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press), 'Golgotha' (place of a skull), 'Aceldama' (the field of blood). It may as well be explained that the final syllable of most of these names, a, is a distinctively Syriac termination. The words 'mammon' (Matt. vi. 24) and 'raca' (Matt. v. 22) and ‘abba' are Syriac also."

Some very helpful readings are given in this Syriac version, which throw a good deal of light upon doubtful passages; for instance:

"Matt. viii. 22: 'But Jesus said unto him, Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.' Four of the Syriac versions, to wit, the Sinai palimpsest, the Peshito, the Palestinian Syriac, and the Philoxenian, have, 'Let the buriers [i.e., grave-diggers] bury their dead.' Dr. Meyer suggests that our Lord's meaning may have been, 'Care not thou about the mortal part of thy fathera grave-digger will be found for that; but preach thou the kingdom of God: it is coming soon, and it suffers no delay.'

"A suggestion about this very difficult passage is worth noting, by whom made we cannot tell. It is that the phrase 'bury my father' simply meant that the young man wished, like other Jews, to live at home until his father died, and that there was no question about the latter's impending dissolution; that, in fact, he was using a common Jewish idiom."

Sunday-school Books.

WE publish on another page a list of books recommended by the Ladies' Commission as suitable for Sunday-school libraries. The need of such recommendation is apparent, it is an arduous task to wade through the hundreds of new juvenile books to find the few good ones.

We need a much higher, stronger standard of literary value than has usually been used in selecting books for the Sundayschool. In a capital article in December Scribner's, Mrs. Repplier charges the Sunday-school library with cultivating "Little Pharisees," and we heartily agree with her. We quote:

"There is no reason why the literature of the Sunday-school, since it represents an important element in modern book-making, should be uniformly and consistently bad. There is no reason why all the children who figure in its pages should be such impossi

ble little prigs; or why all parents should be either incredibly foolish and worldlyminded, or so inflexibly serious that they never open their lips without preaching. There is no reason why people, because they are virtuous or repentant, should converse in stilted and unnatural language. A contrite burglar in one of these edifying stories confesses poetically, 'My sins are more numerous than the hairs of my head or the sands of the seashore'-which was probably true, but not precisely the way in which the Bill Sykeses of real life are wont to acknowledge the fact. In another tale, an English one this time, a little girl named Helen rashly asks her father for some trifling information. He gives it with the usual grandiloquence, and then adds, by way of commendation: 'Many children are so foolish as to be ashamed to let those they converse with discover that they do not comprehend everything that is said to them, by which means they often imbibe erroneous ideas, and perhaps remain in ignorance on many essential subjects, when by questioning their friends they might easily have obtained correct and useful knowledge.' If Helen ever ventured. on another query after that, she deserved her fate."

THE sense of close companionship between man and man, of personal helpfulness so practically emphasized among the various secret orders is not made as much of by the Church as it might be. Rev. W. H. Drummond in a paper in the Inquirer entitled. "The Church as a Brotherhood" says:

Church Brotherhood.

"Christianity, to many of us, is simply a form of personal belief, of personal life. But that is only one side of the truth. Christianity is also a divine method of attaining to this personal belief, of cultivating this personal life. This method is through the membership of a living society; and without the influences of its common life, the discipline of its common needs, and the witness of its common experience, there can be no such thing as a fully developed Christianity. Membership of the Church is not, accordingly, to be treated as one of the subordinate aids to faith. It is one of the essential influences in Christian character. It is not a question of one individual joining a number of other individuals. It is the individual life yielding to the claims and in

spiration of a divine society. In other words, we realize our life through solitary communion with God,—yes, truly; through the teaching of the preacher speaking to us as individual men,—yes, that, too; but also, and in no small degree, through membership of a brotherhood of the Holy Spirit. It is the great fact expressed in the parable of the vine and the branches,-'Abide in me, and I in you.""

Demand for Preachers.

