ADDRESS BY CHARLES W. WENDTE.

There is no topic which better expresses the sentiment and purpose of this Free Religious Association than that which forms the general theme of our addresses at this convention,—World Religion and World Brotherhood. To promote these two great interests of human society was the purpose uppermost in founding this Association, and it has remained ever loyal to these high aims during the nearly fifty years of its history. Thus far, at this meeting, the second of these great ideals has been emphasized by the speakers who have addressed you. Let me devote myself to the first named,-to World Religion.

When the first annual convention of this Association was called, in 1868, the Secretary, William J. Potter, addressed to the Brahmo Somaj, or Theistic Association of India, which had been formed two years previously, an invitation to participate in the Boston meetings. He informed them that it was a distinguishing feature of the Free Religious Association that "it contemplates an ultimate union, not simply of all sects in Christendom, but of all religions, Christian and non-Christian, in one. It looks beyond Christian limits for fellowship." In reply, the eminent Hindu Theist, Keshub Chunder Sen, sent a cordial letter, acknowledging the invitation, expressing the greatest sympathy with the spirit and purpose of the new association, and regretting the inability of the Hindu Theists to be represented in person at its meetings in Boston.

The report of the Executive Committee, in referring to this correspondence, declares that the Free Religious Association does not maintain that "one religion is as good as another. It simply does not determine the claims of any specific form of faith. . . . Christianity thus far has attempted to convert all other religions to itself. The Christian missionary goes to India and says to the natives there: 'You must be converted to my faith or there is no hope for your progress to anything better in this world, or of your happiness in the world to come.'

"This [Free Religious] Association says to these native religious devotees, 'Let us see what is true in your religion, and what is true in this or that other form of faith, and be ready to accept the true from any quarter, and meantime let us put our

heads together, and see if we cannot contrive some better and worthier ways of living.'

"The Free Religious Association simply does not accept any form of religion as necessarily a finality. It admits the possibility of advance in religious truth beyond any present religious system. It plants itself on truth-seeking and does not claim to have found a finality in religious faith and practice."

Two years later, in 1870, the Association at its annual convention devoted one of its sessions to "The Natural Sympathy of Religions, as indicating the grounds on which they may come into practical unity and co-operation." At this meeting, Rev. Samuel Johnson of Lynn, distinguished as a student of Oriental Religions, gave an address on the "Natural Sympathy of Religions." Rev. William H. Channing, the gifted nephew of the great American divine, read a paper on "The Religions of China"; Rev. William J. Potter spoke on "Religion Old and New in India"; while Rabbi Isaac Wise, of Cincinnati, discoursed on "Judaism."

Meanwhile outside the meetings of our Association the ideals of inter-religious sympathy and world brotherhood were assiduously fostered by its members. Already in 1868 Rev. Samuel Longfellow had printed in the Free Religious Monthly, The Radical, a notable paper on "The Unity and Universality of Religious Ideas." In the same journal appeared in 1871 the luminous and compendious essay of Thomas Wentworth Higginson on "The Sympathy of Religions," delivered as a lecture before the Association and later issued as a tract by it, and republished in 1893 for the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and since by others. It is not too much to say that this scholarly and large-minded pamphlet has been the most popular and influential presentation of the free religious attitude towards the great religions of mankind that has ever appeared. Even with the present enlargement of our knowledge of the other great world faiths it holds its own, and a new edition is about to be reprinted by this Association. Hardly less effective in spreading throughout the religious community these sentiments of universal religion were the noble hymns produced by a generation of Free Religious poets-and of which Samuel Longfellow's "God of Ages and of Nations" and "One Holy Church of God," and Samuel Johnson's "Life of Ages, richly poured" are typical examples.

Works of a more pretentious character which were produced during the same period by members of this Association were the three stately volumes of Samuel Johnson in which the philosophy and worship of Persia, India, and China were ably set forth; the less scholarly but helpful compilation "Aspirations of the World," by Lydia Maria Child; "Gems of the Orient," by Charles D. B. Mills; "Chapters from the Bible of the Ages," by Giles B. Stebbins; Moncure D. Conway's "The Sacred Anthology," besides innumerable magazine and newspaper articles dealing with the same topic. From kindred spirits came "Ten Great Religions," by James Freeman Clarke, and a reprint of Theodore Parker's "Discourse of Religion." Back of all such specific contributions to the larger world symphony of religions as it was intoned by these and other prophetic voices in America in the latter half of the nineteenth century, was the inspiring, liberating influence of their common master, one of the founders of our Free Religious Association, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in whose worldembracing sympathy and mystic vision the old religions and the new, the East and the West, were reconciled and transfigured into a cosmic unity. In the mean time the relations between the Oriental and the Occidental world of thought continued to be cherished by our Association, and through the increasing visits to this country of Asiatic scholars were drawn ever closer.

