than to live in; for, although the old will always fascinate us by its memories and romance, the new, the life of to-day, is the real life for men and women of to-day, and the life of Italy at the present time, alis not what attracts the crowds of tourists or though full of great importance and interest, brings to Italy an important part of her revenue. In Italy the tourist lives in an atmosphere of the past, and it becomes a little difficult to get back into the nineteenth century after so long a sojourn in the old. It is true that the more uncultivated and less spiritual ministers make unwarranted use of what they call the death-bed repentance of infidels and sceptics. While, no doubt, in very many instances there is no truth at all in the reports of such repentances that get circulated, in some cases, at least, they are true, and yet mean nothing. That men grow more cautious and careful as they grow older has been often recognized. It is to be expected that a man who studies widely and thinks profoundly will grow broader and more sympathetic; and there is much truth in the position taken by Hermann Lotze, that the ideal life is the life of the old man. There are circumstances, however, that thwart this happy result. It is natural, I think, for the old man to revert to the beliefs of his childhood and youth. To be sure, the man who retains his intellectual faculties to the end, who continues to read new books and think new thoughts to the last hour, will not suffer such a reversion to type; but the majority of men will do just that thing in spite of themselves. Psychologically, it is easy to explain such a result, and, when so explained, it has lost all weight as a support for extreme orthodox positions. I say the result is natural. For, while the youth lives in the future, the old man lives in the past. He thinks his old thoughts over again. He tries to suck from them again the joys they had yielded before. To assist him in the result, he tends to behave more and more as he then did. The thoughts influence the life; and the man dies renouncing the views of his prime, it may be. But, if our orthodox friends are right, that a man should be judged by his prime, these recantings, should they occur, would mean nothing. When a noted Christian worker loses his mind in his old age, grows pessimistic, and says that all things are becoming corrupt and vicious, he is not turned out of the church. He is not judged by these acts. It is said that it is the wornout body that accounts for all this. So it is, largely. But, if so, why may not the heretics have the advantage of the same principle? Again, so to judge the confession of the dying heretic is unfair, because quite as often the matter happens the other way, and no comment is made. No one who has observed the Christian temper carefully can have failed to notice numberless cases where a man grows sceptical in his old age, and throws away his religion at the last moment. Some men, when boys, were like other boys. They were jolly, reckless, religionless. In middle life they are gathered into the Church. They are very devoted, it may be. As age comes on, the old life breaks out. It is manifest. I have noticed it again and again. Any one may notice it. Judged by the old standards, the man is no longer a Christian. This happens more often than we have any idea. Still another experience is very common: it is for men and women to grow broad and tolerant and charitable in their old age, losing their former theological and ecclesiastical dogmatisms and narrownesses, but keeping and, indeed, increasing their Christian spirit and their piety. Thus we find thousands of the "nice old people" in the orthodox churches to be really Universalists and Unitarians. The truth is, where one "heretic" really goes back to a narrow Orthodoxy, thousands of orthodox outgrow their creeds and become heretics. We must not, therefore, overestimate death scenes. We must not judge a man by his youth, his prime, or his old age, until we know something of his history, something of the influences which turned him into this course or the other. Moreover, it is necessary to note whether the change was for the better or the worse. A mere death-bed recanting, did it occur, ought not to influence us deeply in our estimate of a man's real character. We ought to be beyond that doctrine which argues that a man will be judged according to "the state of his soul" at the last moment of his life. A. B. CURTIS. Tufts College. THOUGHTS. Blessed be the kind-hearted, motherly negative, the no to youth that becomes a yes further along in maturity, the no to folly that opens and blossoms, in due time, into the yes of wisdom, -the no on a lower plane that turns to yes, a delightful yes, on a higher plane. The great Affirmation of Heaven is for those to whom "failures on earth" had ever been saying, No, no, no. Being another's and not our own, how many, how many a season of heart-ache do persons pass through, and come out comfortable and happy on the other side of the sorrow and pain! A charge has us to keep, as well as we a charge. Space is to set up house and home in, for boys' kites and marbles, for lovers' walks, for parabola and ellipse, for sun and sunny places, for lines and forms, figures and beauties, for Europe and London and St. Peter's, Boston and New York, to nestle in. Space is for books and birds to flutter in, for the calling of mate to mate to pass through, for learning and science, poetry and the Gospels, to pass over and bless. The day is to drive gloom away-the gloom of night and yours, -to put dark troubles out of countenance, and to lift the covering from God's works and joys. Malden, Mass. W. M. BICKNELL. THE MORNING COMETH. By night the Winter came out of the North, Of the dun, gray