the objects around them, from which they might get knowledge directly, more accurately, and with perpetual pleasure.

4. Because we believe that the period from three to seven years of age which is the period of Kindergarten instruction-may be so used as to compensate for the higher education of the four college years, which, coming later, must necessarily be appropriated by the masses to earning a living.

5. Because the Kindergarten method seems to avoid the evils of the present system, which often oppresses the child with arbitrary exactions and tasks, inducing a habit of unhappiness, which often lasts through life; or by crowding too much upon the attention and memory, creates a distaste for knowledge itself, so that the majority of those who pass through the public schools spend their after life in forgetting what they have learned.

6. The Kindergartens, on the other hand, is an effort to find, in a truly scientific sense, the natural order of the mind's development, -teaching to grow by use, to work by working, to see by looking, to do by doing, to think by thinking, to live by living.

In the hands of wise mothers or teachers, the Kindergarten method would gently unfold the child's mind as sunshine unfolds the flower; would lay no artificial foundations, but build on the child's own nature; would find morality and religion in this very process of developement, as fragrance is formed in the flower; and would make character a gradual growth from within, in order and harmony with the whole organizations and laws of the human being.

VIII.-POLITICAL DUTIES.

WE rejoice in the wise word of the present Governor of Pennsylvania, when he tells the people that no written law, however perfect, can secure a good government, unless they are careful in the selection of public officers. Wm. Penn had long before said, that "the worst system in the hands of good men, is better than the best system in the hands of bad men.' In our country, the responsibility for public corruption and mal-administration, rests upon those to whom is confided the privilege and power of voting. To vote unwisely, or not to vote at all, is to be a party to all the mischiefs which wise voting might prevent.

The shameful disorders, recently developed in municipal and national affairs, should bring home to every citizen the fact of "individual liability," the truth that political power is a trust, and that each man is a stockholder in the common weal, invested with duties as well as rights. The waste and plunder of public moneys, the avarice, incompetence, faithlessness and recklessness of many persons in official position, taken together with the low tone of commercial morality, threaten to fix upon the American character dishonesty as a national trait.

We must raise the standard.

We must teach the young, in President Wayland's language, that "it is as wrong to cheat the postoffice as to cheat a friend;" and that he who takes moneys from the public treasury for illegal purposes, or for services not rendered, is the robber of the whole people.

IX.-TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS.

WE renew our testimony in favor of a reform in the treatment of criminals, and in favor of the abolition of capital punishment.

While society has a right to protect itself against bad men, and while jails and prisons are necessary as means of protection, we must never forget that the criminal, however low he may be in the moral and social scale, is a human being; and as such is entitled to such influences as will tend to elevate, rather than further degrade him.

Believing that crime is the result of abnormal development, or a moral disease, we affirm that the prison, while protecting society against contagion, should be not merely a place for retributive punishment, but a reformatory institution where such religious, moral, intellectual and social influences may surround the prisoner, as will tend to make him a man, fit for human society.

We protest against capital punishment as a relic of barbarism, wrong in principle, profitless in practice, and unnecessary as a means of protection to society.

It is wrong in principle, because society has no right to deprive men of privileges which it does not confer, and life is given not like conventional civil rights, by society, but by the Creator.

Punishment should be remedial rather vindictive or retibutive. In practice, history has shown that capital punishment is not remedial that crime has not decreased as a result of the examples made of criminals guilty of capital crimes.

X.-TEMPERANCE.

We would re-affirm, with solemn emphasis, the warning which all history and experience utter against the evils and miseries which flow from the use of poisonous or intoxicating beverages. Vices, like virtues, "grow in clusters." Intemperance, like a fruitful stem, supports and nourishes them all. It not only promotes all that is bad, but hinders all that is good; so that no friend of any human interest can look on it with indifference.

We do not greatly depend on prohibitory laws; nor does it seem likely that they can be of any service, unless sustained by the intelligent, earnest and prevailing conviction of the people. But we

are nearly unanimous in the belief that the traffic in liquors, as drinks, ought to be outlawed; and that it will be, whenever the community shall become awakened to its rights and duties. The pressing need of the times, therefore, is to enlighten and correct public opinion, and so prepare the way for right laws.

But whatever can or cannot be done by legislation, we are sure that much can be accomplished by right example, by true education, by rational agitation, and by consistent influence and testimony. Heads of families should be especially careful, in precept and example, that no temptation be laid in the way of the young, leading them from virtue's path. Mothers, in the desire to gratify those around them, are particularly responsible; as the tempting viands prepared by their hands may be the first incentive to the use of the intoxicating cup.

We would also call attention to another fruitful source of this evil, in the enormous use of the various nostrums known as tonics, and freely recommended by physicians to young women worn out by late hours and dancing, and to young men for various avoidable ills-thereby engendering a taste which in after years becomes overmastering.

XI. PEACE.

We rejoice in the reduction of the army and navy to the lowest possible figure consistent with the police duty of the government; not chiefly as matter of economy, but as favoring the decline of the military spirit and a universal disarmament of the nations:

We record the settlement of vexatious international questions with Great Britian, by a treaty of arbitration, as a triumph of the right principle and an illustration of the right method. The final appeal must be to reason and not to violence; to the intelligent man, and not to the ignorant animal.