At the convention in 1873, and again in 1874, friendly letters were read from Protap Chunder Mozoomdar and Keshub Chunder Sen, respectively.

Still later, and down into our own day, Jewish, Brahmo, Buddhist, Parsee, Mahometan, Behaist, and other Oriental speakers have been welcomed on our free platform, as well as orthodox and liberal Christians, Spiritualists, Atheists, and Socialists. I cannot undertake, in the limited time at my command this morning, to rehearse to you their testimonies on the subject of religious unity and world brotherhood. My specific purpose is to show that in their spirit and aims the founders of this Association were a half-century and more in advance of their contemporaries in the religious world; that they were the prophets and initiators of that larger interpretation of religion and religious fellowship to which the races and religions of mankind are slowly but surely approximating in our day. With clear vision and in a catholic spirit, they rose above the limitations of their time and church

and country into the consciousness of the universality of religion and the brotherhood of mankind. They foresaw the impending consolidation of the peoples of the earth, through increased intercourse and exchange of ideas, through the extension of commerce, education, science, and practical inventions, and through humanitarian and religious endeavor, uniting the different races of men into one inter-related and indissoluble humanity, with common interests and common aspirations.

Among this cloud of witnesses there loom up, however, three prophets of the soul whose large-hearted and sane utterances on the subject of religious unity and world brotherhood deserve grateful acknowledgment. The first of these was the able and devoted secretary of the Association in its earlier days, William J. Potter of New Bedford. In his report at its fifth annual convention, in 1872, Mr. Potter said:

Some of us may live to see the day when there shall be a world convention in London, or perhaps in Boston, or San Francisco, of representatives from all the great religions of the globe, coming together in a spirit of mutual respect, confidence, and unity for common conference on what may be for the best good of all; not to make a common creed by patching articles together from their respective faiths in which they might find themselves in agreement, but, emancipated from bondage to creed and sect, to join hands in a common effort to help mankind to higher truth and nobler living. It may be that the work of this Association will culminate in such a world's convention, a peace convention of the religions. For that grasp of hands across the dividing line of opinion, with mutual respect for the natural rights of opinion, in a common effort to get truth and to do good, is the Free Religious Association.

This dream of Mr. Potter's came true when, some twenty years later, there occurred that great event in modern religious history, the World's Parliament of Religions, held in connection with the great Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, of which a member of this society, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, was the active secretary and promoter. This Parliament disclosed in an unparalleled manner the universality and power of religious ideas and practices, and taught the religious world a noble lesson of mutual toleration and respect for each other's opinions and worship. In that year the Free Religious Association, departing from its usual custom, held its twenty-sixth annual convention in connection with the Parliament in Chicago. The meeting was one of the most brilliant ever held by our society. Addresses

were made by William J. Potter, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Anna Garlin Spencer, Francis E. Abbott, Minot J. Savage, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Ednah D. Cheney, Ida C. Hultin, Robert Collyer, A. A. Miner, and C. C. Bonney, as well as by the Hindu Theists Protap Chunder Mozoomdar and B. B. Nagarkar. Through all the speeches and proceedings rang the happy conviction that no religious body in Christendom had more abundant reason to welcome and rejoice in the Parliament of Religions than the little group of radical men and women whose world-embracing sympathies, prophetic vision, and faithful testimony had, in such large degree, prepared the way for its realization on American soil. As Colonel Higginson declared: "The Free Religious Association made possible the Parliament of Religions. It gave the other faiths of the world a fair showing, which until the Parliament of Religions no other great American organization ever did."

At this Chicago meeting its president, William J. Potter, declared his belief in

the ultimate union of all the great faiths of the world in one religion, not by the conversion of all the others to any one of the faiths, but by the conversion and education of them all to the perception of a higher realm of truth. We who are now living will behold, nay, may already behold, the dawn of the day of a new religion which is to be really universal in its principles and as broad as humanity in its boundaries; which is not, however, to be Christianity, nor Judaism, nor Buddhism, nor Neo-Brahmanism, but a new faith into which the specific religions are in form to die that they may continue to live in spiritual substance. The meaning of the Free Religious Association, it seems to me, culminates in this thought.

It was at this same convention that the eminent Hindu Theist, Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, speaking of religious unity, said:—

Hinduism gave us spiritual philosophy, lofty utterances, profound sentimentalities. Christianity gave us the solid realities of personal character, and when Eastern sentimentalities and aspirations, when Hindu loftiness and Oriental subtility, when Asiatic poetry and Eastern impulses have combined with the energy, the power, the reality, the solidarity, the triumph that character achieved in Christendom, then alone shall the great Catholic Church (of humanity) be founded.

More impressed than ever with the consciousness of its world mission the Association thenceforth sought increasingly to come into closer fraternal relations with the great non-Christian religions and peoples of the earth. It is remembered that two