live. It reaches out its hands to men in all churches, in all faiths, who are pressing forward and whose fellowship is a fellowship in spirit.

Referring again to the banquet and Festival of the Association to be held to-day at half-past one, it is to us an interesting thing that one so closely related by family tie to the first President of this Association, and the successor in the pulpit of Mr. Potter, for a yet longer term its President, Rev. Paul R. Frothingham, will preside at the Festival this afternoon.

Our great disappointment to-day is in not having with us Colonel Higginson. I received last night a letter from him stating that, much to his regret, owing to the fatigue incident to the Agassiz commemoration and other work this week, it is impossible for him to be with us. We doubly regret it. His is the one name now standing on the list of officers of this Association which has stood there from the beginning. He has been the President of the Association; he was one of its first Vice-Presidents; and he is one of its Vice-Presidents to-day. He presided at all of its early social gatherings, and just as often as it has been possible to have him with us to preside at our recent social festivals we have had him, up to this time. He will surely be with us in spirit this afternoon; and we shall be with him in spirit.

I am therefore going to call upon Dr. Hale as the first speaker of this occasion. There is a book, or an article, or something, entitled " 'Tis Sixty Years Since." While it is only forty years since this Association was organized, 'tis sixty years since Dr. Hale began to preach the gospel up in Worcester; and 'tis fifty years since he came to preach the gospel in Boston; and he has been preaching it in a hundred ways ever since. It is a peculiar pleasure to have him with us to speak the opening word this morning. Whether he tells us of forty years' progress, or fifty years', or sixty years' is all one to us; only, the more progress he tells us of, the better. [Applause.]

ADDRESS BY

REV. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D. D.

THE CHURCH OF AMERICA.

I suppose our business is to "look forward and not back." That certainly is one of my mottoes, and no more fit occasion could come than this year 1907, when we are all engaged in so much enterprise for the future that we can well afford to forget history.

Freeman Clarke said to me one day he said to me a great many times, but he said it in this epigrammatic form one day that he had reduced religion to four words; and I asked, "What are the four?" He said they were, "Love God, love man." That is an excellent motto, and when people ask you what your creed is, and you feel anxious, as some of my friends do, about having a creed, I don't [laughter], you can say that you stick for the present to that creed which was stated by very high authority many, many, many centuries ago, "Love God and love man." And I suppose it is my businessindeed, I know I am asked here simply because a residence in the city of Washington for the last two or three years gives me a certain opportunity which perhaps no other man or woman in this room has had to study the religion of America as it is just now, and as it might be, and as perhaps it is the business of this Association to see that it is. For I take it that whatever else the Free Religious Association is, it is something which means to act and is very indifferent about talk. what you can do, instead of talk about what you can't do! That is a pretty good working rule in life. [Applause]. And I suppose that is what this Association is for.

Do

I ought to say in the beginning that every winter I spend in Washington makes me more and more a Quaker. I mean by that that I hate ecclesiasticism more and more. If it were not very wrong for a clergyman to swear I should swear about

ecclesiasticism [laughter], as that is about all I see in the way of religion at Washington. There are two or three conventions every week there, and most of them are called religious conventions. People come there with an idea that whatever they say in that convention the Fourteenth Annual Convention of the Second Secession of the Eleventh Collection of Covenanters, or something of that sort - people think that whatever they say there is going out into all the world, and they think that is preaching the gospel to every creature. Now, it is going out into all the world if, to begin with, the manager secures the services of two or three reporters who represent Argus-eyed press. It would then go out into all the world. If he neglected that preliminary step it would not go beyond the janitor of the hall in which the meeting was held.

