back to our old wonder. Reason throws its rays deep into the night of mystery; but there will probably always be a large twilight territory where trust alone must lead the way.

We sometimes crave the exact and certain, and grow fretful because it is denied us. We would gladly know what is to be the outcome of that upon which we have staked everything. Is not nature dealing unkindly and treacherously with us in thus enticing us with promises, and yet always hiding their fulfill ment in the dark? Yet is it not better so? Suppose that all of the coming days lay plain before us, like a landscape at noon; suppose the gift of foreknowledge instead of hope had been preserved when Pandora permitted all the other gifts to fly away, and it had been conferred upon mortals: suppose we had known, years ago, everything that was to befall us and those whom we love-who could have confronted existence? It is better that we should be surprised and startled by the unexpected, rather than that we be compelled to march through all the years toward sad, heart-breaking events, while they were in plain view. If we knew just how many days would complete our life, or the life of our friends, what a paralysis would fall upon every heart. If we knew just what hopes would be realized and what plans would succeed the spring of endeavor would be broken. It is better that many purposes should fail, that great hopes should turn to nothing, that hearts should be broken, yet receive with all these sad mishaps the deep moral experiences and the acquaintance of the real method of Providence which in variably accompany them.

Analogous to the loss which life would sustain in its discipline, if it were reduced to the exact, would be the deprivation of much of that which gives it such thrilling interest. Out of the uncertain has come whatsoever beautifies existence. To reduce everything to definable limits would be to rob the soul of much of its delight. There is something native to the soul which finds its expression, not in terms of mathematics, but in the in

exact and flowing-in music, in poetry, in moonlight falling upon ruins, in the woods lying over against the sky with their solemn aisles and lofty arches, in the vast moaning sea. To banish this would bereave life. Parting from all its lovely and mysterious haunts, the soul would be as sad as was Boabdil and his unhappy companions, when, at break of day, they filed through the gates of the Alhambra and turned their backs upon the scene of their former delight, forever. With everything defined and clearly understood, poetry would fade out of literature, as flowers at the approach of winter. There would be no psalm of trust, no hymn suggesting the measureless flight of the soul toward the Perfect. In architecture no temple would be seen. In all of speech no prayer would be heard. The home would be a mere place of shelter. The word God would disappear. The grave would be only a dark opening in the ground around which no tears need fall and on which no flowers need be strewn.

In history who are the central figures? Not they who have lived only in the known and established. No; they are those who have plunged into the darkness and have defied the unknown. All through history there is a line of noble souls who have obeyed marching orders without knowing where they were going, and have not stipulated for any guide or chart; who made no stingy bargain with Providence for their own safety, but who moved grandly forward into the darkness, permitting each forward step to be a sufficient reason for another, trusting the Power which gave the order to find the way and make the end justify the journey. Uncertainty is the mother of heroes.

Consulting a common experience does not weaken the case. "None mount so high as those who know not whither they go." Have not our best endeavors and our richest experience come when we were following a path part of the time running through the light and then through the darkness? Bravery is only possible where defeat is possible. If there is fidelity, it implies a risk of unfaithfulness. If we stand by a friend

in time of trouble, it is because he is in dangerous territory, and we wish to place him on the sheltered side. What ever depth there may be to our love, or constancy in our devotion, or helpfulness in our presence,-whatever it is that makes our friends want us beside them in their hour of trial and sorrow, it has all come to us from our own trials and battles in the darkness with unseen foes. The lines drawn upon the face and the deep look in the eye reveal what a soul has passed through. It is the background of experience touching the foreground of possibility which gives such vivid meaning to every life and makes man never weary of doing and daring. It is the concealed plot with a catastrophe ready to fall every moment -every drama threatening to lift the curtain upon a tragedy in the last actwhich keeps us always at highest tension. Why is it that every time we look upon a group of children at play, or on their way to school, that, after the first feeling of gladness at sight of their fair young faces has faded, there comes a tender, half-sad mood, and afterward when we meet our own children we give them a kinder greeting? It is because we know that the coming days will steal some of this joy out of their lives and that their hearts must be broken so many times before the final breaking,when all the strings of the marvelous life-harp, having made so much sad music through the years, will suddenly snap in twain and will never more make music, sad or glad, on earth. How gladly we would spare them all surprise and disappointment, is the first emotion. Deeper thought tells us that they too must be strengthened by trial as we have been; and every high aspiration and noble venture will come out of the darkness, and must be paid for by throbs of pain and pangs of sorrow. "They lay their corner-stones in dark

Deep waters, who upbuild in beauty On earth's old heart their triumph-arc, That crowns with glory lives of duty. "And heart-strings sweetest music make When swept by suffering's fiery fingers; And through soul-shadows starriest break The glories on God's brave light bringers."

