inclusive, a church truly catholic. If need be, like our neighbors abroad, who in many ways have the wisdom of the centuries from which to a large degree our pilgrimaging over here has cut ourselves off, we may have a collegiate church, as at Geneva, as at Leyden, where on one Sunday you may hear a liberal, on another Sunday a conservative, and so on, with all the shades between; a church presided over by a college of preachers, who exercise an influence that is general and not parochial, that is communal and not individual.

This is what these books, I think, teach us. The split church is weak, and thank God it is! It is dying, and it is deserving to die. [Applause.] The united church, the church universal in its community, of which the minister shall be not merely the paid servant of a little group who pay him to emphasize their peculiarities, but the moral and spiritual teacher of the community, which has him there to lead it up the higher and harder ways of life, such a church, out of the existing chaos and confusion, is surely coming, on spiritual no less than on economic grounds; and that church, the church of to-morrow, is, it seems to me, what we ought to fasten our minds upon, and have less concern about the merely passing church that is of to-day. [Applause.]

The Festival.

After a brief social gathering following the morning session, the Annual Festival was held in Parker Fraternity Hall, Rev. Edward Cummings, of the South Congregational Church, Boston, presiding.

At the conclusion of the luncheon, Mr. Cummings called the company to order, and spoke as follows:

OPENING REMARKS BY THE CHAIRMAN, REV. EDWARD CUMMINGS.

The meeting will be good enough to come to order. I do not think we could more appropriately open this Festival of the Free Religious Association than by singing Dr. Adler's noble hymn, "The City of the Light."

"The City of the Light."

HAVE you heard the golden city
Mentioned in the legends old?
Everlasting light shines o'er it,
Wondrous tales of it are told.
Only righteous men and women
Dwell within its gleaming wall;

Wrong is banished from its borders,
Justice reigns supreme o'er all.

We are builders of that city;

All our joys and all our groans
Help to rear its shining ramparts,
All our lives are building-stones.
But a few brief years we labor,
Soon our earthly day is o'er,
Other builders take our places,

And our place knows us no more.

But the work which we have builded,
Oft with bleeding hands and tears,
And in error and in anguish,

Will not perish with the years.
It will last, and shine transfigured
In the final reign of Right;
It will merge into the splendors
Of the City of the Light.

FELIX ADLER.

The title of this Association

"Free,"

THE CHAIRMAN. and "Religious," and an "Association"— has been admirably exemplified this morning, by perfectly free thought and free expression in great variety, which has all been sincerely religious in its purpose and in its enthusiasm. I always have a feeling, as I listen to the addresses at the preliminary meeting up-stairs, that if one only stays long enough he will hear anything he wants to hear [Laughter]; and that if he only stays long enough he will hear the answer to everything that he has heard [Laughter]; and that if he only stays long enough he will get an antidote for anything that ails him. I should not recommend the person who is in search of a uniform conception of the universe to come to the Free Religious Asso

ciation's morning meeting and take notes. I should not recommend one who is seeking for perfect intellectual repose to come and listen to the preliminary debates with which this body prepares itself for luncheon. I should not really recommend anybody who is a little troubled about the progress of civilization, and a little uneasy as to whether the world is really moving in the right direction, to come and hear all the things that are said. But I think anybody with an open mind, who comes and listens to the contributions that are brought to us from the East, the West, the North, the South, and from across the seas, must feel, after all, the splendid results that come from freedom of thought and expression, and from the one central aspiration toward the improvement of the human race, and toward a better, truer, and more adequate expression for our spiritual ideas and ideals.

It is all very helpful; and those of you who listened to the addresses this morning will wonder that I have the temerity to add anything to what has been said. However, I love the name of the Free Religious Association, and I wish it met all the year round, — just as Mrs. Howe seems to have birthday celebrations going on all the time. I wish the Free Religious Association were in session all the time, so that people who apparently are far away from one another could come together, and exchange ideas, and see how much they have in common, and how, in reality, they are all aspiring towards the same high end.

a clear

I should like to have the Free Religious Association keep open house, and be a clearing house for churches; because that is about what we really have here once a year, ing house for churches, and for the people who ought to be in churches but are not.

Whenever I think of my own ideal with regard to these matters that have been discussed, namely, the church of the future, the church which is needed, it all seems very simple to me. If I could only have these people who have been expressing divergent ideas, in a room with doors locked and with only the upper parts of the windows open, so that there was no reasonable chance to escape, and so that I could

talk to them long enough, I am quite sure I could bring an antidote for all their difficulties, and could persuade them that I have the one remedy which they all need, and that I could provide the one roof, the one concept, under which they can all gather and all worship and all preach and all work!

I suppose you know, some of you, what a heretic I am in these matters. When I hear the discussions about the conflict of church and State; when I hear people telling us that the trouble with the modern church is what did they say upstairs? that we have "practicalized it, and institutionalized it, and temporalized it, and rationalized it, and popularized it"; I think I should like to do almost all those things to the churches, to make them better. I think I should like to extend the concept of the church so that there would not need to be any contrast between the church and the State, between secular and religious, 'between sacred history and profane history, between economics and ethics and religion. I should like to extend the conception of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, for which the Christian church is supposed to be working, as well as all the people who do not call themselves Christians but who are working for the coming of the great kingdom of peace and good will, so that the creed of what we call Democracy and what we call Christianity, and what we believe to be true religion, would all be one.

For my part, I always think of the "Kingdom of Heaven" as the great family Kingdom of Democracy. If I were writing a creed for myself and for the other people whom I should like to have locked up under my instruction until they believe as I want them to believe, it would be the creed of Democracy, the liberty and equality of brothers. Not merely liberty, equality, and fraternity; but fraternal liberty and equality; the great family ideal, which is the real basis not only of the Christian church gospel but of all social progress. Then we could all work together, not for a State church, but for a great Church-State. Then we could all feel that we had not a religion which stood apart with closed doors from the rest of life, but a universal religion, bearing the message