the Supreme is so near, so awful, so splendid that we have not eyes for the half-gods or the magic rite.

This lies before us. Shall we do it? Shall we live up to the vocation? I do not know. I hope, however, that we shall. If not, some greater cause and some deeper spirits will. There will always be those for whom spiritual shallowness or any other juvenility of judgment will not satisfy the deepest desires of life and the clearest call of reason. If we fail, these will come, to bring to predestined victory the day when religion shall mean this finite and that awful, adorable Infinite.

The Festival.

The banquet was served in Kingsley Hall, in the Ford Hall building, at one o'clock. On account of the crowded condition of the room and the large additional audience that had gathered, it was determined to hold the afternoon session in Ford Hall, to which the members and guests accordingly returned at the conclusion of the dinner.

PRESIDENT WENDTE. In congratulating you very heartily upon the success of the morning meeting, as regards both attendance and the quality of the speaking, and also as regards the general spirit of good-fellowship which reigned; and after the pleasant repast we have taken together, I will simply say that we thought it best to transfer the meeting hither that we may have more space, air, and light. Our friend Mr. Frothingham, who is one of the Directors of the Association, and who for years past has been identified with its history, has kindly promised to preside, for a portion of the time at least, this afternoon. I am sure you will be glad to welcome him and to give him the greeting which he deserves for his earnest and faithful service to our Association in years past and present.

OPENING REMARKS OF THE CHAIRMAN, REV. PAUL REVERE FROTHINGHAM

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I confess that it was with a certain amount of regret that I learned that the Festival was to adjourn to this upper hall; for I remember that in the old days the Festival of the Free Religious Association had a very peculiar function: it rather

took us out of the line of serious discussion, and perhaps heated difference, which might have gone on at the morning meeting, and we were supposed, at the Festival, to relax and deal in lighter themes, and speak of lighter things. The Festival, in other words, gave one the opportunity to turn aside from the crowded and perhaps dusty and busy thoroughfare of life; to turn aside into one of those shady by-paths that we see out in the parks, which are limited to "Pleasure Driving Only"; and so this Festival is set aside for pleasure driving, and we are not expected to be too serious.

It was a friend of mine who told me several years ago how he had met an old acquaintance one morning on the street, the death of whose uncle he had recently seen announced. My friend said to him, "I see your uncle is dead; it is too bad; what did the old man die of?" The friend answered him, Why, why, let me see, I forget just what the trouble was; but it wasn't anything serious." And so we are not expected here to get into any troubles that are too serious. Yet there are certain things that I want to say to you this afternoon, and to say them to you because perhaps you will not want to hear them.

I have the honor to be connected, perhaps in a somewhat intimate way, with the Free Religious Association. It was, if you will excuse the way of expressing it, a namesake as it were of mine, some nineteen hundred years ago, who was rather fond of boasting of his freedom. On one occasion the captain of the Roman guards disputed his claim to any such title, saying, "I purchased my freedom at a great price"; and the great apostle remarked, "Yes, but I was born free." So, ladies and gentlemen, I was born free. I was born a member of the Free Religious Association. The first President of this Association was my respected and much loved uncle, Octavius Frothingham, a man who certainly had the courage of his convictions, and who made it a principle to stand up for freedom. I began the ministry as the assistant of the first Secretary of this Association, one of the gentlest, one of the most spiritualminded men that I have ever known Mr. William J. Potter. I think, therefore, that I can claim to be free-born; and be

cause of that fact, perhaps, I have come to realize that freedom is not all there is in it.

Freedom without re

This is a free religious association. ligion is almost as bad as religion without freedom. When I speak of religion, I speak of it in an etymological sense. Religio is a thing that binds; and freedom without any kind of restriction in it ceases to be a thing that has any glory or any use. I am not inclined to go as far as our friend, Mr. Ruskin, who claims there is no such thing as freedom in this universe. He says that the stars do not have it, because they have to move in their appointed orbits; the sea does not have it, because it is restrained by the shores. The universe itself, he says, does not know what freedom is. I do not go as far as that, but I do say, being free-born as I am, that freedom is not the whole thing, and that when freedom comes to mean freedom to destroy other people's property, as it seems to be coming to mean in other countries of the world; when it comes to using violence, when it comes to destroying works of art, then I say that freedom has ceased to be a thing of supreme value.

I think one of the noblest expressions in this world is an expression in the Prayer Book: "In whose service is our most perfect freedom"; and the apostle, I think, rose no higher than when he spoke of the law of liberty. Our ancestors in this country are always given credit for having come over here to seek freedom; and so they did; and they worshiped liberty; but they also worshiped law; and it was said, I think by Macaulay, that the men who could cut off the head of their king felt the necessity of prostrating themselves in the dust before their Maker. Liberty, yes; but liberty with a certain amount of respect for law.

Now, I suppose all of us have the right to our own convictions and beliefs, and I want here this afternoon to express very briefly what one or two of my convictions are. It will not take very long; and, if nothing else, I should like to have you go home this afternoon and think of the possible value at this present time of certain most desirable qualities of life. We live in times of considerable disturbance and of great unrest and of great dissatisfaction. I suppose the different

ages of the world have had, and always will have, what we may call special needs; and I am under the impression that our present age needs certain things more than others.

The first thing, to my mind, that it needs, is moderation. The need of our time, I claim, is not for exaggeration, but for moderation; - moderation of statement, moderation of motive, moderation of utterance, moderation in the charges that are made. Bliss Perry somewhere says I think in his essays on the American Mind- that Americans are born radicals; and I think we all are; but he also says they have a peculiar faculty of always wanting to run past the danger-signals. And I think that is a characteristic thing.

Our subject this afternoon is "The Forward Look." That is the wording of it. But one value of the Forward Look is to be able to see where you are going; and I think we need to consider at the present time where we are bound, whither we are tending. Huxley tells us of landing upon one occasion in Ireland, when he, as most travelers do when they visit Ireland, deposited himself behind a cheerful son of Erin in what is called a jaunting-car, and told the driver to take him to a certain place. The driver, as all good Irishmen do, started off at a high rate of speed. But Mr. Huxley realized, before he had gone far, that the man had taken the wrong turn. He called to the driver and said to him, "Man, you are going in the wrong direction"; and the driver answered him, "What of it? we are going fast enough, aren't we?"

I think a good many people at the present time consider more the speed at which they are going than whither they are tending. Certain people-I am not in that class myself — do not seem to pay much attention to the signs that are put up along the roadways at the present time, requesting them to slow down, and limiting the rate of speed. I used to complain that progress was too slow; most of us nowadays are inclined to regret that progress on the highways is so fast. In Woodrow Wilson's book, "The New Freedom," he begins his chapter on Progress, I remember, by telling of the experience of the famous Alice in Wonderland. If you have read the book you will remember how Alice on one occasion was