church as a community, or civic centre, is the logical application of socialized religion. It is no accident that together these two things have captured my life. For a moment, just as the idea of the social question set me thinking of leaving the church altogether, so this idea of the community church set me thinking of leaving this church and organizing in this city an independent religious movement. Indeed, this latter thought has been something more than a [13] momentary temptation. To have a church has been with me from the beginning a necessity. To have a church of the new community order has become a great desire. Last spring I seriously considered presenting to you my resignation, that I might enter upon the fulfillment of this hope. Last summer I pretty definitely made up my mind to lay this problem and prospect before you, as soon as peace should come, and the distractions of war be gone. Then, at the very moment when peace came, as though to anticipate and thus forestall my decision, there came the call from Chicago.

Most of you know what Abraham Lincoln Centre is, and many of you by what pioneer devotion this church of the future was fashioned out of a traditional church of the past. It is not perfect; in some ways it is already itself became traditional again. But it stands today as a more complete embodiment of what I feel a modern church should be than any other institution of which I know in America. The invitation from the people seemed to me an instant bestowal of all for which I seek. I do not think I could have resisted this call to service, had it not been for your rightful claims of loyalty and affection, and my own reluctance to abandon the project of accomplishing my desires in New York. These considerations made me hesitate—and while I hesitated, I thought. Why should I turn elsewhere for the fulfillment of hopes which may be as surely if not as swiftly realized here? Why should I undertake to build an independent church in this city, or accept the leadership of a church however remarkably developed in Chicago, when the Church of the Messiah, pledged to freedom, and long committed to the idea of progress, lies ready to my hand? Why should I seek the easy inheritance of another man's completed work, and thus avoid the hard labor of building an institution of my own, which, for that reason alone, would be moulded nearer to my heart's desire? Above all, why should I assume that my people who have loved and sustained me these dozen years, are unwilling to move on with me in comradeship [14] to the new pathways of the new world which we have entered, or by what right make decision involving my future ministry here or elsewhere, without taking them fully into my confidence and searching the utmost temper of their minds? These were the questions which came to me promptly on the receipt of the Chicago call. Should I undertake to organize an independent church in New York, should I go to Chicago as minister of All Souls' Church and Director of Abraham Lincoln Centre, should I stay here as minister of this Church of the Messiah—this was my problem. I could not solve it, with fairness to myself or to you, until you had spoken. Hence, the meeting of last Monday night, called by the helpful co-operation of the Board of Trustees, and attended largely by our people.

In addressing this meeting, I stated in some detail the future conditions of church work which I proposed to establish or to find. I had intended originally not to make these public, at least all at once; but rumor has been busy, and exact information, for purposes of correction, if nothing more, has now become essential.

First of all, therefore, may I say that I made announcement to this meeting, as I would now make announcement to you, that I have left, or am planning to leave, the Unitarian denomination, and propose not much longer to be known specifically as a Unitarian minister. The reasons for this change in my life, I shall make plain at another time; this morning I content myself with stating the fact. Almost a year ago I resigned the office of vice-president of the Middle States Conference of Unitarian churches, which have held ever since I came to New York. Two months ago, I resigned from the Council of the Unitarian General Conference. Two weeks ago, I resigned my life-membership in the American Unitarian Association. Next May, when the new list is made up, I expect to withdraw my name from the official roll of Unitarian clergymen, and thus sever the last strand which holds me to the Unitarian body. Of course, I shall join no other denomination, and in [15] this sense shall be independent. But to me this action means not isolation, but entrance into that larger fellowship which I so long to share. No barrier will then separate me from those Episcopalians and Baptists and Methodists and other men, who are my real spiritual brethren. I shall be at one with all men everywhere—at home with the family of mankind. I shall not so much cease to be a Unitarian, as to become a Christian. This matter is of course personal; and it thus affected only incidentally the problem which was before our meeting last Monday night. It is easy to find precedent for the occupancy of a Unitarian pulpit by a minister not a Unitarian. At the time of the famous Year-Book controversy, Mr. Potter of New Bedford, Mass., and several of his colleagues, withdrew from the Unitarian body, but continued to hold their Unitarian pulpits. The latest instance of which I chance to know was called to my attention by the death last week of Prof. George A. Foster, of Chicago University. Dr. Foster was born, bred and ordained a Baptist; and yet last year was called to fill the pulpit of the First Unitarian Church church in Madison, Wisconsin; and died in the service of this church, a Baptist.

Even in orthodox churches, the denominational tag is losing its significance. Thus, when the City Temple London, the most famous Congregational church in the world, sought a successor to Dr. Campbell, it chose Dr. Joseph Fort Newton, of Iowa, a Universalist. We are getting sensible enough these days to recognize that the essential thing even about a minister is not his name but his manhood. Nevertheless, my contemplated change in denominational status might well be regarded as a part of the whole problem before us, and I therefore made careful mention of it last Monday night. Secondly, and more important, I stated my desire that the church which I should serve tomorrow, might itself be undenominational, at last to the degree implied by my conception of what I have called the community church. By this I meant that the church should proclaim [16] as its primary interest and aim identification with, and service of, the people of its community, to the subordination, and, if necessary, the ending of its connection with persons of various and scattered communities who have no other bond of union than that of a single denominational inheritance. Was I wrong when I ventured the assertion at the meeting of our Society, that in this church we have already moved far in this direction? Unconsciously, in the last dozen years, it seems to me, we have been moving out of the denomination, into the community. Nearly every interest in this parish is a community and not a denominational interest. Our natural affiliations as a church in this city have not been so much with churches of our own denomination, as with churches of various denominations distinguished like ourselves as predominantly civic, or community, institutions. This congregation is an independent congregation. If the Unitarian name adheres to it at all, it is to the embarrassment of those whose Unitarianism is their pride, and to the confusion of those who, not Unitarians either by birth or conviction, desire to join us in spirit and active work. For years, like "the chambered nautilus," we have been outgrowing our denominational shell, and seeking "more stately mansions." Is it not time, now, that we left this "outgrown shell," and became at last the full and free community