ple." Cardinal O'Connell in his first address said, "The church is not a democracy." [I have it in the Pilot here before me.] "The church is not a democracy." Well, we, the people of the United States, are a democracy, and we mean to continue a democracy, and we mean to maintain democratic institutions, and we mean to band together toward the maintenance of these institutions; and we shall do this, not in a spirit of bigotry. We shall not engage again in 'Know-nothingism" and "A. P. A."-ism; but, positively, with the dignity and the self-respect that befits us as loyal Americans, we shall band together, we shall organize, because organization is needed, in order to defend, to maintain, and to preserve American and democratic institutions.

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In order to suggest the inherent spirituality of a truly democratic society, let me now say, positively: Blessed is the people - that is, we of the United States - whose laws and ideals, whose practices and purposes, are at one with the spirit of the age. America is happy in the fact that our life, our interests, the gains which we conserve and the aims which we cherish, are the life and the interests, the gains and the aims, which are dear to the whole human race. To each American and to all mankind liberty is precious, liberty which spells freedom from unwelcome rule of whatever kind. Neither by hereditary rule, however benevolent, nor by hierarchic might, however well meaning, certainly not by the power of ruthless wealth, do men mean longer to be ruled, whether against the will of the free in spirit or with the supine submission of the enslaved masses.

So, too, our age has enthroned reason, not as a goddess to be worshiped, but as a reliable light to serve as guide along the path of infinite possibility. Here again, whatever may be the deliberate unfaith of those who refuse to trust reason, we, who have boundless faith in the mind of man, rejoice in the fact that our country and our age are committed to intellectual liberty and progress. (England may be indifferent and love its anomaly, but we are not indifferent and we do not love anomaly.)

Also, our age and our country front gladly mornward still. We revel in all the gains which the race has thus far made, but more we rejoice in the promise of vastly greater gains still to be made. To the past we are grateful, for the future we are hopeful. We respect the institutions inherited from former ages, but still more we respect our capacity to create other institutions, which shall even more fully express our aspirations and even better serve every high human purpose. Then let us, first of the great modern nations, prove to the rest of the human race that a people is stronger, finer, more truly spiritual, whose national life is reliably exalted by the natural movement of mankind towards truth and righteousness and justice.

With this knowledge and in this spirit, may we preserve and develop the peculiar greatness of our people, strong in the strength of its self-controlled and mutually serviceable millions, and growing always greater because of the beauty of holiness flowering freely in the soul of each humblest man and woman and in each simplest child.

The Festival.

The Festival was held in Kingsley Hall, in the Ford Hall Building, at one o'clock, Mr. Edwin D. Mead presiding. Nearly two hundred and fifty people were seated at the tables.

At the conclusion of the luncheon the crowded condition of the hall, together with the throng outside seeking admission, made it imperative to adjourn again to the larger hall above.

DISCUSSION OF THE MORNING'S TOPIC

OPENING REMARKS OF MR. EDWIN D. MEAD Ladies and Gentlemen:

We have been considering during the morning the question of "State and Church in America," and it is announced on your programme, and it is the intention, that that subject in general will be continued in the session here. But that purpose will not be construed too strictly. No programme is ever construed too strictly on these Festival occasions.

As concerns the general subject of the day, I hope personally that it will be understood by everybody that the Free Religious Association has no hostility to any form of religion. If any criticism is ever made upon officials or upon people connected with any particular form of religion, it is never made upon them in that capacity, but always simply with reference to things where they may be exposed, or it is thought they are exposed, to criticisms upon social and political lines, like other people. I am very glad that with

reference to certain criticisms here to-day, speaking as I do here and conducting these exercises this afternoon, that it has been given to me under various and natural exigencies to take up the cudgels on both sides of this question. I have never waged more energetic war as a pamphleteer or as a speaker upon any platform than I have waged against certain of the old-time "A. P. A." extravagances and bigotries in this community. On the other hand, I hope that no person has stood up more resolutely than I have stood, and always mean to stand, for the integrity of the public educational system of this country and against any attempt to divide public money for sectarian purposes.

My mind runs back to a time when I took perhaps a rather conspicuous position on that subject. It was twenty years ago that I went down to Nashville to debate this parochial school question upon the public platform with Archbishop Keane; and I wish to say that there was nothing more satisfactory to me in connection with that agitation and my part in it, I mean as well the agitation here in Boston before that Nashville debate, than the large number of letters which I received, and the large number of visits, from my Roman Catholic friends here in Boston, who wished me clearly to understand that their feeling upon the subject was the strong American feeling. We must always distinguish, we must never fail to distinguish, between the feelings of thousands of the great masses of our Roman Catholic brethren, so far as the public school question is concerned, and the attitude of certain members of the hierarchy who wish that their position was different. I say this because I wish to have it clearly understood I know I speak for the President of this Association as earnestly as I speak for myself — that we wage here no religious war, that we criticise simply violations of the principles which we hold to be fundamental for all true American citizens alike.

I hope the discussions this afternoon may take a somewhat wider and more varied range than the very useful and resolute discussions this morning. My mind cannot help run

ning to a striking utterance in the most remarkable tractate, perhaps, that was ever written on this question of State and Church. I mean the famous discussion in Dante's "De Monarchia that great tractate which I wish were printed in letters of gold and kept in all our libraries to be produced once in so often upon critical occasions. That famous tractate, by the greatest medieval poet and thinker, was written, as Dante scholars here will remember, for the purpose of maintaining and vindicating the Divine foundations of the State, of opposing the theory that the State depended for its authority upon any sanction from the Church, and insisting that its foundation was Divine, was authoritative, original, like the foundation of the Church. No man ever maintained that thesis with greater power than Dante; and when Mazzini and Cavour and the other illustrious creators of modern Italy came into conflict with Clericalism in Italy and were making their historic and heroic struggle for a free Church in a free State, they went back to Dante's "Monarchia" as the strong statement of their position. Dante has been the great inspirer and prophet of modern Italy.

But what did Dante say on the last page of that great tractate devoted to the thesis that the State has its Divine foundation and does not depend upon the sanction or authority of the Church? He said there at the end, after his strong argument was all in: "After all, there is a sense in which Cæsar must listen to Peter." After all, there is a sense in which Cæsar must listen to Peter!

My friends, here in the Free Religious Association we do not speak in that dialect. We have, we think, a better. It is well for us that we have a better. But it would be very bad for us if, having a better dialect, we failed to understand what the great idealist meant, and failed ever to apply to our own politics the great principle which he thus expressed. That principle is this: No State is safe, no legislation is wise or righteous, which is not endeavoring to shape itself forever after the divine ideals and to bring earthly institutions into conformity with divine law. That was what