The practical inference lies upon the surface, and is as old as religion. It is a lesson of trust. In all our experience no hour has arrived for which the soul was not equal. The future is concealed; but we are assured that it will be worthy of the past. Life is a mystery; but there is enough to warrant the trust that it contains within its deepest folds the good of the race. Our best actions are all approved, and seem to fulfill even a higher use than we had designed. A kind and wise purpose seems to be involved in the plan of affairs; and, although we have not been able to see by what we have been led hither, yet we are confident that we have not come without guidance. Even when, the uncertainty was greatest, now we know we were not friendless nor forsaken, but were escorted by an invisible leader. Under such guidance we are willing to face the unknown future,-face it however much uncertainty, however much wandering through unfamiliar scenes it may hold in store for us, and though it contains that greatest of all surprises called Death. Surely He who has led us through so many nights will not forsake us when the great darkness is settling around us.

"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom

Lead Thou me on.

The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead Thou me on.

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene,-one step enough for me.

"So long Thy power has blessed me, sure it still

Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent till The night is gone,

And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile."

OUR HYMN-BOOK.

It seems to me that our people both sing and pray a great deal better than they did twenty years ago. One thing greatly aiding in this is the admirable collection of hymns and tunes given us in the new edition of the A. U. A. HymnBook in 1877.

But that new edition was prepared

now near twelve years ago, and it is high time to begin the making of one which shall be as much better than that as that is better than its predecessor. I say "begin the making," for I think ten years should now be devoted to the preparation of a book to be published about 1900; and I think a thousand

observers should, for ten or twelve years

to come, contribute to the work.

This means, of course, only that I think such a book should grow out of the experiences and needs of our people in our churches and in our homes. To secure the results of such experiments and to gather the manna day by day, I think all who use our hymn-book should be on the watch to note omissions and to suggest additions or amendments. Errors are not numerous in the present book; but there are a few, as in the Index of Authors, that charming hymn, No. 314, slips in both under Hosmer and with the hymns of that most sweetvoiced of all our living singers, Samuel Longfellow. More perilous blunders may creep in. Just before this edition was first struck, I stumbled upon the fact that the new plate made the Doxology read, "Till suns shall set and rise no more!" All who use the book should record any inaccuracies they see, though we cannot hope to make the work as correct as that of an Oxford bible whose publishers offer a guinea apiece for any errors found in the text.

It would be dangerous ground, were the officers of the A. U. A. to invite suggestions as to various readings; and the ice would indeed be thin if our dogma preferences were urged or allowed to crowd themselves into view. But there is a certain demand or necessity for judicious hymn-tinkering, much as we dislike it. For instance, in hymn 423, I dislike to read

"Heir of Jesus, hush thy fear." But the scripture phrase, heir with Jesus, if it betters the sense weakens the sound, and I very much love the hymn just as it is.

Not so with those first lines,
"Jews were wrought to cruel madness;
Christians fled in fear and sadness."

That seems to me the worst opening in the whole collection. There were no Christians then, and Jesus was as loyal a Jew as any of those that assailed him. How much better would that opening read, did it stand:

Foes were wrought to cruel madness;
Friends had fled in fear and sadness.

We shall agree that gibes at Jews or at any others should be wholly stricken out from our book.

And that leads to the suggestion that this is our book. It is only because of that that I presume thus to write at all. One of the best results of publishing it is the uniting of our people. Since the conflicts of twenty years ago, we have drawn together, pulled together, and grown together. It seems to me the signs of yet greater union, of growing peace, of increased usefulness and influence were never so good before as they are to-day. And our hymn-book sets forth as nothing else does our method and our ground of union. We organize upon attractions rather than upon repulsions, and upon affections more than upon convictions. Indeed, the attempt to secure absolute unity in thought in a hymn-book must of necessity produce dissatisfaction among our people, since thus many could not be represented. We are of different minds about many things in our theological beliefs; why should our hymnal attempt to give the false impression that we are all of one mind? We may have something better than absolute agreement in beliefs: we may have a frank and generous willingness to let all believe as they must, to respect them in so believing, and to allow them the same right to a representation of their beliefs in our hymnal that we claim for ourselves. We manifest an undue timidity in not being willing to set forth the sharp contrasts in our people's opinions and in their modes of phrasing the expression of either harmonious or antagonistic con victions. It takes away much that is picturesque and more that is instructive and encouraging to try thus to make our hymnal self-consistent. It makes it lack something of truth. It makes it

It is one of our greatest gains in the past twenty years that we have shaken off so much of our respectability and propriety. I believe our Liberal Christianity, even Unitarianism, is coming to be.

