agency of the platform' we mean the holding of public meetings under the auspices of the League. It seems to me very impor tant that such a meeting should be held in Boston next May, and also in Chicago, about the same time, at which all the great subjects indicated in the declaration shall be presented by well-known speakers. By the agency of the pulpit' we mean the wise, constructive, genial presentation of the results of modern scholarship to our congregations. My own experience teaches me how gladly these will hear. My purpose, and that of my coworkers, is to do our best to make strong, respected, and useful our beloved Church. For the present we invite only clergymen. Ultimately, it may be best to invite the laity."

Of course, it is natural that Unitarians should sympathize with the general aims of this "League." Believing, as we do, that Universalists and Unitarians are called, in the providence of God, to essentially the same great mission, we are rejoiced at every effort that is put forth to bring the two churches nearer together. Certain it is that many preachers, thinkers, and writers in the Universalist body are as broad and forwardlooking in their spirit as any that can be found in any section of the Christian Church. That these should band themselves together to make their influence increasingly felt in their denomination is a hopeful sign.

A SPRIG OF HOLLY.

So gracious is the time, we say,
When Christmas comes with gifts of cheer!
More beautiful it is than May,

When flowers bloom and birds appear.
It is the gladness of the soul

Assured that heaven's not far away, But can our lives in love control:

This is the truth of Christmas Day!

Now fruits of friendship shine amid
Green boughs that winter cannot kill;
Beneath snow-selfishness is hid

A life that can all hope fulfil:
We might be kind and good and true,
Whatever carping cynics say,-
Each life to each like sun and dew,-
So speaks to us sweet Christmas Day!

Love's holy child shall lead the race

Into God's kingdom pure and sweet, Where souls are clothed in heavenly grace, Where broken hearts their brothers meet.

Divineness comes to human kind,

When we love's inward light obey; So like a summer in the mind, Which nurtures flowers, is Christmas Day! WILLIAM BRUNTON.

Whitman, Mass.

LUCY STONE.

In the death of Mrs. Lucy Stone the country loses one of the noblest, most heroic, and most beautiful characters that thus far in its history it has produced. We give below the addresses of William Lloyd Garrison and Mrs. Mary A. Livermore delivered at the funeral services in the Church of the Disciples on October 21, also Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's poem read on the same occasion. Other addresses were delivered by Rev. Charles G. Ames, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Miss Mary Grew, Rev. S. J. Barrows, Mrs. Ormiston Chant, Mrs. Edna D. Cheney, and Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer. Our limited space excludes these; but those which we do give are enough to afford at least an inspiring glimpse of a character of singular loveliness and strength, and of a life-work of unusual singleness of aim, bravery, and usefulness. The Woman's Journal, which was founded by Mrs. Stone, makes its issue of October 28 a memorial number. It is from this that we take the following addresses :—

MR. GARRISON'S ADDRESS.

It would ill accord with the spirit of our friend's life if, at the soul's new birth, as she believed, we who survive her should indulge in sorrow and regret. The note of triumph and congratulation best meets the occasion. A noble life, fully rounded, an age ripened with wisdom and experience, a nature unimbittered by disappointments. a hopefulness that could not be quenched, an exemption from mental infirmity, and a home of purest love leave only room for rejoicing. She has fought the good fight, and kept the faith. She will lead the column in the struggle that remains. No meeting for the cause of woman, no pleading at the State House for the belated law of justice that must be granted, that will not feel her presence with added power. The influence of that sweet, benignant face, of that sympathetic voice which never failed to inspire affectionate respect, of that character so

simple and genuine and steadfast, will encompass us, as we take up anew with fresh resolve the object of her life. Always, as the old friends gather together in council or to rejoice over victories gained, the name of Lucy Stone will spring unbidden to earnest lips, and the mind's eye will picture her gracious figure in the van.

Before Lucy Stone became the prominent champion of her sex, she espoused the cause of the American slave, and is inseparably identified with the historic anti-slavery movement. It is a coincidence that this day marks the fifty-eighth anniversary of the Boston mob. It was a double battle she was forced to wage. Before women could speak effectively for the negro, they were forced to vindicate a woman's right to speak at all. The Grimké sisters and Abby Kelley had broken out the thorny path with bleeding feet; but, when the young, enthusiastic woman from Oberlin College deliberately chose to follow these pioneers and martyrs, she summoned a courage equal to their own. The young women of to-day who walk over the broad, smooth highway of college education and professional life can never realize what popular contempt and cruel opposition the laborious builders overcame. Little wonder that delicate women should then shrink from the coarse abuse of press and party, and, above all, the disapproval of friends and neighbors.

