I love the Bible because it is a book so thoroughly human — human even in its mistakes. I go to it to see how men and women thought, how they loved, how they aspired, how they believed, how they doubted, in those ages long ago. I go to see these men and women there, just as real, just as human, as those who come before us in the wondrous pages of Shakespeare, with a greater than Shakespearean variety; because these books were written, not by one man, but by hundreds of men, living in different ages. I love to see those patriarchs worshiping the gods of the tribe, worshiping them and walking with them. I love to think of Ruth when, "sick for home, she stood in tears amid the alien corn." And better than any formal theology is it to hear the cries of pain, the cries of love, that come from men like ourselves, speaking in those ancient days; to hear the father crying, "My son, my son!" to recognize in some of those marvelous Psalms the pure song of trust, the "swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away." I like those parts of the Bible which a good many persons do not like. I like to read the book of Jonah; I like to read the book of Jonah because I like humor. There are some persons who say that the Jew had n't any sense of humor. The fact is, he wrote a satire so subtle and so keen that we dull-witted people for centuries have waited before we have seen the point. And the point is not at all in the story of the fish, it is in the story that comes later; the satire upon the self-complacent prophet who in the name of the Lord had prophesied certain things and then the things had not come to pass. "Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and waited to see what should become of the city." Nothing became of it at all. I like to read now and then the Song of Songs which was not Solomon's, but was written by a great deal better poet than Solomon was. There are some persons who think it ought not to be in the Bible; and they have found out that it does not, as the old headlines said, mean Christ and the church. They say, What does it mean? It is the same old theme, of which healthy natures never tire, repeated wherever there is youth and morning. It is the same theme that is in Bayard Taylor's Bedouin love-song:

From the desert I come to thee,

On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind

In the speed of my desire."

I love the Bible, not only because it is human literature, voicing all sorts of human emotions, because it brings to us the idea of human nature, but I love the Bible because it answers to our present needs. I love these great words which have come down to us, because here and there I find the watch words of human progress. They "reckon ill" who leave out the old Hebrew prophets from their thoughts. These men still have a message to us; the message of simple righteousness, the message of simple manhood. We need still to hear the words of that prophet who cried: "A man shall be a shelter from the storm and a shadow from the heat." Give us a man, the prophet cried. We need that sort of thing to-day.

I love these words because whenever I speak of them the words of the pioneers of human liberty come before us. When those men at Independence Hall brought forth their ideas of human equality and human liberty, the great bell rang out to give notice to the world, and on that great bell were words from these old Hebrew prophets, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." I stand as Heine did when he said, "I wish to be remembered, not as a poet, but as a soldier in the warfare for the liberation of humanity." So I would say, I wish not to be known as a preacher of this or that sect, but as a soldier in the warfare for the liberation of humanity. When I say that, those great names and great words, thrilling with the loftiest thought of humanity, coming amid opposition, coming out of the grossness of the time, come to me, and I say, These give the watchword of our time. Keats tells us, in his poem, of the time when the old gods felt that a change was coming — the new gods were at hand. And then the god of Ocean, feeling that this change had come, cried out to them, telling them that though the old order in outer forms was passing away, the new order was growing out of that.

. . . As heaven and earth

Are fairer far than chaos and blank darkness,
So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,

A power more strong in beauty, born of us
And fated to excel us."

That is the history of all progress. The power that excels is the power born of the old. And while I believe in human. progress, in the better things that are to be, I believe that we are working for those things when most we are reverent, when most we are appreciative of the best that men have thought and said in all the past, the past of Hebrew history or the past of human history. Waiting for that new day, believing in that larger thought, we are helped on by all the inspiration and all the thought of all the people that have gone before. Not as those who unhesitatingly and undiscriminatingly accept every word written of old time do we stand, but as those who, in their freedom, yet freely see and clearly accept all the light and all the beauty treasured up in every holy book of ages past.

