because it rested in ignorance, which was gradually dissolving, because it was entangled in exaggerated superstitions which were condemned by the wise and good, even in those very times."

And the works, the name, the fame, of this simple pastor of a human flock, will endure; and generations yet unborn shall seek in this church a touch of his vanished hand, a scent of his fragrant memory, redolent as it is with the sweet odor of unselfish devotion to the service of God and loving kindness to his fellow-creatures.

John Robinson's Name and Character a Tie

between England and America.

He had lived not quite fifty years when he was called back to God, and on March 1, 1625, he heard "the one clear call"; and, as was then written of him, "if either prayers, tears, or means would have saved his life, he would not have gone hence." John Robinson, a minister of Christ, died in exile and in poverty; and to-day two great nations are represented here in paying honor and respect to his memory and moral worth. His name and character create a tie between those who feel the kindred, not merely of a coinmon language,-the mother tongue of both peoples, but of the thoughts and feelings of which language is merely the clothing and the symbol; and out of these thoughts have grown convictions of mutual duty, from which we cannot detach ourselves if we

would, and, as I sincerely believe, would not if we could. The wide ocean he never crossed, and which lies between his grave and the colony he planted on the other side, has become a bridge, and no longer is a barrier, but serves to bring together the peoples of the two countries who share in love and sympathy in his life and work. His memory is a tie of kindred, a recognition of the common trust committed to both nations to sustain the principles of civil and religious liberty, of which he was a fearless champion, and under which has been so marvellously fulfilled the prophecy, "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a great nation."

Life is a quarry out of which we are to mould and chisel and complete a character. Goethe.

THE CHURCH.*

Our church is our household of faith, in which God is the Father, and we his children, brethren one of the other.

This church accepts the religion of Jesus, holding, in accordance with his teaching, that practical religion is summed up in love to God and love to man.

We meet to worship God in spirit and in truth, each striving to contribute somewhat in making the worship inspiring, enlightening, and strengthening.

We aim to deepen each other's faith in the spiritual and ideal life, to quicken and purify the thought of God dwelling in us, and to make clear to ourselves and others our filial relationship to God.

We come together, not for what we can get only, but also for what we can give, to help others as well as receive help ourselves. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.

EMERSON AS POET.

Mr. Emerson was once lamenting his fate in being only half a bard, not a poet, but a lover of poetry and poets, and merely serv ing as writer, etc., in this empty America, before the arrival of poets. Yet it seems that the forerunner (if we might use the word) had all the genius of the true prophet.

Lecturing was not the pleasure to him that poetry was; and Mr. Emerson was constantly resolving to withdraw from the public platform, and would have each time but for the necessity of alleviating the accumulating debts of the household.

As management, however, did not seem to increase his worldly goods, he writes, "My prudence consists in avoiding and going without, not in the inventing of means and methods; not in adroitly steering; not in gentle repairing." Thus was he obliged to reconcile himself to this expedient.

His love of verse was ardent, feeling that therein he could better express his thoughts in freer speech, and reveal to us thereby,

Suggested for the use of our churches.

more emphatically, the ideal truths within the rhythmical lines.

All of Mr. Emerson's methods were intellectual rather than scientific, resting in his intuitions, thus giving us this fragmentariness which often tantalizes our meagre intellects.

Mr. Emerson is seldom systematic, at times in his abstract manner making his paragraphs incomprehensible and indirect. The evolution of a theme is sometimes lost in its vagueness. He loved so to watch the play of thought that we often find ourselves winging our flight up and up, when suddenly looking about we wonder where the exit. In such fathomless depths or despairing heights the ordinary intelligence finds difficulty in penetrating these meanings. His innate wisdom perplexes us.

With his unparalleled views and impressious of Transcendentalism, he overlooks our incapacity to cope with and discriminate all relations of his, between these sheathed ideals and formulated facts. But we must come to him, not he to us.

It was not so much, after all, what Mr. Emerson said, or how he said it, as what made him say it. That gave him his position among those who influence thought. Thought is beyond the words which convey it. "His open vision of things spiritual across the disfigurements and contradictions of the actual" is marked of him. His insight is admirable, his truth precious; yet the root of his effect is his temper, hopefulness and serenity being indissolubly joined in this rare nature.