"A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food."

It

But it must not be kept in stays. must be free to grow. Hostile manners make a more severe demand on Christian charity than do warring dogmas. And it is manners, not dogmas, that qualify hymns to enter our denominational book. All the grand hymns of the church, all made såcred by the use of generations of devout spirits, if they still serve the need of any considerable number of our people, should be found there. Any man who will may let them alone. He does not endorse them by reading some other hymn out of that book. The great songs of the church must not be left out because some man hates them or their teaching. If any dozen faithful spirits love them or wish sometimes to use them, they must go in. That collection must be in no way the voice of a clique. It must crystallize about our attractions, not our antipathies. And the comprehensiveness, as well as the true charity, of our Unitarianism will appear in the inconsistency of our collected hymns.

Evolution to-day is putting a grander meaning into all the great words of the church, and it is all a mistake and a source of weakness timidly to lay those words aside through fear of being misunderstood. No man ever yet did anything worth the doing who was not misunderstood; and any Liberal preacher who is not often misunderstood in these

living days may be sure that he is not doing all his duty. It is a duty to-day so to speak that we are sure to be misunderstood-by some men.

The church is grandly remaking its vocabulary. Salvation and redemption have come to be its very catch-words. Evolution is giving us a new salvation and

in this, and should help it on with all our might. And we should not suppose our fellow-laborers to think so badly of us, of our sense or of our truth, as to dream that we are timidly shrinking from the light or fearing to face the issues of to-day, when we exalt the cross of Christ as our symbol, and sum up our highest aspirations in our endeavor to save the souls of men from hell. If hell is right here and now, and not alone beyond the grave, it is none the less a terrible reality, confronting the wealth and pride of this grand land of

ours.

What I suggest, then, as to our common hymn-book is this:

I. Let a hundred hymns be omitted from the present collection because of mediocrity, ascertaining by ballot those which our people are sure never to use.

II. Insert one or two hundred hymns, no matter how unwelcome some of them would be to some of our people, these hymns being those chosen, during ten years to come, by the deliberate judgment of our men and women who are alive and at work to-day.

III. Let the severest good taste exclude any hymn whose form or sentiment is unworthy; but let dogma bar out no hymn that earnest workers wish to use.

cord in their books all those fleeting IV. Let all our workers carefully re

suggestions, that are so easily lost, as to omissions or amendments, as to new hymns or tunes; and let each be invited to report thereon after a faithful observation and study covering several

years.

Our denominational life was never more vigorously growing or more significantly changing. Let it grow, let it change, let it adapt itself to our land's great need and to our great opportunity. And let our hymn-book show the life and thought, the hope and purpose of our people, not as they used to be, but as they find themselves to be at the close of the nineteenth century.

Cambridge, Mass.

HENRY C. BADGER.

AND MORAL FOUNDATIONS.

Universalism is a positive Christian doctrine, affirming the final salvation of every human soul from sin, and the universal victory of good over evil.

This doctrine is distinctly revealed in the Christian Scriptures, and confirmed by the intellectual and moral judgment of man.

The central truth of the Bible is, "there is one God, whose nature is love." And it is in the light of this truth that all Scripture must be interpreted. The law of interpretation requires that individual passages be conformed to the nature of God, rather than that the nature of God be transformed to fit a passage. The whole spirit of Biblical revelation is to show the existence, character, will, purpose and method of God as universally consistent, and this spirit may be indicated in the following quotations:

"There is one God."-I Tim. ii, 5. The character of this God is thus defined:

"God is love."-I John iv, 8.

From this character springs his will: "God will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."-I Tim. ii, 4.

Which will, it is his purpose to carry

out:

Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Phil. ii, 9, 10, 11.

And the Apostles, filled with the spirit of the Lord, prophesy the final consummation of good:

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: and they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest, for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."-Heb. viii, 10-12.

"Every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, blessing and honor, and glory, and power be unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever."Rev. v, 13.

"And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."-Rev. xxi, 2-4.

"And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all."--I Cor. xv, 28.

It is not presumed that these few passages will establish beyond question so important a doctrine; they are only quoted as examples indicating the trend. of the Scriptures.

Other passages in the English Bible, taken by themselves, may seem to point