COLONEL HIGGINSON. It is suggested to me by the incoming President of the Free Religious Association that, at this middle period of the afternoon, I ought to suggest that there is room in the Association for a good many more members; that any person of respectable moral character can become a member by the subscription of the simple sum of one dollar per annum, and that any persons having doubt of their own respectability can leave that to the Treasurer and his subordinates, who are trained to form an opinion on that subject.

The next speaker of the afternoon will take us higher up among the dignitaries, because he is frequently known in his accustomed region as "the Bishop of Chicago." He is the only bishop, I believe, who belongs to the Free Religious Association at least until after you have all given in your adhesion this afternoon. Many irreverent Bostonians will be glad to hear that there is a bishop in Chicago anyhow, and may feel that he is so much needed there that you wonder that he should be spared even for a time to come and do us good. But as he is here we will make the most of him; and

inasmuch as he, more than any other man in America, has learned the art of organizing all liberal religious bodies, and even some very illiberal bodies, into joint action, we shall all be glad to hear from him. I have the pleasure of introducing the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones of Chicago.

ADDRESS OF REV. JENKIN LLOYD JONES.

I fully realize the absurdity of bringing my little barrowful of coals all the way from Chicago to this Boston Newcastle. I will not attempt to trench upon the domain of Biblical scholarship which is peculiarly your own and which has already been so admirably and inspiringly covered. I will be content if I may bear my humble testimony, as one who has been giving his years to the work of trying to influence people in the interests of morality and religion and to lead little children in the paths of reverence. Out of such an experience I come to bear glad testimony, in this presence, this afternoon, that over and above the high contributions of science (and I cannot over-estimate its contributions), over and above the wealth of history, deeper than the searching questions of the economic problems of to-day, nobler than the achievements of statesman or warrior, I have found the power of the poet and the tremendous potency of literature.

Literature, as I understand it, is that successful expression of the universal that secures its perpetuity. Any man or woman who can formulate our common experiences so happily that the formula will abide has contributed to the literary wealth of the world. Literature is human experience, common, plain experience, rounded into the perfect globe, polished into the symmetrical pebble so that it becomes enduring, "a thing of beauty and a joy forever."

Great as have been the contributions of this last century in other realms, it has perhaps contributed its greatest help to humanity in the work that it has done in discovering and restoring to human intelligence the deathless things in the literature of mankind. It is not the great economic triumphs of the century, not the marvelous discoveries even of

the explorers, but that great wealth that has been brought back to us from the far Indies by the diligence of Sir William Jones and his associates, that has brought to us our richest stores of spiritual wealth. When Anquetil Duperron took his life in his hand, and after many years of marvelous exposure and diligent study brought back to us the ZendAvesta, restoring to us once more those deathless maxims and beautiful parables of brave old Zoroaster, he brought to us an abiding and lasting contribution. When the missionaries to China, who went out there to carry a Christian Gospel to the pagans, had sense enough to discover that the pagans themselves had some holy scriptures, and Legge gave thirty years of his life to bring back to us the Confucian Analects, he made a priceless contribution to the wealth of the world. It is in the same spirit and way that the scholars of Hebrew literature have served us when they succeeded in cutting the book-binder's string, allowing the several distinct works in the Bible to fall apart, and each essential element therein to take its own place and represent its own power. In doing this they have given these treasures back again for your use and mine. They have placed at the disposition of the young men and women of America a priceless literature, one that seeks the deeper emotion of the human heart and expresses the higher aspirations of the human soul.

In the wealth of this literature of the Hebrews we find, as has been already indicated, the words of those prophets to whom even so rank a radical and splendid an unbeliever as John Stuart Mill paid his glowing tribute, and claimed that from them modern civilization received its "first impulse and greatest propelling agency," because they stood off there on the horizon of Oriental despotism, and, in the vigor of their individuality, independent of birth and position, declared, each as he saw it, the word of the Lord to humanity; and each spoke, not for himself, but out of a corporate conscience that made politics and religion identical. They represent the great pioneers of that civic conscience that feels the woes and pains of humanity as its own.

But in this presence and on this platform, Mr. President,