pulpit. I went into the ministry for the same primary reason which has held me there through all these years gone by—a desire to preach. I think I can say, in no spirit of boasting, that from my earliest days I have had an intense interest in the problem of truth, and a passion to interpret and defend by the spoken word, the truth as I saw it, to other men. It is just this passion, I suppose, which makes the preacher, as distinguished from the poet or the scientist. So Phillip Brooks would seem to suggest in his famous dictum, that preaching is "Truth (conveyed) through Personality." Furthermore, the truth which I desired to expound was theological in its nature. My whole approach to the problem was along the lines of speculation in the field of religious, as distinguished from political or social, thought. God, the soul, immortality, the origin and destiny of man, sin and salvation—these were the questions that held me, even as a boy, partly, I suppose, because of native inclination, partly because of careful training in a Unitarian home and church, mostly I am convinced because I early came under the spell of that prince of liberal preachers, Dr. Minot J. Savage. To do what Dr. Savage was doing each Sunday, preaching to eager throngs the great truths of the Unitarian gospel—this became the consuming ambition of my life. I wanted to stand in a pulpit and preach. I decided to do so; and if judgment in such a question can be based on experiences of inward joy, I am ready to testify that my decision was not unwise.

I entered the church, therefore, primarily because it had a pulpit. But other reasons, not so decisive, and yet impressive, persuaded me to this same end. Thus I saw in the church not only a pulpit but an altar. Indeed, the pulpit distinguished itself in my mind from a platform or a teacher's desk, by the fact that it was always associated with the presence, visible and invisible, of an altar for divine worship. It was easy for me to picture myself as saying all I wanted to say in [6] college halls, in theater meetings, in public forums, but I craved for my work on behalf of truth the atmosphere and environment of spiritual devotion. It was my desire, in other words, to be not merely a teacher or speaker, but a preacher; not merely a prophet, but also a priest. This does not mean that I am a churchman, as such; or that I find any permanent significance in rituals or other forms of worship. But there is in me that which seeks the stimulus of praise and prayer, the uplift of conscious communion with the Eternal, the consolation of appeal to, and trust in, God. Not only from habit, but from temperament, I find myself at home amid religious rites. Nothing so moved me on my one trip to Europe, as the hours I spent under the shadows of the great cathedrals. As a quiet place of worship, as well as a high place of testimony, the church called me in those youthful years, and I gave answer.

A third motive for my choice of the ministry must not be forgotten. I refer to the appeal of the church as a place for action, a service station on behalf of public causes. My vision of what we mean by public causes was strangely limited. It scarcely went beyond the Unitarian denomination, and the works of charity and kindly reform with which it has always been identified. I was a passionate Unitarian in those days. I had read, and been deeply stirred by, the story of the achievements which Unitarianism had wrought on behalf of freedom, fellowship and character in religion. I reverenced its saints and prophets, and longed to follow in their train. Hence the eagerness with which I sought preparation for the Unitarian ministry—that I might serve the church—advance its glory and magnify its work.

It was with such ideas as these in my heart that I was ordained in February, 1904. Within two years there came an event which shook my life to its foundations, revolutionized my thought, and changed the whole character of my interest and work. I refer to what we have [7] learned to describe in our time as the social question. This question, of course, is nothing new. It has burned at the heart of life from the beginning, and at intervals has flamed forth like the eruption of a volcano, to the terror and glory of the world. Its latest phase, as we know it today in the religious field, made its appearance at about the time I entered the ministry. I recall that the book, which first revealed the fires so soon to burst upon us—Prof. Peabody's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question "—was published in 1903, the year before my ordination. I was not unprepared for what was coming. My deep-rooted reverence for Theodore Parker, the supreme prophet of applied Christianity in our time, and my enthusiastic study of his life, had revealed to me the meaning of socialized religion. But I had caught only the pure essence of its spirit; I had not thought to apply it to the social problems of today. Indeed, I was not aware of the existence of such problems. My whole approach to the question of truth and experience up to that time, had been along the lines of speculation in the field of theological, as contrasted with political or social, thought. In the second year of my ministry, however, I read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty"; then followed the writings of Henry D. Lloyd and Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch; then came the deep and prolonged plunge into the waters of socialism. For several years after I came to this church, I was in a state of intellectual and emotional upheaval impossible for me to describe. At last came a conviction which was a complete reversal of all my former ideas. I was as a man converted; I was as one who had seen a great light. Henceforth I was a social radical; and religion, pre-eminently not a testimony to theological truth but a crusade for social change. Of course, my interest in theology has persisted; but its place in my life has tended to become ever more subordinate to other and more directly practical interests. You know how the character of my preaching has changed since I first entered the Messiah pulpit. You know with what [8] waxing intensity of expression I have moved to the left of our various divisions on the social question. You do not know, hence I must tell you, how this intensity of radical conviction is destined to continue in the years that are now before us. For the war has accelerated the social crisis beyond all forecasting. In two years has transpired what fifty years could not have consummated under more normal conditions. Three great empires—Russia, Germany, Austria—and several newborn countries, like that of the Czecho-Slovaks, have been captured by the Socialists; and the British Empire seems promised to the British Labor Party in not more than another decade or two. The social revolution long prophesied, long hoped for, long feared, is here; and this means in countries like our own, still untouched by change, such a "sturm and drang periode," as makes even the Great War pale into insignificance. Now in these years which are before us, I propose to speak and serve for the speediest and most thoroughgoing social reconstruction. I am committed both by conviction and temperament to the program of the British Labor Party and its policy of indirect or political action for the advancement of that program. This is my predominant interest at this moment, and through what is destined I suppose to be the whole period of my life. This is as much the cause of our day as abolition was the cause of the days before the Civil War. To this I have given all I have—from this I intend to withdraw nothing that I have given. Not in any sense of bitterness or violence in method, but in every sense of utter change as the end desired, I am committed to the ideal of the complete democratization of society.

When the significance of this transformation first broke upon me, I felt an impulse to leave the church, and attach myself directly to the labor movement. I recall how my soul leapt in answer to the great scene at the close of Kennedy's "The