There are yet many living who can remember the advent of this bright, charming, earnest graduate, as she put on the armor for the slave. It was a joy to see and hear her at the anti-slavery conventions, while in a social way she won all hearts. When the conventions scattered, the refreshed workers took up again their weary apostolic task. Imagine this lover of refinement and peace travelling unattended into lonesome country districts, lodging in humble dwellings or seeking the cold shelter of a tavern, and speaking to small numbers in cheerless halls or school-houses, where curiosity had to be satisfied before attention could be won to the subject of the lecture. The marvel is, when the naturally robust constitution of Theodore Parker succumbed to lack of proper nourishment and the terrors of chilling "spare chambers" on his lecture tours, that any of the early women speakers lived to tell the tale. It was not

uncommon for the lecturer to arrive in town, and, finding no advertisement of the meeting, herself nail up on trees and fences the notice of the place and time. Prejudice was to be allayed, combativeness softened by reason and forbearance, and abuse accepted with patience and philosophy. Potent as was the public speech of Lucy Stone, doubtless her presence in stranger households made more converts than her addresses; for even those who received her reluctantly as a guest soon found that they had entertained an angel unawares. Who that met her in this relation could think or say an unkind thing against her ever after?

When happy marriage and motherhood came to her, all her loving nature flowered out the more. When hostile critics dwelt on the ruin of family life and the masculine characteristics sure to be developed by the participation of women in politics or reforın, until it almost seemed as if such a course was flying in the face of nature, we could rest secure in such examples of domestic life as hers. As though unselfish devotion to one's fellow-creatures could bring aught but blessings to the home!

The triumph of abolition and the emancipation of the slave left Mrs. Stone free to concentrate her entire energy upon the suffrage cause. How pathetic was her oft-expressed wish to see the triumph of this, too! Who can forget her plaintive appeals for justice before the legislative committees ? That she did not live to see her dear Massachusetts range itself in the column of equal rights puts us all the more under bonds to make the Commonwealth worthy of this eminent citizen who has contributed so much to its true eminence.

When the struggle for enfranchisement is over and the victory won, the fame of Lucy Stone will not be narrowed to a movement or an agitation. It will be plain that by her labors and that of her companions something greater and more far-reaching has been accomplished: that representative government, now representative only in name, has itself been saved. She takes her place among the founders of the true republic.

Our dear friend's unswerving faith in the Eternal Goodness which rules the universe did not forsake her when the time of parting came. "I feel as if there were ten years

dropped out, and you will go on without me."

more of work in me," she said; "but, if I am to go now, doubtless other work awaits me elsewhere." It is impossible to reconcile the indestructibility of matter with the annihilation of spirit. How fitting in this case Whittier's lines to Mrs. Child,

"Sure the Divine economy must be
Conservative of thee"!

But no personal eulogy, no words to soften the bereavement which death always brings, natural and benevolent as the law of nature is, would satisfy the wishes of the friend and heroine we come to honor. As in the sick-room her face lightened and her soul was uplifted by the news that New Zealand had enacted woman suffrage, so would she wish that in her dying her loved cause should gain new strength. The significance of this occasion will be lost if we fail to consecrate ourselves anew to a realization of the dream which inspired this noble life.

MRS. LIVERMORE'S ADdress.

On Lucy Stone's last birthday I wrote her a letter. She had had seventy-four birthdays before, but I never had happened to write her a letter on any one of them. She was at Gardner, in the home of her sister, hoping for a little longer life; for she said she should be glad to live if it were the Divine Order. I was ill myself; and, after lamenting our demoralized condition, I wrote, "There is nothing for us to do, Lucy, but to put away all thoughts of sickness, and gird ourselves up, and keep on together with the procession to the end." In her reply she said: "Thank you for that. We will do it. We will keep together, and be good comrades straight to the end."

