in them, and that the people are not for the benefit of our mills and our factories. We boast of our civilization; but a civilization that would not permit the normal development of childhood into manhood and womanhood, or an industrial system which would destroy the bodies or crush down the souls of the majority of the people, is no true civilization. True civilization is that civilization which in every possible way tends to build up, to bring about the highest possible development and the greatest possible happiness among the multitudes of the people. [Applause.]

PRESIDENT WENDTE.

We have listened to a very noble

appeal from our friend in behalf of the higher politics. I would like to add only one clause to it in taking the "Next Step" I should include the other half of the creation, which is now disfranchised I mean the women of America.

[Applause.]

I thank you very much for your attention this morning. We have had a most uplifting series of addresses, and I think our meeting has not lacked in any of the elements of worth which have attended previous ones.

The meeting was thereupon declared adjourned, to reassemble for the Festival an hour later.

The Festival.

The annual Festival was held at one o'clock, at the Twentieth Century Club, No. 3 Joy Street, with two hundred members and guests present at the luncheon-tables. When the time arrived for the after-dinner speaking, the tables were removed, the doors of the hall were thrown open, and as many more auditors crowded in as could find seats or standing-room.

The first part of the after-dinner exercises was devoted to memorial tributes to Julia Ward Howe, late a Vice-President, and to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a former President and late a Vice-President of the Association.

The company was called to order by President Wendte, who spoke as follows:

OPENING REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
REV. CHARLES W. WENDTE, D.D.

My friends: The directors and members of the Free Religious Association have reason to felicitate themselves and you on the large success which has attended this forty-fourth annual meeting of the Association. Both in point of large attendance and deep interest, and in the intrinsic merits of the addresses themselves, it has been a notable occasion in the history of our Society. It quite redeems us from the charge that we are "doing nothing," or that we ought to "go out of existence," and makes us feel that we are entering on a new lease of life. The offering of a free platform for the exchange of thoughts and sentiments, of hopes and aspirations, is no small service in the cause of God and man.

I will ask you to begin our symposium this afternoon by

singing together Mrs. Howe's hymn, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord."

GOD IS MARCHING ON

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored:

He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of his terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call re

treat:

He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat ;
Be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me; As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.

JULIA WARD HOWE

After the singing of the hymn President Wendte continued as follows:

It is one of the inevitable yet pathetic features of an Association like ours, that as it increases in years, one by one its founders and early supporters are called away from their testimony and service, so that each succeeding anniversary marks not only a milestone on our journey, but is also a memorial of the great and good who have wrought in us and for us in times past, and through whose faithful testimony we are the wiser and the happier. The past year has been especially characterized by great losses in our member

ship, losses which are irreparable, but which after all bring us to a realizing sense to-day of our great indebtedness to the past, and should inspire us with a new zeal to go on in the course which is laid before us. Our Secretary, Mr. William H. Hamlen, who has served us so faithfully for the last eleven years, and who now withdraws to a more quiet service on the Board of Directors, enumerated yesterday at our business meeting the names of seven of these prophets of the soul whom, during the past year, we have lost from our immediate companionship. He offered with each name a beautiful tribute, which we have no time to read here this afternoon, but which will appear in the printed report of these proceedings. I will read simply their names in the order of their ascension:

JULIA WARD HOWE,
HELEN M. IRESON,

SARA C. BULL,

SAM WALTER FOSS,

SARA A. UNDERWOOD,

DR. EDMUND MONTGOMERY,

and last, the last to leave us,

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

It is impossible for us, in the brief space of time we have at our command here, to dwell upon each and every one of these. We have selected the first and the last as not only typical of the service which has been rendered us, but also of the genius and character which have been consecrated to the high ideals for which we stand. We have asked friends of Julia Ward Howe and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who knew them in life, and who served with them in great and good causes, to speak to us.

The first name to be mentioned here is that of our inspirer and friend, Julia Ward Howe. For many years she never failed to come to these meetings and to grace the Festival

with her presence and word. But, last year, the forty-third annual Festival fell on her ninety-first birthday, so that she could not attend, her home engagements forbidding it; but she sent us a greeting. We sent her in return, you may remember, a bunch of lilies of the valley which had been gathered that morning from the little plot by the side of the parsonage of Theodore Parker, in West Roxbury, gathered in the same spot where he so often rejoiced to behold these early heralds of the spring. We sent them to her with our good will and benediction. I am glad to present to you now one who knew Mrs. Howe intimately and well, and who enjoyed her friendship and regard — Frank Sanborn, of Concord, who, I am happy to say, has now been chosen to take her place in our roll of Vice-Presidents. [Applause.]

JULIA WARD HOWE

REMARKS BY F. B. SANBORN, OF CONCORD

Mr. President and Friends:

I owe you thanks for the honor you have done me by electing me to an office in the Free Religious Association. I am in that state when, as the proverb says, persons do not boast of their age until they have nothing else left to boast of. Now I am going to boast that I was present at the formation of the Free Religious Association. I suppose I might be called one of the first members, for I believe I was at the first meeting and continued to be at the meetings generally for several years. Then I thought I saw a tendency in the Association to form a new sect, and as I felt there were sects enough already I quietly withdrew my appearance. I read the proceedings, I took interest in the persons, but I thought we had better not start a new sect.

To-day I am going to speak to you not only of Mrs. Howe but of Colonel Higginson, and I do it in the sense of one of those parallels in Plutarch where he takes two persons,