We have adopted an entirely different philosophy. To us salvation means character, full salvation, a ripened and matured character, the product of a whole life's thinking, choosing, and acting. To us the Sundayschool must foster the development of such a character, and the Sunday-school's work is not completed until that character is completed.

In the light of this principle there must be a somewhat thorough reorganization in many of our Sunday-schools. We must frankly and unhesitatingly adopt the aims and methods of the new education. We must introduce into our Sunday-schools not only a graded system of instruction, but a system so varied in the character of its ethical and religious instruction that each grade will afford just the discipline that the students in that particular grade are prepared by their previous training to receive. Commencing with a well-equipped kindergarten, we must lead, in a systematic and logical way, up to the study of comparative religion, and of the intricate and perplexing problems of ethics and sociology. It is only in the adoption of some such modern curriculum that we can retain our boys and girls in the Sunday-school, and keep them there after they have become men and

women.

I, for one, have never been able to blame very severely the boys and girls who, as they advanced in their teens, have in large numbers dropped out of the Sunday-school. Over and over again, in slavish conformity to the scheme of the International Committee, these children are dragged through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and back again. There is no unity in the method; there is no element of surprise; there is little or nothing to excite curiosity. One series of lessons is taught in all grades. No wonder that it has been next to impossible to to develop adult classes under such a system. I know very little about Unitarian Sunday-schools. Of course, they have not, to any considerable extent, adopted the International Series of lessons. But the series of uniform lessons for all grades that has been in use in certain Unitarian schools, while it has been vastly superior to the International Series, has at least showed this one serious defect: it has required the youngest child to study the same subject

that was presented to the adult class. This is so unphilosophical that any advantages of such a uniform system cannot begin to compensate for the disadvantages of it.

I am afraid that many of our liberal churches continue to cling to the old idea that the Bible is the only book to be studied in our schools, and that what we have to do is to impart certain instruction concerning the Bible rather than to educate boys and girls into trained and developed men and

women.

The task of submitting a modern curriculum for our Sunday-schools was not assigned to me; but I profoundly believe that, until we do adopt a curriculum that approves itself to the best educational thought of our day, the problem of adult classes will remained unsolved. We cannot solve the problem by adding to our course of study for the lower grades some new class in good government or comparative religion or sociology. These adult classes must be organically related to all that comes before. The highest unity must characterize the whole curriculum. The instruction of each higher grade must follow naturally from the instruction of the grade below. We must frankly adopt the educational ideal of the Church, and consider the Sunday-school nothing less than the Church at school, studying the practical problems of ethics and religion. The Church and the school must be made one. Until we do this, we cannot keep our boys and girls in any large numbers in our Sunday-school, we cannot permanently develop any large adult classes.

But there is another reform imperatively demanded before even the best curriculum can be successfully carried out. In order to maintain the efficiency of any grade in our school, from the work of the kindergarten department to the most advanced class that is studying the latest and most engrossing problems of sociology, we must have capable and properly qualified teachers. This is indispensable. The best system must be worked. As I have become acquainted with the ability and training of the average teacher in many Sunday-schools, my wonder has not been that comparatively so little had been achieved, but that so much had been achieved. These teachers were, in the main, earnest and well-meaning people who, at the importunity of superintendent

or pastor, had consented "to take up their cross," as they expressed it, and teach in the Sunday-school. They had little or no time to prepare their lessons, and therefore brought their "lesson helps," into the class. We must have teachers who are teachers, and who will take the time to thoroughly prepare. If we cannot find them among the volunteers, we must go outside, and hire them at a stated salary. If we cannot secure many, we must for the present be contented with larger classes and fewer teachers. If we make our schools actual schools, employing the best modern methods in the modern spirit, teaching living truths, our churches will support the schools. The teachers will be forthcoming.

Why, my friends, in the most of our schools we have been simply trifling with this matter. We have hardly begun to take hold of it in earnest. We have hardly begun to seriously grapple with the problem of ethical and religious education.

We are now considering absolutely the most important question that could possibly come before us, the question of the education of the most exalted powers of man. Consider for one moment the time and money that have been expended in improving the methods of our common-school education! In them we have attained a fairly high degree of efficiency, and improv ments are continually being made.