The saddest outlook for humanity is in the vast and increasing tanding armies of Euroe-armies which are the ready tools of despotic power, which make war easy and peace difficult, which withdraw millions of men from productive industry and orderly domestic life, and impose crushing burdens on the whole population.

That we join in Kossuth's complaint, "there is not yet a Christian nation." How can there be Christian nations till governments and people accept the supreme wisdom which teaches to " overcome evil with good?" How shall Satan cast out Satan?

XII.-IN MEMORIAM.

PETER WILSON.

AMONG those who took an active part in the organization of our Society, and who, at every step of its progress, was true to its princi

ples and aims, was PETER WILSON. Reared in the Society of Friends, he had a high appreciation of its best elements; but when, according to his conscientious belief, it was untrue to its ancient spirit and testimonies, he did not hesitate to leave it and cast in his lot with a more reformatory association. At the time of our last meeting, deeming himself near the end of his earthly life, he sent us a message of encouragement and affection, with an assurance of his unabated interest in our growth and prosperity. A few days later, he passed away from the scenes of earth to the rewards of the future life, leaving to us the memory of his unswerving devotion to the cause of truth and progress. His last hours were calm and peaceful, and in the pains of death he was cheered by the assured hope of a blissful immortality.

[NOTE.-The following paper, presented by NICHOLAS E. BOYD, was neither adopted nor rejected by the meeting; but the Clerks were directed to print it for information and serious consideration.]

SEXUAL HOLINESS.

To seek, honestly and all the time, to learn the Right; to choose it when revealed, rather than the Pleasurable; to keep to it loyally, at whatever cost of self-denying struggle; and finally, to live it in the perfect love which casts out fear-not as under the law but under grace, not as slaves or hirelings but as sons and daughters of the Most High,-that is Holiness. Such intelligent, cheerful, thorough consecration of our reproductive system, specifically, is Sexual Holi

ness.

"To the pure all things are pure." We see as we are. The opinion or the feeling that there is aught inherently unclean,-necessarily contaminating, about the sexual organism, function and appetite, or the direct contemplation and discourse of them, betrays, in him or her who holds it, a low unworthy conception of the whole matter, a lingering taint of sin and shame,-inherited or self-incurred. "What Infinite Wisdom, Power and Love has created, no man nor woman ought to be ashamed to think of, read of, speak of, learn and teach; and it cannot be that He has so ordered it that knowledge, essential to the well-being of mankind, will sully moral purity."

Procreation-wherein Our Heavenly Father delegates to His human children a measure of the creative Energy,-is a most sacred theme, never to be profaned or lightly treated; no more is it to be ignored or treated as if it were pollution. The beautiful instinct of modesty in a child is not hurt nor lessened by seasonable, reasonable instruction in the most delicate matters; and parents have it in their power to protect their sons and daughters from fearful dangers and temptations, by timely confidence and counsel.

Let none approach the subject in a carnal temper, with an eye to

sensual indulgence, seeking how they may fulfil the lusts of the flesh, -that is debasing and damnable. Let them draw near with teachable mind, purified heart and chastened spirit, asking of the Power above; "What wilt Thou have me to do?"

Instinctive desire, universal and intense, proves beyond a doubt that Man should increase and multiply." We are created male and female, and endowed with that imperious appetite, whose normal satisfaction leads to the conception and birth of offspring, in order that the race may be kept up and bettered. But "the pleasure attached to this function is simply to ensure reproduction,-nothing more," and may never be sought knowingly for its own sake,-never "indulged in," with the Divine sanction. For the frightful maladies which overtake the lewd, the sufferings, bodily and mental, which so surely follow any species of incontinence (social or solitary), are God's clear, solemn warning against sensualism. The animal tendency must be thoroughly subjugated by the higher nature and made strictly subordinate to its providential end; concupiscence must be allowed no voice whatever.

Intercourse not designed to be fruitful is unholy; and children who, when begotten and conceived, are not wished for by both their father and their mother are conceived in sin and begotten in iniquity, -whether in or out of wedlock: for no human usage nor enactment can annul the Eternal Law,-no formula pronounced by magistrate or clergyman, no mutual agreement between partners in a sin, avails to make uncleanness holy.

It is right then to exert the generative function only when children are desired, and rightly desired, i. e. when both man and woman are in good health and spirits and in thorough loving harmony, when conception will probably ensue, and the best qualities of both its parents be embodied in the resultant offspring.

"The right of the child to be invoked by parental love and to be wellborn is the key to human progress." The first duty of husband and wife to-day is to immolate selfish desires on the altar of posterity, dedicating themselves and each other to the coming man, the germinant Ideal of Humanity, "the glory that shall be revealed."

Let man hold his father-power as a sacred trust from Heaven and scorn, to squander vital force in mere debauchery; and let not the appointed mother of the race be degraded into the tool of selfish passion. She who feeds the unfolding germ with her very life-blood, endures the pangs of travail and nurses the babe at her own breast, should be left to decide freely, (without compulsion or entreaty) when she will undertake the holy office of maternity.

We look for the final extinction of "The Social Evil," and its kindred miseries, only through the triumph of the foregoing principles in individual minds and hearts and lives. If American civilization is not to be undermined and to perish in its own corruptions; if posterity is not to become feeble and degenerate, we must arrest the downward tendency by forming habits of self-control and by sup