any one to get music out of them? Suppose I should go through the city of Boston and gather together in one company all the crippled, the rheumatic, the diseased of every kind, and put them into some magnificent garden or park: would that make them well? Here would be one whose eyes were so diseased that it was pain to him even to discern the light. Here would be another whose stomach was so diseased that he would have to turn away from the most luscious fruits. Here would be another with his leg broken, so that, though the most lovely scene were only a little way distant, he would be unable to get to it and enjoy the view. Here would be another with rheumatism racking all his joints, so that the fanning of the cool breeze would be torture.

What is needed, then, for salvation? Can it mean anything else than harmony? What is harmony? Can it mean anything less than bringing ourselves into tuneful accord with the laws and forces of God and our fellow men, perfect health of body, health of mind, health of soul? This perfect adjust ment depends upon perfect knowledge and obedience. That, and nothing short of that, is salvation. I should say, then, to this mother of my Unitarian clerical friend, You are not saved, you are not safe, so long as you shut your eyes to the truth, refusing to see and obey it. And when the death line is crossed, in stead of finding yourself in heaven, you will find yourself in no more of happiness, no more of tuneful accord with the universe, no more joy than you have earned, than you have made yourself fit to appreciate. Salvation means nothing less than this. It is no

casy task on any theory. It means finding the truth, and living it; discern ing God, and coming into accord with him; discerning the right relations in which you ought to stand to your fellow men, and coming into these relations. You will just as soon get music out of a cracked and broken piano by taking it into Music Hall as to get heaven into your hearts by entering with untuned souls into any supposititious heaven.

Salvation, then, means knowledge of the truth and living the truth. If, then, we have the truth, or more of it than the older churches have, then this truth is needed for the salvation of the world; and the world cannot possibly be saved without it. Every man is damned just in so far as he is out of accord with the truth of God, out of accord with the conditions of right living; and he will stay damned just so long as he stays in that condition, whether it is one year or a million. Pain, suffering, sorrow, evil, tread forever on the heels of wrong; and you cannot escape them except by getting out of the wrong and into the right.

Boston.

M. J. SAVAGE.

A WIDE AND OPEN FELLOWSHIP.

There are those who say, In order to have a wide and open fellowship let us remove the "God-idea" from our bases of organization and from our definition of Unitarianism. But the Unitarians of America are with increasing unanimity saying, No! we have found a better way. We will have the wide and open fellowship, but we will keep the Godidea as central in our thought and work as it has ever been. As theists, as Christians we will be broad in our sympathies and fellowships: we do not need to become something else, or plant our churches or conferences upon some other basis, in order to be broad. If we make a definition of Unitarianism or a basis of Unitarian organization that includes everybody, then there is no merit in our fellowshiping. The veriest bigot will fellowship those who are of his name and party. We ought to have a spirit so broad and noble that it will not require persons to be of our party in order to fellowship them, but will gladly leap over party and sect lines in search of possibilities of fraternity everywhere. If we must stretch over the Roman Catholic or the Calvinist or the Ethical Culturist or the Agnostic our name, before we can show ourselves brotherly toward him or seek co-operation with him in all matters which we have in common (of course we cannot co-operate in matters which we do not have in common), surely that is some thing not to be very proud of. A fellowship of that kind should call itself narrow and unworthy, not broad and generous.

Rev. Geo. Batchelor has brought out well the mistake of those who would have us give up Christianity in order to exercise a broad fellowship. He says: "I admire the Jew who stands by his religion and his race, while he opens his mind, his heart and his hand to all that is good and wise in every creed and race, just as I admire the Christian who stands fast in the liberty with which Christ made him free, while he still gives hearty welcome to all the good the past has had, and to all the good the happy present brings. He has the broadest fellowship who stands with all his might for something, while still he has hearty love and sympathy for all who just as sturdily stand for their own faith and do their own work."

As Unitarians, how broad ought our fellowship to be? Doubtless, in matters of worship, broad enough to include all who worship; in matters of doing good, all who wish to do good; in matters of thought and inquiry, all who think and inquire. Can fellowship that is real be broader than that? Certainly not; carried beyond that it be comes simply a sham. But is there anything in Christianity or theism that prevents such genuinely broad fellow ship? On the contrary such fellowship is exactly in the spirit of the teaching of Jesus. Indeed the theism of the Lord's Prayer and the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount are probably the most powerful agents for the promotion of inst such breadth that the world has ever found.

