mer sun as that the human race would be developed without the quickening love and power of the Infinite which we find in everything. It does not take away from me either the belief in the necessity of constant growth. If we could but read it, “I must be born again" is written more plainly in nature than it is in any Bible.

Nev birth is the universal experience. Neither does this faith take away from me my hope for the future; it takes away the vague and vulgar theories of the future; it gives me a philosophical reason why I cannot understand the future and its conditions. It awakens in my soul an inexpressible gladness and hope because it enables me to see that I may live toward the better, live here and now in spite of imperfection and stumblings. It teaches me more than this; it teaches me that the sin stained soul that has trailed its garments in the mire of passion and of lust, in this infinite and ever widening circle of life may be as true and ideal by-and-by as the Pharisee who occupies the high seat in the synagogue, and so I look forward hopefully and feel that life is grander and sweeter with the new than with the old. I see that old traditions and forms are passing away, I do not lament it; nothing perishes until it has answered its use. The old shell is cast off, but it is cast off because the expanding germ within can no longer tolerate the bondage of its pressure. The future will be fuller in growth, of nobler stature than the past, aye, than the present. There is a new motive in religion, it is the motive of fitness; there is a new method of religion, it is the method of adjustment; there is a new end in religion, it is character; and in the union of these and in the filling of them out in the experience shall be found the man's true life. The future shall have strength and wisdom to do what the past could not, it will be great with that wisdom which comes alone from the knowledge of truth, it will realize that inspiration has not been confined to a few Jews or Christians but that in all nations holy men have spoken as they were moved by the spirit, and that progress in the higher knowledge and purer faith can never cease until the last man is born.

"The word by saints or sybils told
In groves of oak or panes of gold
Still floats upon the morning wind

Still whispers to the willing mind;
One accent of the Holy Ghost

The heedless world hath never lost."

MR. FORBES was followed by the REV. MR. HUSSEY who said:

:

Mr. Chairman and Friends; I want to express my satisfac tion at being with you at Longwood once more. It was a small gathering this morning, a little depressing to the highest and finest spiritual life for a little while; but I saw another congregation than that I saw with the outward eye; I saw the pioneers in the noble cause of advanced views, and there was revived in my mind the old poetic passage:

"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel."

And I said in my heart,-"Friends, out of you from these humble surroundings, and this humble, small meeting house, from the principles here held up and preached, and the people who have gathered here, there has gone forth a noble influence throughout your country, and throughout the world, and a noble service has been done to that new faith of which we have so beautifully heard to-day.

And that is our work, friends, under the new faith. I spurn the idea that men can ever live and grow and progress and do their best works without faith. Faith, Religion, are parts of us; we must worship something; we must believe in something; the present will never satisfy the cravings of the mind of man; we must always reach out to the future; always reach out to the Infinite. The faith of our fathers was the simple outgrowth of their religious natures, the sentiments implanted in their minds and hearts, and in many cases with all their superstitions they did the best they could, and they found strength and courage for the hard, hard battle of life; they found light and peace and hope as they looked down into the hereafter,

the great mysterious Unknown; they found consolation in life; they found hope in death, in that old faith, that faith justly spoken of here this afternoon as the faith we should discard, for the old faiths have gone and are going; and you, Friends, in your littleness, when we look at the large gatherings of churches around us, are doing a noble work in advancing the New Faith. I well remember when,-softened, modified, and beautified as the old faith of the Society of Friends was, it yet hung a very dark cloud over us; I remember when I went to my own bed in childhood I was afraid that I should wake up in the lower regions, out of which I should never come; there I lay, there I trembled and did not dare to go to sleep for fear I should wake up in the lower regions and I remember now as I look upon my own children and look into my own heart and see the deep hard struggle with life, what comfort, what strength, what consolation, what inexpressible joy we derive because these things are passed away; passed away almost unconsciously and we have come into a new faith and are coming into it more and more; we hardly know how, we don't know when, we don't know where, we only know the fact, we only know we bow down and worship a God not outside the universe, creating it and then retiring a silent spectator of the scene, but a God in whom we live and move and have our being, and we look around us on all the struggle and ask what it means, and we must get our consolation, friends, from asking the meaning. We cannot understand the methods of the process, and if we can only get at some living, vital faith in what it all means to us, when trials come and our day is darkened over and we speak the bitter word, "Farewell" to those we love; if we can only have some living, new, vital faith in what it all means, we can rest with that.

"And so, beside the silent sea,

I wait with muffled oar,

No harm can come to them or me,

On ocean or on shore."

That is the new faith, friends. It binds us together in the bonds of peace and brotherhood and love, and we say in our

hearts "Of a truth, I can say that God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation they who fear Him are accepted of Him." No Jew, no Gentile, no black, no white, but all brothers and sisters in a common humanity.

We can hope for the best; the world is going forward, we are all Progressive Friends in the highest and deepest sense of the word.

But the best thing is, that He who rides on the wings of the wind, that He who is ruler over all, is in our little, personal, daily lives, and that Power-call it God if you will, it is the most convenient name-that Power means our help, our deliverance; and so through our blinding tears, and I speak to those whom I know have had their blinding tears, through everything that comes or may come in the great conflict of life, all the pain and sickness, all the sorrow and death, through it all our deliverance, our salvation is being wrought out and we are being carried forward, are being lifted toward the eternal Goodness and the infinite Love.

Mr. LLOYD. It is not so much intellectual light that most of us need to see the true pathway of life before us, as it is the sunshine and warmth which shall cause our souls to glow with love for all that is good and true and pure and beautiful in life and character in this world. I am glad that I have been enabled to hold on to life beyond the three score and ten and to realize an age in which men are free to let go the past, to live in the present and to realize the blessings of heaven here and now. I want that we shall not stop here and cavil one with another as to the form our thought shall take, but with the idea of moral accountability and responsibility remember that we are only accountable unto our highest convictions. "Unto thyself be true, and it will follow as the night the day, thou can'st not then be false to any man;" here is the foundation, in my mind, upon which we all must build. As to where is the dwelling place of the Infinite One, how into His presence or into the future life we are to be ushered, are things wisely hidden from our view, and we need not trouble ourselves to

know that which is behind the veil; but, oh, remember the heaven which is to be in this world, when the youth now before us shall have heads gray with age,-oh, that is a thing which we should concern ourselves about, and with which we have much to do in helping onward or putting backward the brightness and glory of humanity in this world. Here and now is the concern which rests most deeply with us, let us leave all other faiths and forms as of minor importance.

One word only escaped our brothers which I was loath to affirm "The bitter Farewell." It should not be bitter. We know that this world is not our dwelling place for all time; we know that we must part from all friends here, and there should be that fulness of faith and hope and trust in the Infinite Goodness which will enable us to say "farewell" to the nearest and dearest without shedding at least "bitter tears;" the tears may be of joy that they are gone to their long home whither we should all feel we are bound to go without any faltering mistrust as to what shall be in store for us.

Then let us make our own souls and our own lives here as near to the ideal as can be, and heaven in a measure will be our allotment in this life.

HENRY S. KENT-I wish to notice some of the things which have been spoken of here to-day, and also to ask a few questions.

My friend, WILLIAM LLOYD, objected to the words "bitter tears." They are bitter tears whether we like to have them so or not; notwithstanding all our theories concerning the future, as one of our poets has said:

"Not all the preaching since Adam,
Can make death other than death."

Perhaps the time will may rejoice that our

And these tears are bitter and galling. come, that Millenium,-when we all friends have all passed away from us, but we are not doing it

now.

The particular point that I wanted to bring up here was the question, How, in trying to be religious, we shall keep in the