much that it may be saved, as it does to love the holiness which saves; it turns towards the good which it sees, and conforms itself to the divine realities, for they, and not self, are the object pursued.

Deep is that utterance of the poet, deeper than any mere pesonal interpretation would make it,

"Let those who are in favor with their stars
Of public honor and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlooked for, joy in that I honor most.
Great princes' favorites their fair leaves spread
But as the marigold at the sun's eye;
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior, famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories, once foil'd,
Is from the book of honor rased quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd;
Then happy I, that love and am belov'd

Where I may not remove or be remov'd."

The supreme fidelity of the soul to goodness, to truth, to justice, to right, to what is eternally pure and lovely, is the permanent, the enduring, the satisfying blessing. All that we haste to make our own with greedy clutch passes away like the moon's shadow upon the rippling water-drops in the sea; but the loves of the faithful soul are eternal as He in whom they centre and from whom they spring, the Source of all blessing

"I AM often tempted to wish there was not another religious book in the world except the Bible; and then there would, I believe, be far less difference of opinion, and more simplicity of feeling. Were Christ himself the model of life, and his precepts the standard of opinion, many, who are by the errors and ill judgment of even his faithful followers led astray, would be filled more with that spirit of love and peace which marks his character."— Mrs. A. W. Hare.

LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS.*

BY A. D. MAYO.

I HAVE been notified to appear before this Conference with an essay that may furnish a fit theme for a forenoon's discussion. I know of no topic more worthy to be considered by this body than the condition of organized Christian religion in the part of Massachusetts covered by our operations. I invite your attention to some remarks on Liberal Christianity in Western Massachusetts.

By "Liberal Christianity" I mean religion as set forth in the teaching and illustrated by the entire personality of Jesus Christ; interpreted in independence of infallible human creeds, by the highest faculties and the noblest experience of religious men and the religious history of the world. I believe the religion of Jesus Christ demands this genuine freedom in its investigation, and only they who use their highest reasonable and religious faculties in the study of it can expect to understand the Saviour and his divine Gospel of Love.

as a mere

On the contrary, I regard a great deal of so-called "liberalism," the whole style of thinking which begins by repudiating the religious nature of man and the great primal faiths implanted in all souls by the Creator, as a caricature of religious freedom. This method of speculation begins with a mutilation of human nature; goes on from step to step in partial, narrow, and most intolerant ways; and ends with atheism, materialism, or boundless skepticism. Of this habit of mind there is an abundant supply in the region included by this Conference, as in all parts of Christendom.

One of its most fruitful sources is the unreasonable and immoral theologies and the despotic ecclesiastisms that still

*An Essay read before the Unitarian Local Conference, at Chicopee, Mass, June 11, 1873.

oppress the Christian world. These forms of unbelief abound most in countries where this perversion of Christianity has been the most violent and protracted; as in the so-called Catholic countries of Europe and the Protestant empires dominated by State Churches. There was enough in the theology and ecclesiasticism of the Western Massachusetts of even half a century ago to explain a great deal of the indifference, skepticism, or hostility to religion that now appear in this region. Superficial, philosophical, and scientific theories of nature and man have also confused or destroyed the spiritual beliefs of considerable numbers of people among And even a larger number have been swamped in the deluge of material prosperity and industrial excitement that has swept over this valley of the Connecticut during the last ten years.

us.

But for this skepticism and secularism Liberal Christianity is not responsible. It is found in connection with all the denominations, and only appears more openly in the Liberal Churches because they encourage peculiar honesty and openness in dealing with such matters. Indeed, it would not be difficult to show that Liberal Christianity in its largest sense, as I shall use the term, is the only power that can now be relied on to check this alarming current of unbelief and indifference; has arrested it in many notable cases; and may be relied upon to do so even more in the future.

Perhaps no community was ever more thoroughly under the influence of the old Congregational Calvinism of the Puritans than Western Massachusettts, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. Only a few protests had been heard against its stern dogmas and discipline, by clergy or laity, and they were suppressed in summary style. The war of the Revolution was a mighty emancipator of the religious life of the Northern States, in its way as powerful as the late war of the Rebellion. It left the people of New England especially, full of a vague unrest, open to inquiry; and also brought them in contact with the skepticism that went before the French Revolution. The numberless controversies of the New England Congregational divines, and the more

powerful influence of liberal ideas among the people, during the following half century, need not be referred to now. Enough to say, that soon after the war of 1812 this religious. agitation gathered force in Massachusetts, and as early as 1820 a considerable number of Congregational churches, of the western counties, were ready to be pushed outside the fellowship of the main body.

In 1819, a portion of the First Church of Springfield. demanded a separation, to form a society in which a larger religious liberty could be freely enjoyed. Being refused, they established what is now the Church of the Unity, or Third Congregational Society, the largest of the Unitarian parishes west of Worcester, in New England.

This movement was most powerful in Franklin County, where no less than ten of the old churches, with their clergy, were thus separated. Indeed the region adjacent to this County, on the north, in New Hampshire and Vermont, was very early characterized by independence in religion. The most distinguished native apostle of American Universalism came from this region, and the "Winchester Confession" is still the platform of this growing denomination. We can remember the time when Unitarianism, of the original Channing type," was the most powerful influence in a large. part of Franklin County, and thirty years ago the Unitarian body, out of Greenfield and Springfield, was relatively more influential than to-day. The Universalists in some places have taken the place of these old Unitarian parishes, and in others added a second church to the liberal body in a community. But, in general, it may be said that in the whole region of Western Massachusetts, including the four counties of Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, and Berkshire, the united churches of these two denominations, to-day, do not relatively represent so large a religious influence as a generation ago.

What are the causes of the "arrested development" of these forms of Liberal Christianity? Does the fact indicate that the cause of Liberal Christianity has failed in this interesting region? If not, to what must we ascribe, at once, the small outward denominational success of Unitarianism and

Universalism, and the decided triumph of a more liberal form of Christianity than the original Calvinistic Congregationalism of the valley of the Connecticut?

To understand this we must recall the original type of the Unitarianism of Western Massachusetts. It is evident, at first sight, that the entire movement which threw up the dozen original Unitarian churches of this region was far less. a controversial, and more essentially a Christian movement, than in Eastern Massachusetts. We must remember that sixty years ago the valley of the Connecticut was practically as far from Boston as the valley of the Mississippi to-day.

It was a two days' journey for young Peabody when he came to Springfield to take the pastorship of the new church. in 1820. He speaks of it as "a frontier post," and says he preached eighteen months without an exchange. The Franklin County churches were even less accessible. These churches had all come out of the old Calvinism of the country by a very gradual process; their clergy, who were in a large sense the public men of the county, being the ministers and moral and social teachers in the towns in which they lived. They wisely guided and held the people together; and, although an occasional crossing of swords occurred, especially in the earlier stages of the movement, yet they mainly acted on the defensive in theological matters. They only demanded larger freedom to think and act in church affairs. Peabody declares that he deliberately chose the policy of preaching Christianity in a broad and direct way, leaving the people to emerge gradually from their old beliefs in the genial atmosphere of a Christian experience. All our early recollections of the Unitarianism of these churches, thirty-five years ago, remind us that the preaching of the Unitarian ministers was essentially "evangelical" in its type, devout and reverent in its dealing with the Scriptures; even startled at the outspoken doctrine of Universal Salvation, by the few Universalist preachers, who worried them even more than the radical clergy worry their opponents now.

These old churches never departed, under this ministry, from the evangelical cultus. Their type of polity, their way