Matthew Arnold writes of Emerson, "This man of genius, visible to you in the flesh, speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for your heart and imagination. This is surely the most potent of all influences! nothing can come up to it."

He broke through the barrier of narrow, fixed ideas confronting him, and won an entrance for new ideas, thanks to his philosopher's insight.

none the less sought for with great avidity. While at Harvard, in 1821 he was "class poet."

Through privation or bereavement he was the same serene philosopher ("persistent optimist," he said), bearing all with a sweet fortitude; and even at the death of his eldest boy, upon which he wrote the beautiful "Threnody," he says: "Alas! I chiefly grieve that I cannot grieve. Dear boy, too precious and unique a creation to be huddled aside into the waste and prodigality of things."

Matthew Arnold does not class Mr. Emerson with one of the legitimate poets. "His poetry is interesting," he says, "and makes one think; but it is not the poetry of one of the born poets. Emerson lacks directness and concreteness and energy, and in general his poems have no evolution."

However Arnold may think, or any other, it is enough for us to know that Mr. Emerson "did not die with all his music in him."

We cannot prize him too much, nor appreciate too highly one of our best American writers; for was it not Ralph Waldo Emerson who began the new era in American thought, and made a permanent addition to the highest literature of the human race? JULIA DE WITT STEVENS.

THE WORTH OF A MINUTE OF
TIME.

What is the worth of a minute of time?
To the artist it came as a priceless gift,
Something dropped from its fairy wings
As they fanned the air-of spiritual things.
He caught on his brush and worked in the drift
Of the glowing river, his picture's theme;
And the eyes which gazed on the canvas there
Saw a beautiful river sparkling fair

In the light of an artist's dream.

And hearts were touched and souls were stirred, When the minute had flown as a swift-winged bird.

What is the worth of a minute of time?

Although Emerson's doctrines were not generally accepted within the provincial precincts in which he lived, his poems were

To fight for the life of a little child.
He answered her cry of terror wild,
And saved, with his last pained breath,
Her fragile form from the dark sea wave.
And the feeble life he had died to save
Was a power for good when the minute had
flown

On gauzy wings to its distant home.

What is the worth of a minute of time?
To the poet it brought a precious thought.
Over and into the choicest words

He wove notes sweet as the song of birds.
And the lay that his soul had wrought
Found its way to a nation's heart,
And became of the people's life a part.
Men and women were moved to cry

To God, when the minute had long passed by.

What is the worth of a minute of time?
God only knows. As a gift from him
The minutes come on their glistening wings,
Bearing treasures of wedding rings,
Piloting death through shadows dim,
Bringing life to the laughing boy,
Giving sorrow to one, to another joy,
As swiftly they fly to the dear home nest,
'Neath the wing of Old Father Time to rest.
-MAUD L. COTTON.

Bemis Heights, N.Y.

WHAT IS MAN ?*

Nov. 24, 1859, was the day upon which appeared Charles Darwin's epoch-making book on "The Origin of Species." At a meeting of the Linnæan Society in London in the preceding year a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace, who was engaged at the time in scientific investigation on the other side of the world, was read simultaneously with Mr. Darwin's announcement of his theory, showing that both naturalists had

arrived at the same conclusion at about the same time. This was their conclusion: Species are not fixed. They are not special creations. Species arise from natural selection. In the struggle for existence which is continually going on in the animal and vegetable world, only those varieties of a given species that possess qualities which enable them to adjust themselves most perfectly to their environment survive. The fittest survive because they are fittest: the others perish. From varieties of these varieties gradually arise new species.

Neither Mr. Darwin nor Mr. Wallace originated the theory of evolution or development. What they did do was to show how in one particular realm evolution can and does take place. No one claims to-day

that natural selection alone can account for

all species, but neither does any one doubt

By Rev. W. M. Brundage in "Some Things for which the Unitarian Church stands."

to-day the importance of the factor of natural selection in securing the survival of the fittest. No scientist of any distinction any longer holds to the old theory of the special creation of species. The work of Mr. Darwin in 1859 wrought a revolution in modern thought which is only second to the revolution effected by the work of Copernicus in the sixteenth century. It has necessitated a reinvestigation into the origin of man.

