are true or not,

things which people are very insistent that you shall believe in. But although I may not be as spirituallyminded as some, I certainly am sufficiently so to recognize the fact that there is a great Power a great Power which is wiser and better and infinitely greater than our conception of it can be lying behind all these phenomena of human existence. Its benevolence, however, is not our kind of benevolence, its wisdom is not our kind of wisdom; "His ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts.'

A few months ago, I had I was going to say the pleasure I had the instructive experience of being in the Jamaica earthquake, when, within thirty seconds, fifty thousand people were made homeless, six thousand people were killed, and as many more wounded through no fault of theirs under the dispensation of this Providence, this Fatherhood of God which you and I believe in, but which does not operate like human fatherhood and cannot be criticized by human standards. Will you say that in accepting this I am acting in "faith"? No, because I see, all through the creation, so much overbalancing wisdom and benevolence that I must accept these apparent exceptions to the general rule without attempting to explain them. I feel that we have a right to believe that all that is, is right, in a certain sense. I have a great deal of faith in fatalism. I am one of the most active people I know in the world, for I never find the day long enough to do the things that I think worth doing; yet Mr. Blanchard, here at my side, tells me if I believe in fatalism I am regarding the world and myself simply as an automaton! Nevertheless, when I feel my own shortcomings and the shortcomings of others, I often repeat to myself those wonderful lines of Bailey, in his poem entitled "Festus," which have never passed from my mind. since I first read them sixty-two years ago:

"Free will is but necessity in play,

The thunder-footed coursers of the sun.

The ship which goes to sea informed with fire, —
Obeying only its own iron force,

Reckless of adverse tide, breeze dead, or weak

As infant's parting breath, too faint to stir

The appointed thrall of all the elements

As the white-bosomed bark which woos the wind,
And when it dies desists. And thus with man;
However contrary he set his heart

To God, he is but working out His will
And, at an infinite angle, more or less
Obeying his own soul's necessity.

He only hath free will whose will is fate."

I hold that faith with the Mohammedans. But I do not practice it exactly after their plan, for I believe that part of the destiny of man is to make things better, and that the only thing which makes life worth living is, if we can, to be able honestly to say at its close, "We hope that the world is a little better from the fact that we have lived in it." [Applause.]

There is progress. Three or four weeks ago I was invited by my Roman Catholic friends to attend the presentation of the Laetare medal to Miss Katherine Conway. There I saw some two or three thousand elegantly dressed, intelligent people, evidently cultivated, many of them very highly so,— Upon the platform were

gathered to do honor to a woman. many of the highest dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States; the Archbishop Coadjutor of this diocese, in the absence of the venerable man who was not able to attend; the Archbishop of Baltimore; the head of the College of Notre Dame in Indianapolis, which presents the medal once a year to some prominent Catholic American, for distinguished service; and the Bishop of Rochester, who was the early friend and teacher of Miss Conway. These eminent men vied with each other in their praise of this woman. They said that Mr. Donahue, the founder of the great Catholic organ, The Pilot, did a great work and edited a noble paper; that his successors made it still better; that John Boyle O'Reilly left it in a literary point of view much higher than before; but they all united in saying that the best editor they had ever had for the great Roman Catholic organ of the United States, the Boston Pilot, was Miss Katherine Conway, a woman. Does not that mean progress? progress from the time when

women were so lightly esteemed that the only safe place for them was a convent, until the present time, when Miss Conway as a journalist is recognized by the highest dignitaries of the church as one of the greatest Catholic Americans, and is given this medal? So you see there is progress everywhere.

But there was one little thing that did somewhat detract from my enthusiasm. I applauded heartily almost everything that was said, for almost everything met my approval; but in his closing remarks the venerable Bishop of Rochester said that this country will never be what it ought to be, that society will never be what it should be, until public education is held and exercised only by the Roman Catholic church [laughter]; that the whole system of public education by the State is a mistake, and that no fine morals and true culture can come to this country until education has passed into the hands of the Catholic hierarchy. I could not applaud that; I was obliged to keep silent.