NO ONE is in a better position to really know of what he speaks than the Secretary of the American Unitarian Association when he tells of the need for preachers. Meadville ought to leap for joy when it is learned what a demand exists for great preachers. Let the professors and students read together Mr. Batchelor's glowing description of the sort of men it is expected will occupy the pulpit of the future. We quote the closing paragraph from "The Infection of Pessimism," an article in the December number of the New World :

"The American church needs immediately and would accept with enthusiasm a new supply of great preachers; men who know what perpetual forces are and can reveal them; men who can administer charities without forgetting that they are the temporary patchwork of civilization; men who can lead reforms as they administer antitoxin; men who can preside over an everyday church without putting one-seventh of a minister into the pulpit on Sunday morning; men who can dabble in pools of Kiddism and anti-Kiddism without being drowned in them; men who can discipline criminals, while, all the more, they rejoice in the training of saints and heroes; men who can deal with all phenomena, esoteric and exoteric, and yet be plastic to 'the hands that reach through nature moulding man'; men who can inspire and educate other men and women and send them out to study sociology and economics, and political science and practical politics, while still they keep their own higher place and highest function. Christianity truly interpreted is the most optimistic religion the world has ever seen. He who can rightly interpret and apply it occupies the supreme point of light in this century; he can have no finer duty and no higher honor."

WE have already

A Popular Creed. the creed suggested by Dr. John Watson (Ian Maclaren) in a sermon "Jesus our Supreme Teacher." This creed has been taken up by the Christian Unity Brotherhood, and is being circulated with the object of forming a national union with this creed as the covenant.

printed and praised

The words of the creed are as follows:"I believe in the Fatherhood of God. I believe in the words of Jesus. I believe in the clean heart. I believe in the service of love. I believe in the unworldly life. I believe in the Beatitudes. I promise to trust God and to follow Christ; to forgive my enemies and to seek after the righteousness of God."

Good Hymns.

MR. STEAD has brought out a new collection of old

hymns. His idea in doing this is simply that he may give the public the opportunity of learning what hymns Mr. Stead personally approves. It seems hardly worth while, for individual preference is an exceedingly faulty test of the permanent value of religious poetry. In this particular case it seems worse than useless, it seems ludicrous; for Mr. Stead, with all his wonderful gifts of news gathering and original advertising, evidently is not superabundantly endowed with any critical poetic instinct. The Spectator describes Mr. Stead's favorite hymns as full of bad grammar, doggerel metre, and atrocious metaphors, his very favorite of all "limps with an ostentatious pietistic twang," and if the following is a fair sample of the collection, we agree with the Spec

tator.

"His love in time past

Forbids me to think He'll leave me at last In trouble to sink.

"Each sweet Ebenezer
I have in review
Confirms his good pleasure

To help me quite through."

Hymns that touch and inspire are not of this quality, and Mr. Stead will do more good if he will advertise Stopford A. Brooke's admirable collection of "Christian Hymns" published in 1893, or Dr. Martineau's "Hymns for the Christian Church and Home," for these collections are the fruit of ripe experience allied with faultless taste.

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"This World's not all a Fleeting Show."
This world's not all a fleeting show
For man's delusion given.
He that hath soothed a widow's woe,
Or wiped an orphan's tear doth know
There's something here of heaven.
And he that walks life's thorny way
With feelings calm and even,
Whose path is lit from day to day
By virtue's bright and steady ray,
Hath something felt of heaven.

He that the Christian's course hath run,
And all his foes forgiven,

Who measures out life's little span
In love to God, or love to man,

On earth hath tasted heaven.

Wednesday.

The Way to Love.

-A. E.

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." If each man loved his neighbor as himself, Oh, what a blissful place this world would be!

We would smile oftener. No man loves
A sullen face to see.

What we receive with gladness
We would freely give to others,-
Sympathy and cheer in sadness,
Loving words in lonely days,
Kind thoughts at all times,
For right actions praise.

We would not seek to keep the best,
But how to give the best to others.
Another's good would be our gain.
We would rejoice, as brothers,
In another's joy. As we love joy
So would we seek to promote pleasure.
We would be hopeful,-

Of ourselves each hopes the best.
Did we love thus, what eye could measure
The change in other lives?
Souls would be brought to God,
Wrong actions be forgiven,-
In lives of righteousness on earth
Men would establish heaven.