However, they meet in that way I should not exaggerate it at all if I said that in the twelve weeks of the session of the last Congress forty annual religious conventions met, of, as I say, the Fourteenth Secession of the Thirtieth Assembly of Covenanters of the Northern Persuasion - the North happens to be different from the South. [Laughter.] And those people - don't laugh about this! cry about it! those people meet simply and absolutely to preserve the continuity of that conference, that it may be the best meeting of that conference that ever was held, and to report that the people of North Podunk in the sub-conference of the Northern States, or in the. sub-conference of the Southern States, have presented a thimble to the wife of the minister of North Podunk or have shingled the meeting-house in South Podunk. I will not say, "Curse it!" because, as I said just now, it is wrong for a clergyman to say such words; but if it were a man of the world he would say that this cursed ecclesiasticism prevents all the forward look which, if I may be permitted to say it in an assembly like this, characterized the day of Pentecost and Whitsunday. Aggressive Christianity, aggressive religion — that is what they ought to be after; but what they are after is the ecclesiasticism of their own particular sect.

Washington is a city of four quarters. There are what we call Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest. South

east is inhabited mostly by Negroes; Northwest is inhabited by white folk, gentlefolk, just such people as you and I are, — people who can change their clothes six times in a week if they want to; people who-well, people who can have anything for dinner that they want to have. The death rate in Southeast is twenty-one in a thousand. The death rate in Northwest is fourteen in a thousand. In other words, if a black child happens to be born in the Southeast section of Washington, those figures represent its chances for life. If a child happens if there is any such word as "happens "-to be born. in the Northwest of Washington, the other figures are its chances for life. If you are the Negro mother of a Negro child your child's chance of dying is represented by twentyone, whereas if you are a white mother with a white child your child's chance is represented by fourteen. I know but one church in the continent of America which addresses itself to that sort of business which would see that Southeast shall have the same chance as Northwest; — and that is what I mean when I say that this or that convention addresses itself to this and another bit of ecclesiasticism, while I have not heard of a single so-called religious convention which addresses itself to such square, commonplace businesses of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, June, July, and August, as these details that I have spoken of. I do know individuals who thus interest themselves. I am thinking at this moment of the late Surgeon-General of the army Sternberg, whose name I saw printed in the morning newspaper, who himself worked from seven in the morning till ten at night in such cares. But I have not seen or heard of any convention of "the Disciples of the Fourteenth Secession of the Fifteenth Body of the Covenanters of the Sixteenth Principle" that lift a finger or care a hair whether the Negroes of the United States die at the rate of twenty-one or at the rate of fourteen. That is what I mean when I say that the church of the future, if it means to exist or if it means to have the confidence of this country any longer, has got to devote itself to the future and to taking care of all sorts and conditions of men. That is what I meant just now when I said that Pentecost, that Whitsunday, sent

out the followers of Jesus Christ to speak to all sorts and conditions of men, to men from Mesopotamia and the countries around Cyrene and the people of Rome and the island of Crete, and that your business and mine, if we really care anything about free religion, is not to talk about forty years ago, but is to do something in 1907 and 1908 and 1909, and in the times which are before us. [Applause.]

The religion of America has a creed, and it may be very distinctly stated. You take the average man whom you find smoking in a baggage car as you are riding along from North Podunk to New Padua ; you find there is no passenger car and you get in there; you sit talking with him. After you have ridden one hundred and seventy-two miles with him you will find out what his creed is. And his creed is that he means to do about right; that he wants to have God's kingdom come; that he believes if we could find out what is in the Bible, that would be about right. And that is the whole of it he wants to do about right.

Now, a man like that, persecuted by his wife to go to church, comes out on some particular Sunday morning to hear the average preacher of the country. He is not addressed that man is not addressed. The average preaching of this country is talk about the High Church or Low Church, about the creed of this or the creed of that, about whether the Northern Conference should unite with the Southern Conference, or about whether they shall pay off the mortgage on the meeting-house. It does seem to me that some such co-operation as is represented in this room might look forward and look outward so far that the average man, groping into the city of Washington or into the city of Boston or into the city of New York, might, when he hears the bell of the church ring, go in with some feeling that he would learn how to live, how to serve God, how to do about right. I do not think that the average man now has any such idea when he hears the bell strike and sees the door open and sees that all people are welcome there.

My dream is I am too old to do a thing myself toward trying to carry it out my dream is that it would be a good thing if in every one of the principal cities (I don't pretend to