She did not realize her expectation, but came back to her home, and failed rapidly. Then came a letter that was like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky: "If you want to see Lucy again, you must come soon." I went to her chamber, and found her facing the future, calm, fearless, with much more of composure and strength than any person from the outside world could possibly manifest in her presence. For a moment she put one hand over her eyes, to keep back the tears, and reached out the other to me, saying, "I pledged you that I would keep up with the procession to the end; but I have

We had planned to attend half a dozen conventions together in September and October. She remembered it. Near death, already feeling the atmosphere of the other life breathing upon her, she recalled our purpose, and said, "You will go to the conventions alone," and so I did. She was a brave woman from the beginning to the end, a heroic woman, such as I have never known in my life, who dared as a young girl stand up and battle against all the united world for her ideal. She was brave now; and, as I came away, these were her words: "Well, good-by! If we don't meet again, never mind. We shall meet sometime, somewhere: be sure of that. We shall be busy together again in some good work somewhere; and we will be good comrades again somewhere."

Somehow, I haven't a doubt of it. Let us hush these bewailing hearts of ours that cry out when the knife of separation cuts away those with whom we have had comradeship and fellowship. And there is no comradeship in the world like that which grows up between people who work together for a grand cause year after year, enduring contumely and ostracism, watching its slow progress together with quiet patience, receiving defeat together and sometimes victory, and yet with no other course open to them but to keep steadily at work. People sometimes said that Lucy Stone was narrow. Yes, she was. She had the narrowness of Saint Paul, who said, "This one thing I do!" and the one great work she imposed on herself she adhered to straight to the end. If a thing was to be done, that was right, all the world united could not induce her to turn aside from it. Do it she would, let come what might come. That was her right and her privilege.

I have read a newspaper article within a few days which declared that our friend thought woman suffrage would accomplish everything,—that was the end for which she toiled. She never for a moment believed that woman suffrage was the end. She regarded the ballot as a means to an end. After women were enfranchised, the real work would begin. And she saw this so clearly that she never faltered. "When I began to work for woman suffrage," she

said to me, "it was so hard and so difficult that, if I had been put at the foot of the loftiest peak of the Rocky Mountains, with a jack-knife in hand, and had been told, 'Hew your way up,' it would have been pastime compared with my task." But she never faltered, though she often suffered. I have seen her in moments of keenest anguish over a defeat that she expected would be a moderate victory. I have seen her so wrung with anguish over the wrongs of women that she could not weep; and I have seen her weep over them, and then her grief would break us down, and we would weep together. For she had such ability to bear and to hope on, always believing that she would live to see the end, that, when she gave way to temporary despondency, we dropped into temporary despair.

Single-hearted, working for women only, she distinguished herself in this particular above all who have worked for women. All the rest of us who worked with her had other hobbies and went into other employments. We went into literature and philanthropy, we worked for the religious or ganizations in which we had a place and a name, joined clubs and worked for them, travelled in Europe, went to India, to California, to Florida, travelled through the South and West, held receptions and attended receptions; but she could not be drawn into anything of the kind. "My one work is for women, and I must do it. This one thing I do!" And that one thing she did for half a century. We can never realize how much we are indebted to her until we have the whole story of her heroic, unselfish life written out, as I hope and believe we shall. And all the while her work was done quietly, tremendous as it was; and she made no fuss. I have sometimes said

that this was her chief characteristic. Busy here and there in extending her ideas, never knowing an idle moment, she lived the most perfect life in her home, a marvellous housekeeper, a devoted wife, a glorious mother. "Do not grieve," was one of her last messages. "Do not grieve for me. It is part of the Eternal Order that I shall go. I am going where it is better yet than here." We will try not to grieve for her, but to remember her words, and to carry on the

work fallen from her hands.

LUCY STONE.

Full of honors and of years,
Lies our friend at rest,
Passing from earth's hopes and fears
To the ever Blest.

One of the anointed few
Touched with special grace,
For a life whose service true
Should redeem the race.

Where is that persuasive tone
Welcome in our ears?
Still I hear it, sounding on

Through the golden spheres.
When we raise our battle-cry
For the holy Right,
We shall feel her drawing nigh
With a spirit's might.

As the veil of flesh doth part,
We behold her rise,
Crowned with majesty of heart:
There true queendom lies.

JULIA WARD HOWE.

