PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE

By MINOT J. SAVAGE

Size, 54 x 74 inches;

pages, 226;

price, 90 cents net; by mail, 99 cents

Dr. Savage is acknowledged to be one of the foremost preachers of liberal religion in this country, and his books, whether on religious or other subjects, have a wide circulation among many different classes of people. In this last volume each chapter deals with cardinal points of religious belief from the author's Unitarian point of view. "The God we Worship," "The Christ we Love," "The Heaven we Hope for," "The Hell we Fear," indicate the line of topics treated.

The foundation truths of religion cannot be too often emphasized or repeated, and when such wholesome religious teachings can be put into Dr. Savage's own simple, direct, reasonable, and forceful way, the resulting volume appeals to all who are willing to be guided by clear and fearless thinking. The chapters of this particular book go far to clear up confused popular ideas about the subjects dealt with. The pillars upon which this temple is reared are sturdy columns of rational religious conceptions which devoutly concern the development of the higher life. Rev. Robert Collyer writes a brief introduction, telling of the circumstances under which he became in a way sponsor for the material now published as "Pillars of the Temple."

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"Some great cause, God's new Messiah"

MESSIAH PULPIT

NEW YORK

(Being a continuation of Unity Pulpit, Boston)

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NOTE.

I preached on this subject two or three times in Boston-always at some one's request. This is the second time I have preached on it in New York-having been asked to do so. But as it has never been writtenof course it is not a verbal repetition.

M. J. S.

THE FADING LEAF.

My text is in the sixty-fourth chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah, a part of the sixth verse,-"We all do fade as a leaf."

"There is in souls a sympathy with sounds."

So says the English poet Cowper. He might well have said a good deal more. Not only is there a sympathy in us with sounds, but there is also a sympathy with odors, with forms, colors, outlines, landscapes, skies,-with whatever is a part of the moods and changing phases of the natural world around us.

And this is not accidental. Though we be children of the infinite God, this old earth is our mother; and, as a little child in its mother's arms reflects its mother's moods,-smiles when the mother smiles, bursts out into crying when the mother frowns,—so are we, in the arms of our dear old earth mother, played upon by all her changing fancies and feelings.

Our moods are reflected upon the world around us; and in turn the world's moods are reflected upon us. It is something more than poetry. I think we shall find, when we analyze it deeply, that it is by no mere fancy that we attribute to the world around us human feelings. The morning smiles, the clouds weep in tears of rain, the brooks sing, the waves on the seashore murmur, the leaves whisper, the mountains call to us and lift us up, and the stars at night have hints to give us of some infinite mysteries.

The poets have put this thought into a good many

forms, one or two of which, briefly, I wish to read to you. Byron, for example, says,

"I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling."

He says again,

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore."

And once more,

"Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
Of me, and of my soul, as I of them?"

And Wordsworth, you know, talks about a Presence that disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts; and then he adds,

"Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows, and the woods,
And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth."

We think of the world as in some way alive; and, curiously enough, after we have been talking for ages about "dead matter," the scientists are beginning to tell us that there is no such thing as dead matter; and some of those that we call most materialistic, like Haeckel of Germany, are hinting that perhaps all Nature, all forms at any rate of what we call life, however low, have at least some crude beginnings of consciousness. They tell us, in other words, that these things feel; and so the sympathy between them and us is heightened.

In the early world, when men were in their childhood, they thought of spirits everywhere. Every tree had its spirit, every brook, every mountain, every cloud. The sea, the thunder,-whatever was moving,-seemed to them to be alive with a spirit akin to their own.