tter last Monday night. I have been still more astonished to
hear, during the week, that some of you suspect or infer that a
decision on my part to remain will involve an immediate intention to
proceed to the capture of the church for purposes not disclosed. On
Monday night I gave expression to a conviction and a hope, and asked
you to register opinion thereupon. Beyond that I would not go, and
could not if I would. Those of you who have been Unitarians for
years, are Unitarians today, and desire to remain Unitarians, must
be protected in your rights. The indebtedness of this church to the
many in generations gone who have served it for the sake and in the
name of Unitarianism, must not be repudiated. Moral obligation as
well as legal necessity may make it impossible for this church to
sever connection with the body of its origin. Above all, I am
insistent that there shall be no quarrel or schism on this issue.
There may be place here for change by evolution, but never by
violence. No faction must presume to dictate what may [22]
come beneficently by consent alone. What I did on Monday last was to
plant in your minds the seed which found lodgement years ago in
mine. What I shall now do is to wait the germination of that seed
through a period of years which may be less, and may well be more,
than I endured. And I do this with the more content and confidence,
that I have little doubt as to what the result will be. I have not
lived with you all these years gone by, without learning the
openness of your minds, the instinctive passion of your souls for
right, the quickness of your sensibilities to all sweet influences
of progress and good-will. If there be truth in my conviction for
change, it will in time be your conviction, as it is mine. If this
be

"The freer step, the fuller breath,
The wide horizons grander view,"

then it will inevitably work enchantment in your hearts as it has in
mine. And if not, then shall I trust those sweeping tides of change
which are now engulfing all the world and destined so soon, to
obliterate the barriers of denomination, so that this issue between
us must vanish for good and all. And in any case, we may ever have
the task of making our Unitarianism in this place of so new and
wonderful a character that this body to which we are bound, may
itself become transfigured by the service we perform for God and
man. I am quite content, therefore, to postpone this question for an
indefi