cloud, Over field and hill (The wind was asleep, and his step Went he like a sower, and scattered forth It fell like a dream Over meadow and stream, Along the ways of the woodland glen, On the broad highway, on the footpath small, Then the sun looked over the white world's rim, The field and the dell, The broad highway, and the footpath small, Then every deed of the vanished night -W. H. Savage, in Arena, April, 1890. AN EPITOME OF UNITARIANISM. The Unitarian movement in America was simply and only this, -a calling of men in from their gotten up guesses and theories and machinery of religion to religion itself. It said, Faith is a babe's cry for its own mother, a child's trust in things lovely and beautiful. It said, Theology is not religion. It said, Salvation is not a shrewd device to circumvent God's justice. It said, Heaven is the natural joy of well-doing and righteous living, and hell the cloud and pang that evil makes in a man's soul. It said, again, after the Master: Ye must enter the kingdom of knowledge and righteousness as a little child, saying, for substance of faith: "Our Father, we love and hallow thee. Thy rule and guardianship be over us. Thy will, not our passions, be our guide. Our daily bread is from thy hand. Forgive us, as our own mother does, for every sin and meanness we are ashamed of. Help us when we are in temptation; and may we keep thy strong and tender hand when evil is around us." The Lord's Prayer, in place of scheming and diplomatic rituals; the being like Jesus, instead of trying to bargain for his virtues to be set to our account; the banishing of a metaphysical and bewildering trinity, that we might more childlikely say, "Our Father"; the seeking of our paradise in daily love and duty rather than in far-off dreamlands; and the coming cheerfully from our sins and foolishness to be judged every day of our lives, as the child lays its head at nightfall on the familiar lap for mercy-seat, instead of keeping ourselves scared with thoughts of one great distant judgment,this was the Unitarian movement of religious reform, and this the name signifies to-day. This simple, instinctive religion, with its primal language of faith and affection, making God only a shorter and dearer name for good, and never dreaming of any going to him by and by, because his children are always with him here, -this faith, I say, has little charm for the gnostics of our time; but it is the sweet, strong power of daily work and daily joy. Men who cannot reason metaphysically, humble women in their kitchens and nurseries, can toil by it, be calm and brave and hopeful in it, with no theology but "Our Father," no salvation but love and faithful work, no heaven but the daily sunlight of affection and conscience here, and a reunion of the family, when life's week-day task is ended, for nobler tasks and braver futures. Here, in the great Master's company, is all the religion a soul can need, and all the theology one can ever be sure of this side the grave. S. C. BEANE. Newburyport, Mass. A COLLEGE FOR THE PEOPLE. In the very heart of Chicago there has been built up within the past twenty years one of the noblest institutions of education "for the people" that this or any other country affords. We refer to the Chicago Athenæum, which within a few weeks past has moved into a large new building, which is to be its permanent home. It has additional interest to the readers of the Unitarian, because, though strictly undenominational, it was founded and has largely been built up by Unitarians, its present superintendent, to whom its present prosperity is largely due, being Rev. Edward D. Galvin, for some years pastor of the Third Unitarian Church of Chicago. We are glad to reprint from the Chicago Graphic the following description of the Athenæum : Six months before this honored institution has attained its "majority" we find it established in a commodious and elegant structure of its own. No choicer location, nor one better adapted for its educational work, could have been chosen than that on which the new Athenæum Building stands. The square, bounded by Van Buren Street on the north, Congress Street on the south, Michigan Boulevard on the east, and Wabash Avenue on the west, has well been characterized as that of "the three great A's"; namely, the Auditorium, the Art Institute, and the Athenæum. All who have carefully followed the history of the Athenæum for the past twenty years-its foundation having been laid in October, 1871, while the city was then in smoke and ashes-will gladly acknowledge that it richly deserves a fine, permanent home. Its beginning was modest, but the animating spirit and purpose was to extend its usefulness as far as possible in promoting an interest in self-improvement and in the diffusion of knowledge. "Good will to men" in all that concerns their manly progress and well-being has always been an underlying principle of its action. From a little company of educated gentlemen and ladies, who for the first two or three years were volunteer instructors, the school has steadily grown till it has enrolled a corps of twenty teachers. The plan of this "People's College," simply stated, is to provide competent teachers, who, in evening hours as well as during the day, are ready to meet young men and women who have come to realize their need of a better education and desire to improve their spare hours to the best advantage. To such pupils it is a great boon to have a school the doors of which always open hospitably to them, and where they may enter at their own convenience and select one or more studies at will. So far as its classaccommodations would admit, the Athenæum has always shown a cheerful willingness to provide able instruction in branches outside its regular course whenever