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and praying in these regions, we may be sure they will. It may be said that the dwelling-houses themselves in these vicinities are fast giving way to stores; but there are people living in the upper part of store buildings, all over Boston. Shall we have no religion for them? Should a few wealthy proprietors, who own a time-worn and honored church far from their homes, turn it into a place of merchandise, and go away with the money to new sites? Should they not rather ally themselves with some of the other churches most convenient for themselves, or else stay by the old, beloved ship, and help pilot to heaven a new company of voyagers occupying the old seats?

Look at King's Chapel! What an example to the Philistine spirit that ever wants to improve by destroying! What a distance many of those people go to their cherished place of worship! They would as soon think of moving the mountains or the sea to their doors as of bringing their church to themselves. And the result is, they not only go to it but all the world goes, too, on festival days to join the choir invisible, the crowd of witnesses through all the venerable past.

Such were some of our thoughts on anniversary week, as the worshippers came up to their Zion, and we heard others expressing the same fear that the old meeting-places would be sometime swept away.

In the midst of our joy at the progress of our Channing Memorial Building, let us cherish and keep alive the old churches that echo with the voices of the men who have made us what we are to-day.

THE SOUTH MIDDLESEX CONFERENCE OF CHURCHES.

This Conference held its summer meeting in Bedford, Mass., a quiet, lovely village containing a small Unitarian society, worshipping in the ancestral church, once the only meeting-house of the whole neighborhood. The discussion of the hour was on the Old and New Theology, stimulated by a comprehensive and interesting essay by the Rev. J. P. Bland, of Cambridgeport. Many cheering and hopeful words were spoken. Although there was a great variety of opinion in regard to what constituted new and old truths, the Conference seemed to be one in the feeling that the great spiritual realities of God, life in the spirit, fellowship with the Master, and the hope of eternal life were the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. A short summer day's discussion

would not permit a sounding of all the depths of modern and ancient thought; but the phases of our age were touched upon, its scientific gains and its losses. The old seers of our Church were cherished, but not slavishly followed; the Conference loved the old, but was ready for new truth to break forth. In short, there was a spirit of courtesy and liberality, combined with a just conservatism, which made all the speakers respect each other's position, and move ever toward a fine harmony and yet progress of thought.

This Conference is not going to content itself with discussion alone, we are glad to say. It is making earnest efforts to create a missionary spirit among its churches; and, after inciting them each year to raise their quota for the general work of the American Unitarian Association, it means to persuade each prosperous society to aid the feeble churches in their midst,-churches full of earnest men and women, who are sometimes burdened with debts for which they in their own generation are not responsible. After the morning meeting, a basket collation was held in the comfortable hall opposite the church, which means that each one in picnic fashion carried his own entertainment with him, in order not to tax too much the hospitality of the small society which received the Conference. We wish that "surprise parties' of this kind could be held in all our little parishes in order to bring them into closer fellowship with us, and show to the denomination the importance of sustaining these old strongholds of our faith where "two or three are met together" in the name of the Master.

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The Report of the Woman's Auxiliary Committee of the Conference for the past year was read by the chairman of the committee. We give it here, as the new life that is springing up everywhere among women's organizations in our Church needs continual quickening from contact and sympathy among all their branches:

Report of the South Middlesex Auxiliary Committee of Ladies, for 1882 and 1883.

The ladies of this committee have held monthly meetings during the past season at the Rooms of the Association, Boston. This committee should be composed of one representative, or her substitute, from each church in the Conference.

The members of the committee have occupied themselves in

urging the claims of the Association upon the parishes, in order to secure an annual contribution. In some cases, this yearly sum has been raised through the systematic benevolence of the parishes; but in many cases the contributions have been gained entirely through the energy of these ladies, especially among the smaller societies which in times past have not contributed to the Association. The ladies are especially anxious to impress on these churches the fact that their offerings are important, however small they may be, as they indicate a feeling of loyalty toward the Association. After having accomplished this duty as far as they were able, the ladies wished to engage in a little more missionary work before the end of the winter; and a few of them therefore raised the sum of forty-two dollars, as a gift to Rev. Mary A. Safford of Humboldt, Iowa, a devoted and earnest worker and preacher, who was then lying ill, and unable to continue her labors. Miss Safford, after her recovery, wrote a cordial letter of thanks, expressing her great desire to see more workers in the vineyard.

The committee, in order to bring about more unity of action between themselves and the Woman's National Conference, invited Miss E. P. Channing to address them in May. Miss Channing came, and found a large room full of ladies ready to greet her, and listen with sympathy to her interesting reports of missionary work. Our lady representatives of the churches in the county have not created new branch societies in the Conference, thinking it a simpler way to invite existing parish circles of women to make themselves auxiliary to the committee. Several societies have already done so, and it is hoped in time that they will thus become also members of the Woman's National Conference.