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I thought myself indeed secure,
So fast the door, so firm the lock;
But, lo he toddling comes to lure

My parent ear with timorous knock.
My heart were stone could it withstand
The sweetness of my baby's plea-
That timorous, baby knocking and
"Please let me in-it's only me."

I threw aside the unfinished book, Regardless of its tempting charms, And, opening wide the door, I took My laughing darling in my arms. Who knows but in eternity

I, like a truant child, shall wait The glories of a life to be,

Beyond the Heavenly Father's gate? And will that Heavenly Father heed The truant's supplicating cry,

As at the outer door I plead, ""Tis I, O Father! only I"?

January.

-Eugene Field.

Saturday.

Which of the merry months shall I praise? Meadow birds, say!

Shall the April nights or the autumn days Have place in my lay?

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AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION.

The last business which claimed the es

Fund of $20,000, to be placed in the hands of trustees accepted by the American Unitarian Association. This money is to be used at the discretion of the trustees for the improvement of the Christian Register, the increase of its circulation, and, it may be, the reduction of the subscription price. The desire is to meet the wishes of Unitarians in all parts of the country for a national paper which shall be adequate for their needs. Still, our constituency is so small in numbers, and so vast in territorial extent, that the problem is very difficult.

Rev. and Mrs. Theodore C. Williams, late of New York, attended the one thousandth anniversary of the founding of the Hungarian kingdom. Our Unitarian brethren held an international convention as part who visit the Unitarians of Hungary, with of this celebration. Like all Americans their romantic and heroic history of three hundred years, our delegates were fascinated, and have reported their pleasure in glowing terms. Bishop Ferencz has acknowledged in grateful terms the encouragement given to our Hungarian brethren

pecial attention of our directors related to by the presence of the foreign delegates.

the interests of the Conference for the Middle States and Canada. Those who scan our appropriations with a critic's eye will note the fact that considerable appropriations were made to some places for the first time. They will probably not note the other fact; namely, that the total appropriations were less than for last year, and that the money appropriated for new work was saved from other places now becoming selfsupporting. The following appropriations were made for the year beginning Jan. 1, 1897 Albany, N.Y., $1,200; Ithaca, N.Y., $1,300; Trenton, N.Y., $300; Vineland, N.J., $300; Passaic, N.J., $200; Plainfield, N.J., $400; Hamilton, Can., $300, conditionally, on uniting with Toronto under one minister; Rev. W. L. Beers, Union Springs, N.Y., $150; Gouverneur, N. Y., $600; Ridgewood, NJ., $150; New Brighton, N. Y., at the rate of $650 a year, after the settlement of a minister; for new missionary work, $200; for one-half the salary of Rev. D. W. Morehouse, superintendent for the Middle States, $1,250. Appropriations were also made of $100 to Randolph, Mass., $200 to Des Moines, Ia., and $750 as a loan, without interest, to San José, Cal.

The directors voted to instruct the secretary to visit our churches in the South that required aid, during the month of January in order to have fresh information before acting upon the applications from Southern churches. The January meeting was therefore postponed, and the Southern work made the order of business for February 9. It is proposed by the managers of the Christian Register to establish a Guarantee

Our few communities scattered throughout the world ought to multiply occasions to exchange greetings. American Unitarians, especially, need to cultivate an interest in their foreign friends that they may not become merely American and provincial.

GEORGE BATCHELOR, Secretary.

SUNDAY-SCHOOLS.

If I were called upon to mention the chief tendencies in Unitarian Sundayschools at present, I should state the following:

The strengthening of the primary department at one end, and the adult classes at the other end of the Sunday-school. This is often accomplished by the selection of paid teachers.

Next, the extensive use of the one-topic three-grade course of lessons. This system somewhat recognizes the necessity for graded work, while it includes all the advantages of one subject.

Next, an increased attention to teachers'' meetings on the part of ministers. It is now seen that these gatherings are almost necessary to a successful year of Sundayschool work.

Next, the use of the recently published placard, entitled "Our Faith," as a means of simplifying, and yet enforcing, the cardinal truths of our faith. The statement is so simple in its five points that it has not yet been considered by any one as imposing fetters upon the young mind.

