Fifty Notable Years. Adams John Greenleaf

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СКАЧАТЬ of Massachusetts, in his annual messages of the last two years, has recommended the abolition of the death penalty. A large number of ministers of the Universalist Church have constantly affirmed their opposition to it. Rev. Charles Spear published a sensible work on the subject, and Rev. Hosea Ballou, D. D., thirty years since, gave the whole question a very thorough investigation, in reply to Rev. Dr. Cheever of New York, and others.32 Michigan was the first State in the Union to abolish the death penalty, and a late Report makes the statement that, with a population of 1,500,000, no man has been executed in the State during the last thirty-five years, and that a less number of murders have been perpetrated during the last ten years, in ratio to the population, than during the same decade in any other State where public or even private executions have prevailed.33 Capital punishment has also been abolished in Maine.

Capital PunishmentThe Position and Work of Woman

      has also been a subject of deep and widespread interest. Christianity has ever given to woman a place denied her by all other religions. As Christian thought has had freer course, and Christian theology and practical work new and brighter development, the relations of woman to the welfare and progress of human society have been more clearly understood and appreciated. Her rights in law are now more plainly and justly defined, and the importance of her equal education with the other sex admitted and emphasized. She is prominent and indispensable as a teacher, all over the land; she is a graduate of the college and a professor there; she is a successful practitioner in the legal and medical professions; she is an ordained minister of the Gospel; she is a merchant, a book-keeper and accountant, an editor, an artist, a mechanic, a farmer, and has more than average success in all these departments of activity. Her right to the ballot is slowly but surely coming to a settlement, which it will take time and thought on her part (for when she asks for the ballot it will be hers), and enlightened legislation to effect. Where she has exercised this right, none but favorable results have been witnessed.34 Our State legislatures are called upon to give attention to the subject, and a committee of our national Congress have just decided to report a proposed amendment to the Constitution, declaring that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex, and giving Congress the power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce the provisions of this article." If Congress will agree to propose this amendment, and three fourths of the States will ratify it, woman suffrage will be legalized.

Other Questions

      The philanthropic and successful efforts in behalf of the blind, the deaf and dumb, and feeble minded, of fallen women, and orphan children, are becoming more and more apparent every year, all in cheering accord with that restorative mercy and power evinced in Him whose mission was to relieve the sorrows and remove the afflictive evils that beset mankind. And no more unmistakable evidence of the decline of that horrible doctrine of endless suffering for the wicked can be realized, than the instituting and maintaining societies for the suppression of cruelty to animals. Surely, the Father of our spirits will not be less merciful towards any of his children, than these children are justly called upon to be to the inferior creatures of his forming hand! These are some of the signs of Christian progress during the last half-century. Laus Deo!

      CHAPTER X.

      THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH AND ITS WOMEN

      "Help those women which labored with me in the churches." – Paul, Phil. iv. 3.

      THE Universalist Church is much indebted to its faithful women. Taking into consideration its comparative numbers, no other church in America has been more signally favored in the genial and healthful influence of its writers who have borne the honorable name of Woman. They have been instrumental in spreading the doctrines of the primitive Gospel and the moral bearings of their religion before the world in most attractive and impressive forms, and have disabused the public in its wrong estimate of the character and ability of the advocates of Universalism and the tendency and influence of its principles.

      Among those worthy to be remembered in this goodly company, who have passed from the present life during the last half-century, we may mention the gifted sister poets, Alice and Phœbe Cary, Mrs. Sarah Broughton, Mrs. Julia H. Scott, Mrs. Sarah C. E. Mayo, Mrs. Charlotte A. Jerauld, Mrs. Henrietta A. Bingham, Mrs. Elmina R. B. Waldo, Mrs. Luella J. B. Case, and Mrs. E. H. Cobb.

      Among the living we may note the names of Mrs. Catharine M. Sawyer, whose contributions to our church journals are so well known; Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, who in her past connection with our church work and literature has gained such a high reputation with her voice and pen, as well as in her deeds of benevolence and mercy during the war of the rebellion; Mrs. Julia A. Carney, whose hymns and instruction books have made her name so familiar in our Sunday-schools and homes; Mrs. Caroline A. Soule, whose consecrated words and works have secured her a name which the church of her love will hold in righteous estimation; Mrs. Nancy T. Munroe, Mrs. Lathrop (formerly Mrs. Bacon), Mrs. E. M. Bruce, Mrs. J. L. Patterson, Mrs. S. M. Perkins, Mrs. P. A. Hanaford, Miss Carnahan, Miss Remick, Miss Minnie S. Davis, – but it is difficult to know where to draw the line in this counting. Others might be named, would space permit, who have made their contributions to the literature of the church. The older and well known retain "their wonted fires," and the new and younger are coming to succeed and honor them. Some of our women are speaking our best and most practical words in our churches, prayer and conference and missionary meetings; in our Sunday-schools, conventions, and associations; in our pulpits, as evangelists and pastors; in our educational institutions. If the Universalist Church has not at this hour as brilliant a presentation of Christian literature from the pen of its women as it had thirty years since, there never was more of the practical and available talent of woman in it than at the present time; never so much organized effort on their part as now.

      This effort seems to have taken new form and life since the Centenary Year of the church came round, – 1870. Previous to that date, the history of many a new movement, many a new parish or church, had been the history of woman's fidelity in the inception, progress, and success of the enterprise. It was but natural, then, that in the inspiration awakened by the approach of this centennial year, the women of the church should be aroused to new and still greater effort. And thus it was that the "Woman's Centenary Aid Association" was organized at Buffalo, N. Y., in September, 1869. The organization was effected, and the main work under it was to aid in the raising of the proposed "Murray Fund," of $200,000. The total amount raised by that Association for this object, in all the States and elsewhere, deducting comparatively moderate expenses, and placed in the treasury of the United States Convention for the Murray Fund, was $35,000. Nearly 13,000 women thus became members of the Association. The fact was a new and cheering manifestation. The "Christian Leader," a Universalist journal of New York city, thus alluded to it: —

      "If our women need no eulogy, we need the satisfaction of making a warm, explicit confession of our admiration of their attempt, and our gratitude for what they have done. They can well afford to dispense with the acknowledgment, but we cannot afford not to make it. It becomes us here to raise no question as to woman's fitness for certain employments and political prerogatives, hitherto the prerogatives of the rougher sex. But should we reach what some call 'extreme views' on the several points, and should our zeal bring us onto the platform as a champion thereof, the sledgehammer we should wield is, the work of the Universalist women in their Centenary Year. God bless and make us grateful for our women!"

      Since that time the Association has taken the title of the "Womans' Centenary Association" (dropping the word "Aid" used in the beginning in reference to its work in connection with the United States Convention). It has much other work of its own now. Its tract publishing and circulation, its Scotland Mission, its endowment of women professorships in one of our colleges, its special gifts for the aid of theological students, the helping of needy and worthy parish organizations, establishing Sunday-schools in waste places, and assisting to sustain them and other beneficent works, are included in its ministries. Every year's report СКАЧАТЬ