As Unitarians we have passed all necessity for discussing the alternative of Christianity or breadth, theism or large and open fellowship. It is plain that the mind of the denomination is well made up to have both. We are going to be Christians; but as Christians we are going to try to be as broad in our sympathies and outreachings and co-operations and fellowships as God's paternity and man's humanity. We are

going to be theists, but as theists we are going to try, in all practical ways we can, to fellowship in matters of worship all who worship; in matters of doing good all who do good; in thought and inquiry all who think and inquire.

THE NEW YORK "SUN” ON THE

RELIGIOUS SITUATION.

"The Sun that shines for all" gives us the following interesting editorial upon the present religious situation:

On Monday last the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, of Boston, began at Trinity Church in this city a series of Lenten lectures to men. The church was crowded with a very serious audience, composed in chief part of business and professional men who escaped from warehouses and offices to spend an hour in prayer and listen to religious discussion and admonition. Yesterday the attendance was even greater, and there is no doubt that at all these services, held in the vicinity of so great worldly activity, the venerable house of worship will be filled at midday with similar throngs.

Yet this is not a period of religious enthusiasm. There is nothing like a revival of religion in progress after the fashion of what was known as the great awakening, when midday prayer-meetings in John street and Fulton street were crowded with men of affairs oppressed with a sense of sin, and trembling with anxiety about their salvation. But, all the same, it is a period remarkable for the extent and earnestness of religious inquiry. The minds of the people were never before so much occupied with the subject of religion. It is the great theme of discussion. Never since the Reformation has it engaged a larger share of the public thought. Every Protestant church is examining and testing the foundations of its theology, and seeking for the reason of the faith that is in it. Of them all there is none more conservative than the Presbyterian, yet to-day it is the communion most radically affected by this new spirit of investigation. Perhaps it would not be going too far to say that the majority of Presbyterians have awakened suddenly to the conviction that, they have been professing to be lieve what they really detest and abhor. Their theological seminaries are full of rebellion against their ancient standard of faith, and the theological professors who are most critical of it are the most popular among the students. The same is true of the Congregationalists, and a like spirit of inquiry has entered into the Baptist and Methodist bodies. In doctrinal sentiment they are very different from what they were a quarter of a century ago. The Episcopal church is also undergoing a transformation as to belief which is none the less real because it is less apparent on the surface. The great change which has taken place has been with regard to the doctrine of future retribution; and it has occurred within very recent yearswithin ten, nay, five years. There has suddenly sprung up a feeling of invincible repugnance to the doctrine of eternal damnation, a central and fundamental article of all orthodox faith and theology. The conviction that it does violence to every reasonable conception of Divine justice has spread rapidly among clergy and laity both, with the consequence of stimulating a belief in a future probation that amounts to Universalism.

Of course this implies and makes necessary a radical reconstruction in theology, and favors the way for what Prof. Briggs, of the Union Theological Seminary, calls a new Reformation, when the theological foundations will be builded anew, The terrors of hell have lost their power. They are no longer preached in Protestant churches. The great missionary society of the Congregationalists is in confusion because the ablest and most sincere of the young candidates offering themselves for heathen evangelization are leaning toward this doctrine of future probation, which destroys the main reason for the existence of the organization. Even at the Methodist camp meetings it is the mercy and loving kindness of God, and not the terrors of his law, which are proclaimed.

But this discussion has awakened a new interest in subjects of religious inquiry. The Westminster Confession is no longer a book unread by the laity, and preachers who seek to adapt theology to the prevailing tone of thought, are heard with eager attention. Having lost their old faith, men are searching for a new which will justify itself to their new state of mind.

THE NEW SAVONAROLA.