SOCIALISM IN AMERICA.*

For several years I have been waiting and hoping for a book on Socialism and Individualism, which would do justice to both, and at the same time refute their errors; and at last such a book has been produced. Rev. N. P. Gilman's "Socialism and the American Spirit" is the best book I have been able to find on social problems. It is characterized by depth of thought, breadth of view, a clear and forcible style, a fair and tolerant spirit, and, above all, by level-headedness. Unfortunately, many writers on social questions are cranks or hobbyists; but Mr. Gilman displays the best American spirit in his treatment of opponents and opposing views. He meets the Individualist and Socialist on their own ground,-the only possible ground to meet them on,-and refutes them not by theories, but by an appeal to facts familiar to all Americans.

Every reader of Spencer, Donisthorpe & Company, must have felt the unsatisfacto

riness of their radical individualism as

strongly as he has the absurdities of Marx's, Bellamy's, and Gronlund's visionary schemes. After reading Mr. Gilman's book, he will not only feel that there are dangerous fallacies in these two social theo

"SOCIALISM AND THE AMERICAN SPIRIT." By N. P. Gilman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

In the first chapter of his book, Mr. Gilman expounds the nature of Individualism and Socialism. The essence of the latter, according to Dr. Schäffle, "is the transformation of private and competing capital into a united, collective capital." Individualism, on the contrary, is "a system of production by means of private capital, held by single persons, firms, corporations, or co-operative associations. This method demands a free labor contract, open competition, and distribution to individuals. The Alpha and Omega of Individualism is, accordingly, private and competing capitals, with a large measure of individual freedom from State control." (p. 10.)

Mr. Gilman then goes on to show that "between the apparent fanaticism of the extreme socialist and the patent Philistinism of the extreme individualist there is sufficient standing ground for the great body of human beings who would not govern their lives by one hard and fast theory, but willingly confess that mankind is influenced by many forces, that progress is a resultant from the diverse action of these, and that the appeal is always open to experience." Mr. Gilman's book is devoted to an exposition and defence of this thesis, and it is admirably done.

The second chapter discusses the tendency to Socialism in this country, which is again and perhaps better discussed in Chapter V. In the last-named chapter the author divides the Socialists into two general classes; namely, foreigners (immigrants) and sentimentalists (readers of "Looking Backward," etc.). These latter consist of clergymen, teachers, philanthropists, men of leisure, a very few business men, and a large number of educated women. (p. 39.) In his chapter on "The American Spirit," Mr. Gilman names as its characteristics a love of personal liberty, practical conservatism, enterprise, competition, public spirit, and optimism; and his exposition may be accepted as, on the whole, correct. Certainly, these are the characteristics of the spirit of New England and the South and the older parts of the United States. But the important question arises, May not this spirit be greatly modified and foreignized by the heterogeneous elements of our Western

the spirit Mr. Gilman defines retain the ascendency in this country, or will other spirits get control? We whose great-greatgrandfathers were born in America may hope that the old American spirit may continue to rule; but we must remember that this spirit is being adulterated, and we must not be lulled into a dangerous security. "Now that the best available land has been occupied," says our author, "and labor difficulties have arisen and multiplied, the congestion of our great cities with multitudes of Hungarians, Poles, and Italians calls for restrictive measures which shall throw upon the nations of Europe the rightful care of the ignorance, poverty, and incapacity of their own citizens. With immigration regulated in accordance with the first principles of international justice, America can still absorb a large foreign element, as she has done in the past, and out of the most unpromising material continue to make tolerable citizens." (p. 31.) In his admirable little book on "Our Country,” Dr. Strong shows that the resources of this country are sufficient, when thoroughly developed, to support a thousand millions of people; and, as there are only about 65,000,000 now here, it would certainly seem to be unnecessary to prohibit immigration for many years to come. We should not let national prejudice influence us on this question. And, above all, we should eschew religious prejudice. I find here in the West a truly diabolical spirit springing up against immigrants from Roman Catholic countries, and every true American will protest against this intolerance and bigotry. Immigration has made our country what it is, and we have no more right to shut out immigrants than our fathers had. But Mr. Gilman is right in urging that immigration should be regulated in accordance with the principles of international justice, and in order to prevent a congestion of our great cities.

The step, however, from regulation to absolute prohibition is a short one for many people; and against this Americans must be on their guard.

In Chapter IV. Mr. Gilman shows that "American practice has never been in accordance with the theoretical individualism of closet philosophers"; and he handles