In our common schools, however, there is no thorough-going and systematic moral training. This training, if it is to be received at all, must be received at the home and the church school. How little of such training is received at the home we are all too often painfully conscious. And in our church school we have by no means kept abreast of the modern methods in the public schools.

I believe that we are becoming aroused to the supreme importance of this work at last; and in this fact there is great ground for encouragement. An important step toward the healing of a mischievous disease has been taken when the disease has been properly diagnosed. At last we have been able to diagnose the disease of our system of ethical and religious training. Let us now begin to apply the remedy concerning the effectiveness of which all modern educational reformers are agreed.

In regard to the particular methods to be employed in adult classes, they will naturally vary with the character of the subjectmatter to be taught and the general attainments of the members of the class. From a somewhat wide experience, I have come to believe that, on the whole, the best results are to be secured by the method of the lecture and the quiz.

I am afraid that some of you will think that my consideration of this question has been too general, and has not been as closely confined as it might have been to the particular problem assigned me. My only answer is that I could not treat it in any other way. I have tried to show that the problem of the adult class is the problem of the school; that we must carefully prepare for the adult class in the lower grades of the school; that we must work to a plan that amid all variety is characterized by the highest unity, and that we cannot expect to develop any permanently successful adult classes by adding them on artificially to the regular curriculum with which they are not vitally connected; that our idea of the Sunday-school must broaden until it becomes the idea of the church at school; and that, finally, no matter how excellent our system may be, capable and well-trained teachers are absolutely indispensable for its successful working. If we cannot put into active operation the entire plan all at once, let us try as much of it as we can. If we can secure but few properly qualified teachers, let us be content for the present with fewer classes, even if they are overcrowded. As fast as we discover the right teacher, we can set him or her to work in the proper place, and thus gradually bring into successful operation our entire scheme.

THE SUPERNATURAL.

BY MARTHA P. LOWE.

Not long ago our attention was directed to an article which appeared in a French Liberal Protestant paper at Paris, in which the writer averred that there was a great change going on in their branch of the French Church.

In 1866 he says that there was hardly a person to be found who acknowledged any belief in the so-called supernatural.

But the tide had turned: young men were studying into these questions with more fairness and a deeper interest. It looked as though in the course of a few years there could be a change of base throughout the whole branch of the Church.

This wave of absolute rejection of the supernatural has in the mean time reached the Protestants of this country; and among some ministers it amounts to a sort of dogmatism that will not allow that a Unitarian who believes in the supernatural could be anything but a simpleton, or, at least, an oldfashioned conservative, knowing nothing of the critical study of the Bible. Dr. Allen, in his interesting and sympathetic address published some time ago in the Christian Register, speaks touchingly of the sadness of Prof. Norton and Henry Ware and others of the older men who saw the drift of the young minister. Now, if these older men made a person's belief in the miracles a test of his being a Christian, they were truly behind their age. But we have never yet heard that they did, although there were undoubtedly some good Unitarians at that time who did believe so. The young men at this period, full of the new wine of thought, were perhaps a little hasty in their discoveries, and shocked the devout emotions of these venerated professors in a way that perhaps they could not do to-day.

We are not of those who believe that the older Unitarianism is wholly superior to the new, or who desire to restore our denomination to the position it occupied at the time of the secession from the orthodox church. We cannot go back upon the past and accept its standpoint. But we can gather up valuable fragments which may have been dropped. The early Unitarians did not probably believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. But they kept up a war of words with proof-texts, which had often to be stretched a good deal out of their original meaning. When Dr. George E. Ellis made the declaration some years ago that "the Bible was an orthodox book," we were all astonished, and resented the statement; but we at length came to the conclusion that he was correct, in this sense, that it is an orthodox book, and also a Unitarian book. It is consistent in this one respect: that, although containing a thousand human opinions, it stands unalterably for virtue

and holiness. We no longer try to reconcile errors or discrepancies even in the New Testament. If Jesus is represented as saying things that are thoroughly inconsistent with our well-conceived ideas of his character, we simply say we do not believe he ever said them.

