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 socia