the man. So here there are those who say that religion and morality are one, and that one is morality. But no. Morality is not religion until it is thought out, felt out, lived out in such a fashion that it is something more than "mere morality," the relation between man and man,— and has become also and equally the relation between the soul and that universal Power which,

"call it what we may,

Is yet the master-light of all our day,

Is yet the fountain-light of all our seeing."

We may live in beauty and in goodness, but we do not live in "wholeness" until we live in this. Religion in its earliest dawn, before it was yet moralized, was exclusively this sense of man's relation to a Power unseen, but felt in all the wonderful and strange appearance of the world; and to call that religion, be it never so sublimely moral, that has nothing of this most characteristic glow upon its face, is to use language with disloyal freedom and abuse.

But it is loyalty to facts as well as to the sanctities of speech that makes the religious attitude and the religious confession an absolute necessity for every man who thinks seriously and feels profoundly concerning the deep things of life. Here, pressing on his mind and heart, is not only that need men have of one another which we call morality, but also pressing on his mind and heart are the immeasurable power and beauty, order and bounty, of the material universe, flowering and fruiting in the glory of the human, in golden deeds that "pierce the night like stars, and by their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues." How is it possible for a man to be a man, and not experience in every deeper moment, however it may be with him in the stress of business anxiety or in pleasure's giddy whirl, that expansion of the heart, that joyous lift, that happy confidence, that awe, that tenderness, which, call it by whatever name you please or by no name at all, is of the incorruptible essence of religion? If such a thing is possible in any way, it is not in my

imagination to conceive that it is so; and I must hold that every man who is in truth a man is as much bound to be religious in religion's primal sense as he is to be moral, as he is to eat for hunger and to sleep for rest and love for love's sweet pain.

But to assert and prove so much is far and away from either proving or asserting that the public ministration of religion is a valid institution, deserving of the support and sympathy of all people of intelligence and earnest will. Men and women can be and do everything that makes for religion in its twofold power and grace in private isolation. Indeed, they must often be religiously compelled to withdraw themselves from such religious institutions as invite their sympathy and co-operation. If a man would have any religion left, the less he has to do with some of the most popular manifestations of religion at the present time, the better.

But to vulgarize religion here does not prevent its contemporaneous existence there untainted and unspoiled. Art and literature are continually vulgarized, and yet Raphael and Shakspere sit no less securely on their thrones. If the popular ministration of religion is not what it ought to be, so much the more need is there that those who cherish a lofty and serene ideal of what such ministration should be should band themselves together for its public recognition. If there are but two in any given community, then those two; if there are two score, then those two score; if there are two hundred, then those two hundred, and so on. The common recognition of religion is of the very essence of religion in its most characteristic quality. It is the symbol of men's common needs and aspirations, and therefore it demands a common recognition and a common life. The Latin proverb, unus homo nullus homo,— one man is no man,- has nowhere a more striking application than exactly here. Morality has never been defined more aptly than as "the art of living together." And what, then, is more natural than that men should come together for the contemplation of its generous ideals, and band themselves

together for its sure defence, unless it be that with the same heaven above them all, the same earth beneath their feet, the same mystery enfolding them, they should come together to lift up a common heart of wonder, reverence, awe, and trust, and love to the Eternal Power in whom we live and move and have our being?

For it is not, you will notice, as if the beginning and end of the whole matter were the attainment for one's self of the best quality of the religious life. Granted that, with such spiritual helps as are now generally accessible in any solitude not hopelessly remote from the express company and mail, a man might nourish in himself a spiritual life of noble purity; yet no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself, said the apostle, and Shakspere echoed him across the ages," Spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues."

"God wills that in a ring

His blessings should be sent
From living thing to thing,

And nowhere stayed or spent.

"And every soul that takes,

And gives not on again,

Is so a link that breaks

In heaven's love-made chain."

From first to last, in the course of my Brooklyn ministry, a good many people have come to me with a kind of flattery, my response to which has somehow disappointed them. One and another has said: "I do not come to hear you any more, because you have helped me to get along without you. You have enabled me to go alone." I should not speak of an experience so personal, were I not sure that it is that of many other ministers in our Unitarian pulpits at the present time. I have but one answer to make to all such flattering protestations: All the more reason, then, why you should be my helper, why you should gird

yourself to spread in wider circles the truth and good to which you think you have attained. The true church no more exists exclusively for the saving of individual souls from spiritual penury than it exists for the saving of individual souls or bodies from an eternal fiery hell. It is a company of men and women less bent on the getting of some moral and spiritual benefit for themselves than bent on the doing of some moral and spiritual good to others. We are proud of the motto over our church door: “The truth shall make you free." It is a good motto. But it needs to be supplemented with another: "To do good and to communicate." The old motto is subject to a gross and miserable interpretation; namely, that, the truth once safe in our possession, we are free to go our way in selfish isolation. If you have a truth which stirs your mind, your imagination, and your heart, which quickens you to brave surrenders and to generous deeds, it is a sword upon your shoulder knighting you to join with each and every other who has been likewise called for the communication of that truth to souls that hanker for they know not what, but whom you dare believe your vision can sustain, your word can satisfy and cheer and bless. There is no discharge in this war. To enlist at all is to enlist for every march and every battle till you fall, one soldier of the many who have somewhat advanced the unconquerable hope of man.

Of course there is nothing in all this to make it clear why you, or you, or you, or anybody else, should stand by me in my particular work, should give your time and thought and money to the maintenance of this particular church. There are various tendencies at work in the community. One is a tendency to obscure and bury in emotional slush all of those intellectual aspects of the religious situation which are so evident and so important, not only to the learned scholar, but to every honest mind. Another is a tendency to exaggerate these aspects, and to identify them with the substance of religion; and hence to conclude that for this substance we have no longer any need. Another is to privately acknowl

edge all that criticism and science have done to invalidate the traditional formulas, but to go on using them as if nothing had happened,- as a kind of practical humbug that we cannot get along without, or without much inconvenience. If these tendencies were exhaustive of the religious situation, it would be impossible to find any work for such a church as this of ours in the religious field. But there is another tendency. It is to frankly acknowledge all that criticism and science have done to invalidate the traditional formulas, and at the same time to recognize that the reality, not of these formulas, but of the essential dignity and glory of religion, is in no wise impeached by such invalidation. And with this tendency this little church of ours has been in line throughout its brief and uneventful history from 1851 till now. It invites the sympathy and co-operation of those to whom this tendency seems sound and sweet and good,- sounder and sweeter and better than it could otherwise be,— because the danger threatens more and more that the enthusiasm of an ignorant emotionalism and the calculating selfishness of ecclesiastical dishonesty will divide the religious world between them, and rule it according to their will. Is it not worth while, think you, for those who are neither of this house nor that, and who still do not believe that the reality of religion has perished with its superstitions, to band themselves together here and there and everywhere for the maintenance of this reality? I believe it from the bottom of my heart. You must believe it, too, or you would not be here. But you may very well believe at the same time that this church is not doing what it ought to do for the great principle it represents. There, too, we are agreed. But whose the fault? Not yours or mine, but yours and mine,- in what proportion it would be invidious to set forth if I could. Of this, however, I am sure: that, if we all could bring, to serve our purpose here, the enthusiasm and devotion which some of you have always brought, we should enjoy a far more vigorous life than we do now. It is a purpose worthy of the strongest manhood and the rarest womanhood that this town