There are, however, wonders, sublime events, connected with the ministry of Jesus, which cannot be easily set aside. If we literally refuse to believe anything that does not suit itself exactly to our physical senses, we become doctrinaires in our Christianity, and rob the Gospels of their greatest scenes and the personality of Jesus of its august power. Everything, says the rationalist, "must be brought under the domain of science," cold reason, but not the higher reason of Coleridge as distinct from the understanding.

This attitude of a growing portion of our denomination keeps us from cordial union with the liberal orthodox, and weakens our hold upon young and emotional natures.

What is our belief in God but a supernatural act? We cannot see him nor touch him nor hear him, and yet he is firm in the consciousness of the religious mind. Can we afford to strike out of the Gospels the narrations of the transfiguration, the resurrection, and the ascension, without crippling them sorely of their power over men?

If it is our duty to do it, God forbid that we should be so cowardly as to refuse to recognize the truth, in order to spare our own and others' feelings! We have already proved, as a denomination, that we are not unwilling to face the truth, and lose such tremendous agencies as the orthodox atonement, conversion, and everlasting punishment. But we are not called upon by reason or duty to give up everything that the old church held dear. Creeds are of man's making; but these sublime events are of God's making. They are between God and man, and well attested by Christian history in some form that suits itself to our spiritual perception. If we cannot take satisfaction in them, let us at least avoid flippant words or extreme negations, and consider them at least as open questions. This is the course of the highest Christian philosophy, which lays down no laws, but reverently watches the revelations of God's spirit in man.

Why should the beautiful story of the transfiguration be wiped away by an overconscientious preacher, in his address to children, by the remark, "You know that none of us really believe this story is true"? Supposing we do not believe that Moses and Elias appeared bodily before the disciples: they may have appeared to the higher spiritual vision of Jesus. No "Spiritualist" would have any difficulty in believing this; and "Spiritualism," in its crudest forms, will grow at the expense of our Christian Church, if we maintain such a literal attitude in regard to invisible realities. Supposing even that we cannot believe in any actual phenomena, can we fail to see, that glorified face of Jesus which the disciples have painted and the world has remembered for ages? Shall we not show these scenes anew to our children, to beautify and strengthen their faith and impress them with that picture of communion with the Highest which affects men more than any arguments for the unseen?

The resurrection ! What a flood of memories throng the spirit as the images rise before us of those who have found exceeding comfort in the thought that Jesus showed himself to his friends, and gave the whole world new hope for its dead! What is Easter Sunday without the risen Jesus? And yet many of our churches are loaded with flowers, filled with people listening to Easter anthems, and hearing only about the summer solstice, the awakening of spring, the chrysalis and other beautiful intimations of immortality, when we have in our possession the divinest sayings of one who spake as never man spake of his Father's mansions above, and sealed his words by a last expression of earthly love, overcoming by his great spiritual power the veil of matter to see once more his beloved before he could rest in the Eternal Country. There again our preachers can be true to their convictions. They can say that they doubt the bodily resurrection of Jesus. But all the facts of the gospel history prove that he appeared in some form to his disciples and friends, and brought comfort to them and the whole world. The preacher should speak of Jesus, not merely as a great figure in the past, but as risen immortal to do greater service for earth and heaven. Thus we shall save our Easter,

which is in great danger of being lost in the verifications of science and intellectual speculations on immortality. We respect the conscientiousness, but cannot enjoy the bare literalness, that would rob our Church of all those sacred scenes in the past which may be repeated to-day, as they are the expression of the highest aspirations of our being. Let us, at least, if we cannot agree in our speculations, make these historic days warm with the presence of Jesus.

After the resurrection comes the ascension. Would we banish from our Church calendar this day, which comes at the opening of summer? Why need we perplex our minds with the impossibility of the ascent of Jesus up to the zenith? Ascension means, in our usage, an entrance upon the life eternal. We speak of the ascension of our friends. If the spiritual form of Jesus, as we believe, appeared to his disciples and friends, was it not in keeping that he should melt away upon the air on the hills of Bethany when his last words were said? Such is our idea of the ascension,-a vanishing away of an ethereal form, like unto the earthly body, which had spiritual power to make the apostles know their Master, and after visits of rare intervals passed away into the realms of the unseen world.