there were five or six applicants for the room same. Here, too, the boy who wishes to fit himself for entering college, or the lady who desires to pass the examination necessary to become a teacher in a public school, or that for a higher grade, may be accommodated. The machinist, the carpenter, the engineer, the boiler-maker, come from their shops after eight or nine hours' work, the student of architecture, the engraver, the lithographer, from their office tables; and all find here the instruction they need in drawing, mathematics, or designing. For five evenings a week during nine months in the year these classes are open, with a wide range of studies, from reading, spelling, and penmanship to rhetoric, literature, and trigonometry. There are, also, classes in French, German, and Latin, a large department devoted to elocution and oratory, and opportunities for the study of instrumental and vocal music. During the autumn and winter courses of science lectures are given free. It is the purpose of the board to extend these lecture courses, and to make them of greater interest and helpfulness, especially to those who are engaged in the mechanic arts and in the construction of electrical apparatus. The new Athenæum building will, to a very large extent, be devoted to art and science and general educational work. The entire seventh story is occupied by studios and the large reception-room of the Chicago Artists' Association for the monthly exhibit of their pictures. The Chicago College of Law, with upwards of one hundred and fifty students, the National College of Music, the Chicago Watchmakers' Institute for practical instruction in watchmaking and Sketch repairing, the Architectural Club, and one of the Kindergarten Associations for the preparation of teachers are now located here. The entire first story and basement, 91 by 97 feet and 25 feet in height, are given to one of the most attractive and best-equipped gymnasiums in the country. All the gymnastic apparatus that could be devised is here provided, and in addition fine plunge and shower baths, a natatorium, two standard bowling-alleys, a running-track, and spacious hand-ball court. On the sixth floor is a choice library and reading-room, supplied with the best standard literature, daily and weekly papers, magazines and reviews. Out of the readingroom opens a quiet and cheerful chess-room, where the members of the Athenæum may enjoy social parlor games. A special desk furnished with stationery is also provided for those who wish to write letters or make notes of their reading. It seems to be the universal judgment of visitors that the new Athenæum building is admirably planned for the purposes for which it was constructed. Situated in the very heart of the city, easily accessible from all parts, it has the great advantages of quietness, cheerful light, and excellent ventilation. Let this "People's College," chartered by the State as an institution not for pecuniary profit, become the recipient of generous endowments, that it may not be hampered by want of means in extending its valuable aid to all eager seekers after useful knowledge. A WORD TO REFORMERS.-We cannot improve ourselves, we cannot assist others, we cannot do our duty in the world, except by exertion, except by unpopularity, except with annoyance, except with care and diffi culty. We must each of us bear our cross with him. When we bear it, each day makes it easier to bear. DR. BELLOWS AND THE NEW YORK MINISTERS. We have recently come upon the following incident in the life of Dr. Bellows of New York. If the most eloquent Unitarian preacher in America could have the cold shoulder turned on him by his brother ministers of the orthodox faith, persistently, for forty years, in the commercial metropolis of the New World, Unitarian ministers in smaller towns need not wonder if they are treated in the same manner: At the time Russia was waging war against Turkey to protect the Bulgarian Christians from persecution on account of their religion, a public meeting was held in the city of New York, upon the call of a large number of its leading citizens, to denounce the oppression, to sympathize with the oppressed, and to declare in favor of religious toleration. At an early hour the public hall was crowded with anxious hearers and the large platform filled with prominent men, most of whom were ministers of the different denominations. After several clergymen and others had spoken, Dr. Bellows was called out by acclamation. He stated, toward the close of an eloquent address, that during his travels in the East he had frequently worshipped in the Greek Church and taken part in its service, and that he was always received as a minister of the gospel, with Christian fellowship, with brotherly affection, and that he now felt the deepest sympathy for them in their trials and persecutions for holding to their Christian belief. He then added: "I have preached the gospel over forty years; and during all that time" -here he paused, and, looking around upon the ministers, said, with a lowered voice and an expression of sorrow-"I have never been invited to preach in a pulpit in this city outside of the denomination to which I am attached. And this may be one reason why I sympathize so deeply with my fellowChristians of the Greek Church in BulThe audience here burst forth with garia." a round of applause, in which all the clergyFor men on the platform heartily joined. the time the fellowship of Christian hearts triumphed over the Thirty-nine Articles and the Westminster Confession of Faith. This, however, was of short duration, and passed away with the occasion; for during the remainder of his active and useful ministry he was ignored as he had previously been by the ministers of the orthodox churches. |