REPORT OF COUNCIL. REV. MINOT SIMONS, CLEVELAND, OHIO. Immediately after the adjournment of the last Conference in Buffalo two years ago the Council voted to hold its next meeting in San Francisco. The vote was unanimous, and behold, our confidence is justified. A company of Unitarian evangelists has made a pilgrimage across the continent to fellowship with Unitarians on the Pacific Coast. Here we emphasize anew the national and international character of our mission. We proclaim again the world character of our cause. We meet to rededicate ourselves to the responsibilities and to the opportunities that can alone be assumed by free churches. We are mindful of our privilege in coming to this virile city, our gateway to the Orient. We come, cherishing the traditions of Thomas Starr King, inspiring patriot, eloquent prophet of the noblest Liberalism; of Horatio Stebbins, for more than a generation a tower of Unitarian strength in this pulpit. For these leaders of the past we bring our tribute of veneration and esteem. "They have left a name behind them, and their remembrance is sweet as honey in all mouths." We come with fraternal greetings to the home city of a leader whom we of this generation seem always to have known and loved, Horace Davis. Indeed, we come to commune with all the saints in the faith in this saintlycity-that-is-in-the-making. We come in profound admiration, as we see her rising spiritually above adversity, and materially in forms of strength and beauty, as though by magic, above her ashes. We commend to her citizens the noble lines of Richard Watson Gilder: "On love of city here we take our stand, Love of city is no narrow love; Who loves it not he cannot love his land With love that shall protect, exalt, endure. Here are our homes, our hearts, Great God above! Not in the memory of this generation has the Conference met in the midst of such extraordinary circumIn the first place, we are challenged by present stances. day reactions toward the crude, raw orthodoxy of the far past. As Unitarians, we are particularly pummelled by the revival wave of mediævalism and intolerance that is sweeping over the country. But we are not troubled for ourselves. Every Billy Sunday revival makes more Unitarians. We know that such attacks upon us are, for the most part, an ignorant verbiage, or what James T. Fields called "an affluence of rigmarole." Our trouble is rather with what the revival wave indicates. It discloses, as it passes, a low state of spiritual and moral perception in Christianity that is almost incredible. It is true that great masses of Christian people have never been trained above this level. But the startling and ominous fact is the number of educated people who knowingly and deliberately permit it to represent their ideas of God and of man, and who use it for petty and local advantage. Old-fashioned revivalism, however, is but one sign of religious reaction. In Catholicism reaction has triumphed completely. In various Protestant bodies it is showing the strength of desperation. Some one has said, "The one vital issue in Christianity is the one between traditional and scientific minds." It is true. In all churches the two types are standing out with increasing enmity, one type looking backward, the other looking forward. The striking thing about the situation is the fact that there are people from different denominations who differ less among themselves in their religious beliefs than these people differ from others in the same denomination. That is, the widening cleavage is, to-day, not so much between different denominations as between different people in the same denomination. Liberals, unhatched Unitarians, are in all churches. It is time for the liberalized conservatives to realize their power to stand forth, to co-operate, and to commit the Christian religion to intellectual freedom and to the growing revelation. Some way must be found to bring them together and to organize them on the basis of Liberalism. Just now, to be suspected of Unitarianism would discredit them with their associates. They must co-operate as Liberals. Happily such larger co-operation is coming. We Unitarians have prepared for it by getting the liberal movement organized. We have been able to commit one denomination to the principles of Liberalism. In the face of all reaction we are holding on to what has been gained by historical criticism, and we are proclaiming the faith of the modernist, a faith based on the scientific habit of mind, and lifted by the highest ideals of God, of man, and of human destiny. In all churches, the half-Liberals need the constant challenge and encouragement which the Unitarians alone can provide. We have our faults and our shortcomings, but intellectual timidity is not one of them. If, in their judgment, we lack warmheartedness in religion, they, in our judgment, lack wholeheartedness in bearing witness to the truth. How can it be otherwise with them who hope to face both ways? What can be more demoralizing than the casuistry to which they are frequently reduced? Can spiritual integrity have a more treacherous safeguard than the lip use of a phraseology, the plain meanings of which have been outgrown? The Council would urge our churches to appreciate the commanding position which they hold in the progress of religious ideas, to realize the duty still confronting them to commit Christianity to intellectual freedom and to the growing revelation, and in every community to be patient, friendly, sympathetic with the liberalized conservatives. Again, we are challenged by the new religious ideal, the "democracy of God." Jesus spoke of the "kingdom of God." What he meant was the rule of God in the human soul. He used the figure of speech that fitted into the thought of his time. But we have outgrown kingdoms and all the institutions which they imply,-of sovereign ruler and subjects, of mediators, and of privileged classes. We might well discontinue the use of the phrase "kingdom of God" except when we have occasion to use the ancient poetry of religion. Let us introduce and vitalize the conception of the "democracy of God." Political democracy is a government of the people, for the people, and by the people. Religious democracy is a religion of the people, for the people, and by the people. It is of the people because religion is a native expression of the inherent religiousness of human nature. It is for the people because its ideal is the attainment of the good of all. All, even the least, are the children of God and are to be served as such. It is by the people because its authority rests with the people themselves, and the people themselves are com petent to fulfil it. Old Dr. Furness once declared that he had never found any one trained in a political monarchy who ever understood what Jesus meant by the "kingdom of God." Much less would such a person understand the "democracy of God." He could not conceive that the people themselves were competent to fulfil their religious responsibilities any more than they were competent to fulfil their political responsibilities. If we are committed to the ideal of the democracy of God, we are committed to whatever will make for the good of all. We are committed to human values above all other values. All traditional values, bolstered up by race and religious prejudice, property prejudice, political and social prejudice, must justify themselves on this broader human basis, or be discarded. Now we may not be in entire agreement in our social philosophy, but we can all strive to turn the world's mind and heart to the pursuit of the good of all. can strive to lift modern industrialism to the plane of fraternalism, compelling it to produce for the good of all. We can strive for human good, justice, and brotherhood as the supreme goal of applied religion. Here is the twentieth-century ideal, and we are all passing before it for judgment; but let us beware, another crisis is upon us. Even those among us who have the social vision, and are committed to it, will be confronted in this time of world stress by economic and social reactions which will tend again to subordinate the highest human values. Our Unitarian churches are widely representative. They include people of all classes. Our ministers must have for all classes the good news of the "democracy of God." Finally, we are challenged by the incredible world war. Civilization is receiving its severest blow. The life of the spirit is threatened. We know not into what depths it will be plunged. As churches, we must become schools of prophets, who shall prophesy the final triumph of the spirit. As Unitarians, we shall not acknowledge a defeat of humanity, though the world be submerged in barbarism. believe in God and in the final triumph of the divine in the human. Truth, justice, and love shall bring in a new day of the Lord. It is a time for prophets to reach the soul of the world. The personal views of the chairman of the Council may be one thing, and the personal views of its members and |