THE DAWNING DAY

The morning hangs its signal upon the mountain crest,
While all the sleeping valleys in silent darkness rest;
From peak to peak it flashes, it laughs along the sky,
The day of pow'r is coming, is coming by and by!

Above the generations the lonely prophets rise—
The truth flings dawn and day-star within their glowing eyes;
From heart to heart it brightens, it draweth ever nigh,

It blesseth all men thinking, it cometh by and by.

The soul hath lifted moments above the drift of days,
When life's great meaning breaketh in sunrise on our ways;
From hour to hour it haunts us, the vision draweth nigh.
It crowneth living, dying: we'll see it by and by.

And in the sunrise standing, our kindling hearts confess
That no good thing is failure, no evil thing success!
From age to age it groweth, that radiant Faith so high,
Its crowning day is coming in power by and by.

W. C. GANNETT

MR. HOLMES.

We are here this afternoon to hear a discussion of the morning addresses. The first speaker is one whom I am happy to present to you as my brother in the Unitarian ministry and my companion in arms in the fight for social justice Mr. Casson, of Dorchester. [Applause.]

REMARKS OF REV. CHARLES W. CASSON

Mr. Toastmaster, - Friends:

If I am to accept Mr. Wendte's introduction of this symposium, and I am to come after the thunder-storm, my speech should be Pure Air." And if Mr. Holmes is right, I would like to have been catalogued before I appeared upon this circus arena. I rather feel that I belong to the side-show as the Thin Man. [Laughter.]

However, this meeting is to me rather a peculiar and yet a fitting combination. While I have been sitting here listening to the words of honor and respect paid to the noble dead, I have been reminded of an hour that I spent in Westminster Abbey some years ago, when, after lingering beside the graves of the great dead, recalling associations, paying my humble tribute, I stood again at the door and looked out into the noise and turmoil of the street, and took a step from the door of that cathedral out into the rush outside. The first part of this meeting has been simply the quiet consideration of and reverential paying of our tribute to those who have been great in the past. But I trust that no one will think that we young, indiscreet, and rash insurgents-"insurgent" is the prominent political word now, I believe — lack reverence simply because we do not spend much time in paying tribute to the dead. When there is so much to do, when there are so many cries for aid from the living, I submit to you that we have not time to give to the dead. And if we lack reverence, if we seem to be rash and indiscreet, it is simply because I speak for myself in this, and yet I think I speak for others- it is simply because we feel the needs of to-day, we hear the cries of to-day, and we do not see how we can spare any time or any strength except for the doing of the present task.

The subject for this morning's symposium was admirably chosen. We might have expected this when Mr. Wendte prepared the programme, for I think he is our particular and pecu

liar genius in arranging programmes. [Applause.] We never appreciate our geniuses until some time after they appear.

One or two facts seem to me apparent from the discussion of this morning. One was that in all the departments of life and thought and endeavor represented by the four speakers there is evidence of a distinct and a decided step forward-a step indicating progress, indicating change, indicating crisis, indicating a new era lying just ahead. And another fact — that in these steps that are being taken, all the differing steps lead to a common centre. In what I heard of this morning's addresses - I was not able to hear all, owing to an engagement elsewhere for a time it seemed to me that there was every evidence of a coming unity of thought, a coming unity of action, a meeting of many roads in one gate, a coming of many people to one common ground. The new religion of to-day expresses itself in social terms. The new sociology of to-day expresses itself in religious terms. And so religion and sociology are becoming more and more recognized as one and the same.

My particular interest, as my profession perhaps would denote, is in religion—not in the narrow sense, but in the broad; not in the sense of creed or custom, but in the sense of social interpretation; not as it pertains to the past, but as it pertains to the future and the duties of the present hour.

There is only one thing that I want to express and to add to this meeting. The centre and the essence of the whole change, and what seems to me to constitute the "Next Step," is the evolution and recognition of what we might call the new individualism. The man who has not recognized the fact that there is no longer any private individual is not fully awake to the tendencies and conclusions and facts of the present time. Not a man, whether he be Unitarian or not, can stand aside and say, "I live my own life, I save my own soul, I develop my own character; I will have nothing to do with the mass. and the mob." That might have been said years ago, perhaps, but it cannot be said now. The fool optimist to-day says, "I don't care what happens, if it doesn't happen to me."

The man is a fool, because nothing happens but happens to him. And we who gather here in this place to-day must know that we are connected vitally, and by bonds that we cannot break, with every human being in every grade of society, and that our life is the world-life and the world-life is our life.

That to me is the new individualism. I am in sympathy with the full propaganda of socialism because I believe, rightly or wrongly, that socialism is simply the new individualism. It is the new social compact whereby individualism will once more become possible, as it is not possible now to ninety per cent. of all the people of the world.

I am, therefore, a social reformer, or a socialist, if you can stand the word, because I believe in individualism - because I believe that the time has come when men shall no longer be known by tags and numbers; when men shall be recognized as so divine that they are not to be caught and ground and crushed by any wheels of industry, but that man must be made supreme, and the individual must be given the social chance to become his truest and best self.

In view of this there are many conclusions that I would like to state. I hate to differ in any sense from my friend Holmes. Holmes has so many enemies, or those who seem to be enemies, if noise is enmity, that I dislike to disagree with him at all. But when he declares - as he has declared this week of a man under indictment as the result of participation in that which we know to be contrary to our ethical standards — that he believes such a man to be of unimpeachable integrity, I disagree with him. I say that a man's character is to be judged not by a part of his life, not by his private life alone nor by his public life alone, but by all. [Applause.] I say that a man's religion can rise no higher than his politics. And I repeat to you as the most significant words that could and should have been spoken a few days ago, the words of a woman, Mrs. Gilman:

"By our common public work we stand or fall;
And the fraction of the sin

Of the party I am in

Is the sin that's going to damn me, after all."

Therefore I declare that because of this new individualism we can no longer believe in our own integrity so long as we have any share whatsoever in any impurity, in any wrong, in any injustice; and that the only way to be clear of it is to take part in whatever movements there are that are intended to remove injustice and to bring about right.

All religion to me is being transformed in these days. I am a religious evolutionist in the fullest degree. I believe that now we are in the age of man, of social man; that whereas before in religion we have been dealing with the discovery of God, we must now set ourselves to the discovery of man and the development of the divine in the human. The centre of religion is now no longer in deity; the centre of religion is in mankind. He who does not find God in man will never find God anywhere. The power that will save man is in man, and not in any superior power that will come out of any sky or from anywhere else to save us and to give us the right and the justice that we can deserve only by working for it and by exerting the deific power contained in ourselves.

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I have not time to express this new principle more fully. But it means a transformation, it means a revolution. The Next Step" is not merely a step forward, but it is a step into a new condition, a new era, and an era whose ultimate conclusions and whose finest conquests will be liberty and justice and right. We may sum it all up by changing somewhat that phrase that has come up to us from the past, "Faith, hope, and charity," and declare now as the purpose of our religion, not "Faith, hope, and charity, these three, and the greatest of these is charity," but "Faith, hope, charity, justice, and the greatest of these, justice." [Applause.]