This Association has done a great work. It has made it possible for all classes of people to come together. Some one spoke with pleasure of the fact that at your meeting this morning you had such a variety of beliefs. I wish you had had one more; I wish you had had an intelligent representative of Buddhism, because, if the New Testament word is true and "a tree is known by its fruits," I am not sure but I should find a good many of you agreeing with me that Japanese Buddhism to-day is in advance of Russian Christianity. Therefore I am anxious to find a Buddhist who can tell me something about his religion; for who knows that I may not die a Buddhist, since I have ceased to be what is commonly called an Orthodox Christian?

Before closing, I want to remind you that this Free Religious Association is not yet very widely understood. A gentleman said to me, as I came into the hall this afternoon, "What is this institution? What does it mean? What does it mean? What is free religion?" "Well," I said, "it is the recognition of every man's right to believe what he pleases, provided he is sincere and honest." "Why!" he said, "would it admit a Roman Catholic?" "Yes," I said, "certainly; and the Roman Catholic,

if he joined it, would admit you who are not a Roman Catholic." Really it is the co-operation which we have heard so well described this afternoon, co-operation in religion as well as in industry; it teaches that, instead of fighting each other, all forms of human belief shall assist each other, recognizing the fact that there is but one object in life, and that is to learn the laws of Nature, which are the laws of God; and, when we have learned these, to try to live as nearly as possible in accordance with them. There is no such thing as supernaturalism; Nature itself is the revelation of the Divine Being. We do not need to go to any book or to any church or to any creed if we will only study the life that is around us and in us, and try to learn what are the laws of Nature, for these are the perpetual, everlasting revelation of the Divine Nature, the only revelation which human beings have a right to trust and to follow.

If I could look forward a hundred years, I should hope to see the ideas of this assembly the ideas of the American people. They are not its ideas as yet. I saw with sorrow to-day a beautiful spectacle - all those noble young high-school men, dressed in beautiful uniform, marching to martial music, every young man and boy carrying on his shoulder a weapon of destruction and death; and I said to myself that a nation that is spending $200,000,000 a year (I think it was that amount it spent last year, certainly a hundred million) in building an unnecessary navy, when all that is needed is to unite with other civilized nations in an agreement to police the ocean and preserve peace, I say, such a nation is neither civilized nor Christian nor religious, in the proper sense of those terms. [Applause.] I say, too, that so long as we are governed by monopolies and trusts and combinations of selfish aggregations of capital, increasing the cost of living, depressing industry, building up on one hand the slum and on the other hand the multi-millionaire, we are not a republic, but a plutocracy, and we have so much work to do that I don't know where we ought to begin.

But one thing I do know, that your Association has the principle of freedom, the principle of pure religion and unde

filed, that which visits the fatherless and the widow in their affliction and keeps itself unspotted from the world. That is religion. Religion is not dogma, it is life; it is the spirit in which we meet our fellow creatures, it is the spirit in which we work. I do not know whether I am immortal or not; I suppose within ten years I shall find out or I shall not find out, as the case may be; I am willing to wait and learn. But I do know that whatever is in the order of Nature we must accept, not only with resignation but with alacrity, and I think that every man and every woman ought to say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." [Applause.]

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MEAD.

I should like to say a single word with reference to a word of Mr. Blackwell's. Mr. Blackwell said that a gentleman inquired of him whether a Roman Catholic would be welcome here, and perhaps be invited to a place on the platform of the Free Religious Association. I wish to say that I do not believe there is a single officer among the twenty or more officers of the Free Religious Association who would not heartily welcome a Roman Catholic here, and to speak on this platform. Let me say more than that, that just as we invited a Unitarian to-day, and a minister of the Episcopal church, and a minister of the Jewish church, so we invited a Roman Catholic. I do not mention this as in any way remarkable, but I will mention something else as possibly remarkable, namely, that the Roman Catholic whom we invited responded most cordially, and told us that he personally very much wished that he could come, that he believes in it and would like to stand on our platform, but that so many of his brethren would misunderstand the position, that out of regard for their feelings he chose not to come; but he believes the day is not far distant when Roman Catholics like himself will come gladly, and will be cordially approved in coming by the high dignitaries of the church. This, I think, is worth making a note of. [Applause.]