Extraordinary accounts of the great preaching friar, Padre Agostino da Montefeltro, have reached us from Rome the past year. The expectations of Leo XIII., who summoned him from Florence to preach in the ancient capital, have been surpassed. During last Lent he addressed every day, for forty days, from four to five thousand persons. The large church of San Carlo, in the Corso, was thronged, crowds being unable to gain admission. It was even found necessary to give the monk a military guard. The people accompanied him in crowds to his hotel, and he was often compelled to show himself on the balcony before they would disperse. His sermons were interrupted with the sobs, the laughter, and even the applause of the congregation. All the usual conventionalities of the church were laid aside. The instant he appeared in the pulpit murmurs of "Eccolo! Eccolo!" (There he is! There he is!) ran through the assembly, and at every pause, "Bene! Bene!" or even "Bravo!" were distinctly audible-the father's efforts to repress these outbursts had proved useless, and so he gave it up. The people were simply carried away by his eloquence-old and young, high and low. He is commonly called the new Savonarola; let us hope he will not work out his legend.

Who is this man? All sorts of tales are abroad about him. He is a widower, who, in despair at losing a beloved wife, took to the cloister. He is a Garibaldian who has exchanged the red shirt for the monk's cowl. The truth, however, seems to be even more romantic. Some twenty years ago a young Italian of good birth became enamored of a beautiful girl, and the course of true love, as usual, not running smooth, in a fit of burning and headstrong passion the impetuous Agostino cut the knot and ran away with his idol to Switzerland. The rash pair were rudely aroused from love's young dream by the appearance of an altogether matter-offact personage, the brother of the young lady. He seems to have fallen on Agostino with his sword in the good old slashing style; but Agostino, it appears, could also play the swordsman, and, in the desperate encounter which followed, the girl's brother fell pierced to the heart by the hand of her lover!

What went with the young lady is not told, but Agostino, overcome with terror and remorse, seems to have fled to a Franciscan monastery, and there sought pardon and expiation for his crimes by twenty years of devotion, rigid seclusion, and severe penance. His extraordinary qualities, the vigor of his intellect, his taste for learning, and above all his eloquence did not escape the notice of his superior. About four years ago he was ordered to preach at Bologna. After his very first sermon he was hailed by the populace as a second Savonarola. He went to Florence two years ago, and was carried daily in a litter- for at that time he was very ill-into the Duomo. The whole of Florence was soon at his feet; the local journals employed numerous shorthand writers and within a few hours of their delivery his sermons were hawked about the streets and devoured as greedily as Luther's tracts.

name of the faith of our fathers, I say to you 'Forward!'" Sooner or later this sort of thing will be met by the imbecile, but apparently inevitable, non possumus of Rome, which broke the heart of Lacordaire, cowed Passaglia, paralyzed the intellect of Montalembert, and wrecked poor Father Hyacinthe soon after his magnificent conference at Notre Dame. He feels that the old style is played out. There is hardly a trace of the old dogmatic, much less Roman Catholic, theology left in his sermons; somehow or other the people don't seem to miss it. His utterances are direct and glowing,-defenses of the religious instincts, expositions of human passion in the light of the higher spiritual experiences of the race as regenerate in Christ, vignettes of real life, flights of poetic declamationin a word, grand, moral, philosophical and practical orations ordered with consummate art, and heated through and through with the electric fire of a noble heart; that is what has won the people of Bologna, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and struck the narrow cardinals with fear and suspicion.

Father Agostino is in the prime of life. He is now in fair health, and in splendid oratorical form. His head is broad and finely formed; his features, clear cut but strong; his mouth, sweet but firm. A smile, said to be irresistible in its geniality and tenderness, is wont to play about his lips as he first surveys the eager upturned faces of the vast congregations which flock to him. How long will it be before Rome stones this latest of her prophets? We shall see. --Pall Mall Budget.

[The Andover Review for March contains an extended article upon Father Agostino, but it adds little to the information contained above. -ED.]

the rocks upon which SO many of Rome's most gifted sons have split.

"My friends," he cried, in the Duomo at Florence, "your great desire is to press onward - to advance in every sense of the word; well, then in the

ONE UPWARD LOOK EACH DAY.

WARD BEECHER.

SUNDAY.

O Thou Infinite Love and Perfection, may we look away from all our consciousness, from our various endeavors, and from fretful resolutions that vex and torment us, from the whole round and fever of our in