The committee would further state that, besides the missionary work carried on by them, they have found profit at each meeting in having a short discussion upon the religious needs of their parishes, and the importance of cultivating in themselves and the young the spirit and habit of personal piety.

ABROAD.

Our English Unitarian brethren seem to have had an interesting time at their anniversaries. Our friend, Mr. Ireson, the Secretary of their Association, congratulates them, in his speech at their soirée, that their collections for missionary work had de

cidedly increased, not only in England but in Scotland. "They did not mean," he says, "to increase in conceit or cynicism or daring speculation, but to stand squarely on their own convictions, and at the same time to look kindly and smilingly upon those around them, and endeavor to harmonize rather than to exhibit discord."

The Baptists at their anniversaries are beginning to get waked up, in their foreign mission gatherings, to a fact which we have long known,— that there is a large body of people in India who are almost Christian in their belief, and should be treated with respect and sympathy, and not ignored as the old-fashioned missionary has done, carrying his Westminster Catechism and Thirtynine Articles, or nothing, to the Hindu theist. The Rev. James Smith, from Delhi, tells the mecting that everywhere he goes in India, in the railway carriages or the most lonely places, the people are asking about Christianity. Sir Richard Temple, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, takes the chair at the soirée, and tells the audience about the Brahmo Somaj, the Hindu theistic reformers, and says: "It is for you, my Christian brethren, to attract that movement in the direction of Christianity. These people have considerable intellect; they cannot be talked over, they must be convinced by the power of Christian argument and divine grace." Another speaker, the Rev. W. J. Henderson, in speaking of the need we have of the Oriental mind to help us interpret Christ, says: "Could our speech, though all should use it like Shakspere, prove sufficient for the depths and heights of Christ's thought?... There is in him a music unexpressed and incapable of expression until his life shall unfold itself in all races of mankind,— the robust and the subtle, the speculative and the practical, the imaginative and the logical, the plain and the gorgeous.... Christ in the Church is a confident, victorious presence." "He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth." This whole speech is full of that warm, overpowering zeal and love in the cause of Christian missions which must carry success wherever it goes.

Let us not forget that we have a man in India whose heart is as warm, whose tongue is as eloquent, whose knowledge and zeal are as great as any of these missionaries. Let us not forget Rev. C. H. A. Dall and his work there.

An attractive book has been published in London by James Clarke & Co., called East Anglia Personal Recollections and

Historical Associations. The writer was brought up under the instruction of Dissenting ministers, that condemned class of fifty years ago, which happily we know nothing about in this country, and which English prelates are now learning to treat with courtesy and appreciation. Here is a kindly tribute which the writer pays to these old-time men, whom he gently criticises, but loves:

Dressed in rural black, with hat considerably the worse for wear, with shoes not iguoraut of the cobbler's art, unconscious of and careless for the fashions of the world, rarely in London except on occasion of the May meetings,- — no one can tell, except those who, like myself, were admitted behind the scenes, as it were, how these good men loved to keep alive the traditions of freedom, civil and religious, in districts most under the sway of the ignorant squire and the equally ignorant parson of the parish. If there has been a decency and a charm about our country life, it is due to them, and them alone. Perhaps more in the country than the crowded city is the pernicious influence felt of sons of Belial, flushed with insolence and wine. It is difficult to give the reader an idea of the utter animalism, if I may so term it, of rural life some fifty years ago. For small wages, these Dissenting ministers did a noble work in the way of preserving morals, extending education, promoting religion, and elevating the aim and tone of the little community in which they lived and moved and had their being. At home, the difficulties of such of them as had large families were immense. The pocket was light, and too often there was but little in the larder. But they labored on through good and bad report, and now they have their reward. Perhaps one of their failings was that they kept too much the latter end in view, and were too indifferent to present needs and requirements. They did not try to make the best of both worlds. I can never remember a remark addressed to me by all the good men of the class with whom I was familiar in my childhood, as to the need of getting on in life and earning an honest penny and becoming independent in a pecuniary point of view. I was to be a good boy, to love the Lord, to study the Assembly's Catechism, to read the Bible,- as if outside the village there was no struggle into which sooner or later I should have to plunge, no hard battle with the world to fight, no temporal victory to win.

The most interesting reminiscence is that of the Rev. W. J. Fox:

In after years it was often my privilege to meet Mr. Fox, who had then attained no small share of London distinction, among whose hearers were men, often many, of the most distinguished literati of the day, such as Dickens and Forster, and who was actually to sit in Parliament as M.P. for Oldham, where he occupied a most respectable position,- all

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