Man, taught the traditional theology which prevailed up to that time, is a special creation of God. About six thousand years ago the Almighty fashioned a figure out of the dust of the ground in some such manner as a sculptor would mould a clay model. He then breathed into the nostrils of this figure the breath of life, and "man became a living soul." A garden was planted for this new being, and he was placed in it to dress it and to keep it. The animals were then created and brought before the man, in order that he might give them their proper fect wisdom and holiness. But he had no names; for this first man was a being of per

mate. The man was alone. "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib which the Lord God had taken

from the man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."

The pair thus created and placed amid such favored surroundings, supplied with resented by the traditional theology as pereverything that heart could wish, were repfectly upright moral beings, supernaturally They were like God their Maker in “ightendowed with language and all wisdom. eousness and holiness." Yet, at the first serious temptation, they fell into sin, and were driven out of the garden of Eden, and thereafter were constrained to labor for their bread. The earth was cursed for their

sakes, and made to bring forth thorns and thistles and all ungracious things.

This naïve legend of ancient Hebrew literature has been embellished by traditional theology, has been taught the world as histhe basis of a philosophy of history. The toric fact, and has actually been accepted as

fall of man therein described lies at the

foundation of the entire traditional system of theology. Every theological term derives its significance from this event. Salva

tion, redemption, the atonement, mediation, heaven, hell, have no significance whatever in the old theology except in the light of the fall of man. Salvation is the rescue

of man from the consequences of the fall of Adam; redemption is the deliverance of man from the bondage of Adam's sin; atonement is the making one again of God and man, the reconciling of an angry God, who, because of Adam's sin, separated himself by a wide gulf from his fallen creatures; mediation, the coming in between an angry God and fallen man of one who brings them together; heaven, a new paradise for those who have been saved from Adam's fall; hell, the place of eternal torment for all the rest of humanity, for all who have not been redeemed. Jesus of Nazareth, in the old traditional theology, has little or no significance, except as the Saviour, the redeemer from the consequences of Adam's sin, the author of the atonement, the mediator be tween God and man, the one who holds the keys of heaven and hell.

But what do modern science and philosophy have to say about man and his origin? First of all, science relegates this story upon which the old theology is founded to the realm of pure legend and poetry whither similar stories of the other religions of the world have long since been relegated. Science treats man as a natural object, a part of nature, to be studied as such. He is classed zoologically as a vertebrate animal belonging to the division of the mammalia and the order of the primates. He belongs to the highest family of this order, the Hominidæ, in which he is the sole genus and species under the title Homo sapiens man, the intelligent. Anatomically, he is distinguished from the other members of the order of primates by his erect position and by the remarkable development of his brain.

But, when we come to a true psychological classification, the problem is a vastly more intricate one. Psychologically, man differs from the lower animals by the possession of self-consciousness; by the possession of a fairly clear and well-developed sense of the difference between the right, as something that ought to be done, and the wrong, as something that ought not to be done; and, finally, by the possession of a certain moral freedom to choose between

the right and the wrong. We see the beginning of moral distinctions in the lower animals, especially in the animals which are the friends and companions of man. But, so far as our present knowledge extends, "the power of introspective reflection in the light of self-consciousness," to employ the expression of Prof. Romanes, and the power of moral choice, begin with man. Of course, these began in the first man, very far back of the point of development which we behold to-day. But the beginning of self-consciousness and moral freedom mark an advance in the ascent of man somewhat similar, though perhaps more striking, to the advance marked by the beginning of sensitivity in the ascent of the animal world, somewhat similar to the advance marked by the beginning of life in the ascent of the organic world. The higher ever grounds itself in the lower, and there is no real break in the process. "The slope of ascent," as Prof. Drummond calls it, "may be abrupt or gentle; but in any event it is nature's staircase."

Science, therefore, in tracing the development of man's body through the animal structures which are below man, and in tracing the development of man's mind from the faintest dawn of intelligence as manifested in the emotion of fear displayed by the annelids, though it frankly recognizes the difficulties of the process, though it does not shut its eyes to the incompleteness of the evidence, cannot but accept, as the only satisfactory working hypothesis, the hypothesis that the whole man is the product of the evolutionary process. Evolution, and not special creation, seems to be the divine method which operates throughout the rest of nature; and the evidence that man forms no exception to the law is cumulative, growing stronger every day.