Next, the larger and more cordial recep

tion of what is called the "higher criticism." The fears of many are abated, and the understanding of what modern scholarship means as a positive, upbuilding force, has deepened. The Bible stands firmer on its imperishable basis of truth and authority. Next (though I am not giving these points in any supposed order of value), is the stronger spirit of co-operation. Distrust has given way to confidence, and consequently our schools add to their enthusiasm and efficiency by this unity of action.

Next, I should make the cheerful comment that the Sunday-school is regarded more now as a friend of the church than heretofore. In return, the Sunday-school gains also, for its best interest is not found in selfishly looking after itself.

Next, the wider membership in the Unitarian Sunday School Society on the part of Sunday-schools, which has this significance: it discloses the fact that there is not only more co-operation, school with school, plan with plan, but also that there is a closer touch in denominational loyalty.

I was not able to report in the December number of the Unitarian the result of my trip in the Middle West, as this magazine went to press before I returned. Now that so much time has elapsed, I can only say in brief what I should like to have described more fully. The ministers and superintendents in the Middle West are more earnestly at work than ever. As regards the spirit and method of Sunday-school work, I find a great improvement. Our workers are alert to find out the newest suggestions, and as far as possible to incorporate them. What I have said above in the summary of tendencies will greatly apply to our friends in the Middle West. The Unitarian Sunday School Society is in perfect harmony with the Western branch, and I was very glad to journey in company with Rev. A. W. Gould, president of the Western organization. The various conferences which I visited had carefully arranged for sessions where the moral and religious education of the young should be considered. No conference can hope for full usefulness which fails in this. I am very much pleased with the intelligent interest which I found, as regards organized instruction in religion for our children. As Mr. Hervey very well says in the December Review of Reviews, in his lucid article on Sundayschools, we are obliged to turn to the Sunday-school as our main agent in certain phases of education. When torpid ministers and critical laymen awake to this fact, we may be able to do something better.

Things to be remembered :

That the Unitarian Sunday School Society has lately been favored with another bequest, making now six in all; but neither

is very large, and there is a grand opportunity offered here for those who wish to do a great deal of good, to remember in some legacy or large donation the welfare of this organization.

That the annual appeals of the Unitarian Sunday School Society are sent out to all churches and Sunday-schools in November, the beginning of the financial year, and it is very desirable that early responses should be made. Do not postpone giving until the last moment, when pocket-books have been exhausted and the treasury is empty.

I wish the Unitarian and its readers, and especially the workers in our Unitarian Sunday-schools all over the land, a "Happy New Year." May courage and hope be companions with insight and inspiration, making noble guard and guidance for them all through the duties of the coming year!

EDWARD A. HORTON.

TEMPERANCE WORK.

Mr. Horace G. Wadlin, chief of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor in Massachusetts, has done good service for the cause of rational temperance reform in publishing the results of an investigation made by his bureau into "the relation of the liquor traffic to pauperism, crime, and insanity."

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Here are trustworthy facts, gathered by careful and skilful investigators. Their work covers twelve months of investigation, and the results are based upon "personal interviews with respect to 31,738 cases of pauperism, crime, and insanity"; and thus the report "comprises the largest amount of direct information,-that is to say, information secured by direct personal interviews with the persons immediately concerned,that has ever been obtained."

The inquiry was made concerning all persons committed during the year to the State institutions for paupers and the insane, and all who passed through the courts, i.e., 3,230 paupers, 26,672 criminals, and 1,836 insane persons. In regard to these latter, the testimony of others was necessarily taken; but, in regard to the other two classes, the testimony is their own. And "the experience of

the Bureau leads to the belief that their statements are trustworthy." These statements were tested, and corrected when it was necessary so to do, by reference to all available records. Hence the returns may be accepted as accurate.

Out of the 3,280 paupers, 2,108, or 65 per cent., were addicted to the use of liquor. Excluding minors, 75 per cent. were so addicted. There were 866 total abstainers, of which number, however, 429 were minors. Excessive drinkers, 505. Of the whole number of paupers, 47.74 per cent. had one or both

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