What a mistaken idea it is in regard to the gospel miracles that we must believe all or nothing! It belongs to the Roman Catholic and the Anglican, but is unworthy of any true religious philosophy, unworthy of the Unitarian. Man is not an embodiment of material facts, but an emotional being, who cannot be fed merely on moral truths: he must have the quickening influences of those revelations which come to chosen souls, not only in solitude, but before men, as in Jesus, and stamp upon the material world the impress of the spiritual.

We do not believe that the theism of the Old Testament nor the Christianity of the New was forced upon the world from without, by an unnatural divine revelation from heaven; but we do believe that the great personalities in both, in spite of their human imperfections, were full of inspiration, and that their work was attended with manifestations that transcended ordinary phenomena. Most of all was this the case with Jesus, who, to our minds, did not perform his great works to attest the

truth of his doctrines, but because he could not help it. He was full of so much spiritual force that the power of love impelled him to do what his disciples or humanity needed. Whenever this divine necessity was not upon him, we doubt the authenticity of the miracles attributed to him.

These thoughts which we have imperfectly developed are not new to Unitarians, min. isters and people. But we need to have these scenes repeated as the old Church repeated them on holy days. How beautiful in modern times have been the pastoral scenes on the pages of fiction depicted among the parsonages of the German Lutheran Church by Jean Paul Richter, Heinrich Zschokke, and many others! They are a great help to young and old. They sweeten and dignify our lives, and in no way impair that search after truth which is the distinguishing feature of our denomination.

THE PROBLEM OF LUXURY.

BY JAMES T. BIXBY, PH.D.

Is luxury censurable or commendable? From the earliest times this has been one of the vexed questions. Alike in the pages of the Bible, in the ethical disquisitions of Greece and Rome, and in the political economies of the nineteenth century we find the most opposite views urged; and urged, too, with the greatest earnestness.

Is luxury a thing to be condemned or approved by a conscientious man, who keeps in view his obligations to the general welfare? At the threshold of this inquiry we are met by a further question that demands precedence: What is luxury? For the slightest attention to the opposing arguments shows us that the difference in judgment on this question usually runs back to a different definition of the subject under dispute. One means by it wanton waste and ostentatious extravagance, and naturally can find no phrase too severe for it. Another warmly defends it as an essential of civilization itself, because he means by luxury everything beyond the necessaries of existence.

Now, if one should adopt this latter definition, and interpret strictly the term "necessaries of life," then he would have to admit that the poorest laborer amongst

us is indulging daily in manifold luxuries. Condemn humanity simply to that which is needful to keep soul and body together, and our race must return to a condition below even that of the savage. For there is no race of savages, even, that does not treat itself to more or less ornamentation of the person, and such finery of clothing, nose rings, and bracelets, as they can procure. Sir Walter Scott tells a good story of some Highlanders sleeping out doors on a moor one winter's night. One of the men rolled up a snowball for a pillow, but his comrade kicked it away with disgust as culpable luxury.

This illustrates how relative a conception always the conception of luxury is. It varies with men's habits, station in life, and personal taste. To the bibliomaniac it seems wicked waste to spend large sums on fast horses, but quite sensible to lavish any sum on rare books or engravings. To the horse-fancier, foolish extravagance is thought to lie in what is spent on morocco and wide margins, and good sense in the fine equipment of the stable. The morceau you have no taste for is to you always a culpable luxury.

Again, the idea of luxury varies with a man's social position and income. To the man who is working for two or three dollars a day, the thousands of dollars sunk in wine and flowers at a millionaire's banquet seems unjustifiable extravagance. Yet in proportion to the rich man's income this may not be nearly as large a bill to him as the laborer's weekly spree is to the latter.

Or suppose we take the utilitarian test, and say everything that is not strictly needed and useful shall be condemned. Again, how relative is the test, What is "necessary"? What is "not useful?" If the opera, the picture gallery, and the multitudinous ornaments of life are thus to be judged culpable luxuries, all the beauty and grace and comforts of life to the refined must be swept out of this reformed world. Pictures, indeed, do not clothe a man nor music and flowers feed our race. None of the comforts of a modern home or the amenities of civilization are indispensable to keeping the breath of life in our flesh. In a strict sense they are superfluities. But to the sensitive, æsthetic nerves of to-day, life is not worth living without them. And we