Prof. Drummond, in his new book "The Ascent of Man," has recently only emphasized what Herbert Spencer has been teaching for thirty years, that even so spiritual and exalted a quality of character as loving self-sacrifice finds its earliest foreshadowings in the primitive forms of life. There is struggle for life and there is struggle for the life of others from the very beginning, egoism and altruism, the selfish and the unselfish; altruism, the unselfish quality, slowly but steadily gaining upon egoism,

or the selfish quality, all the while that man is being made.

So much, then, for the origin of man. The question immediately arises, Is there any way by which science can determine how long man has been upon the earth? Has he been upon the earth only six thousand years? Every scholar admits to-day that there are temples still standing in Egypt whose foundations were laid more than six thousand years ago. But the science of geology has assigned to man a much greater antiquity than that.

In the year 1841 a retired French physician, M. Boucher de Perthes, residing in Abbeville, in the valley of the Somme, discovered in the beds of gravel near his home the remains of extinct animals, such as the mammoth and the rhinoceros; and among these animal remains he found rude arrows and hatchets of flint which had very manifestly been shaped by a human hand. These gravel beds had been deposited in the quaternary period, when the river Somme ran at a level more than one hundred feet higher than it runs at present. Man, therefore, must be as old as these gravel beds. But the scientific world was very slow to recognize the significance of this discovery, for Darwin had not yet published "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man."

The discovery of Abbeville, however, was repeated elsewhere. Flint arrows and hatchets and other remains of human workmanship were discovered, not only in beds of gravel, but also in the débris of limestone caves, together with the remains of the mammoth, the cave lion, the cave bear, and the reindeer. Then human skeletons were found in similar positions. Thousands and thousands of these remains have been collected, and are distributed among the various museums of the world. The evidence has long since been complete. Six thousand years do not cover the period even of his toric man. Prehistoric man, slowly emerging from the depths of savagery, can be traced back through the quaternary or drift period, which immediately preceded the historic period, into the tertiary formations, perhaps even into the miocene, the very midst of the tertiary period, tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Man, therefore, did not appear upon this earth suddenly six thousand years ago, by

a special act of creation, any more than did the lower animals. Man began low down in the scale of intelligence, at least thirty thousand years before the historic age. The possession of self-consciousness and moral freedom constituted him man, Homo sapiens, man the thinker; but yet he was capable of forming only the simplest conceptions. He was capable of working only in the rudest and simplest manner. We possess no remains of his workmanship; for, from the very nature of the case, nothing could come down to us until man had advanced far enough to begin to fashion rude instruments out of stone. His manners must have been as rude as his instruments, his language mainly the language of gesture and imitative sounds. Says Prof. Drummond, "The child who says 'moo' for cow, or bow wow' for dog, or tick, tick,' for watch, or 'puff, puff,' for train, is an authority on the origin of the human species." But, rude and imperfect as man was when he first appeared, there was in him the capacity to grow and develop into the man of to-day.

History, anthropology, and geology are thus agreed; and they have proven beyond peradventure that man's golden age was not in the past, that man was not created a perfect moral being, who immediately fell as soon as tempted and incurred as a penalty the loss of his perfection. Man, as a species, has never fallen, unless, as Henry Ward Beecher was fond of saying, "he has fallen upward." Individual men have fallen, individual men do fall whenever, in the conflict between the lower and the higher nature, they yield to the gratification of the lower. This, and this only, is the truth of human experience which lies at the heart of the story of Genesis. Jesus never recognized the fall of man. Man has ascended. Man has ever been struggling upward, struggling from the lower condition to the higher. There has been progress, growth, evolution, from the beginning.

Progress has not always taken place in a straight line. The progress of man has been like the progress of the incoming tide. Not every wave touches the highest point. There is retrogression as well as progress, but, on the whole, progress, ever progress, progress from the lower to the higher, progress from the incomplete to the more complete, progress from the less divine to the