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UNITARIANS. 



UNITED EVANGELICAL CHURCH. 



and would be defrayed in the ensuing year by the 

 income of the Hayward fund. The association 

 was enjoying close co-operation with other mission- 

 ary bodies of the Unitarian fellowship, including 

 the Western Missionary Council, the Women's Na- 

 tional Alliance, the Young People's Religious 

 Union, the Sunday-School Society, the Ladies' 

 Commission, the trustees of the Church Building 

 Loan fund, the Ministerial Union, and the Minis- 

 ters' League, through the last two of which churches 

 and ministers desiring settlement were brought into 

 communication. In New England, the association 

 had contributed $11,627 to the support of 41 

 churches or missionary enterprises, of which 12 

 were " historic " churches in towns of stationary or 

 declining population, kept alive for the sake of their 

 associations and because they are needed by popu- 

 lations unable to support them ; and 29 were new 

 or revived churches which had not yet attained 

 self-support. Eleven churches were aided in the 

 Middle States at a cost of $7,650. Most of these 

 churches were growing steadily toward self-support. 

 In the Southern States $2,912 were expended in aid 

 of 5 churches. The church at Charleston, S. C., 

 was the only self-supporting church in this depart- 

 ment. In the Western States 11 churches, 4 of 

 which were in college towns, were aided, 3 mission- 

 aries were supported among the Scandinavians, and 

 2 special enterprises, 1 in Illinois and 1 in Wiscon- 

 sin, were aided; all at a cost of $11,943. Twelve 

 churches on the Pacific coast, one in a college town, 

 and all planted within recent years, were maintained 

 with an expenditure of $4,500. In all, 85 churches 

 and 78 ministers were wholly or partly supported 

 by the association, 22 of the churches holding loans 

 from the Church Building Loan fund. 



Unitarians in Great Britain. A special meet- 

 ing of the Unitarian (English) National Conference 

 was held in London, May 31, to consider proposi- 

 tions for conferring certain new powers on the body 

 which had been postponed from the regular meet- 

 ing of the previous year at Sheffield. After consul- 

 tation and the consideration of proposed amend- 

 ments, a resolution was adopted instructing the 

 committee of the triennial Conference to hold reg- 

 ular meetings " to consult and, when considered 

 advisable, to take action in matters affecting the 

 well-being and interests of the congregations which 

 form the Conference, as by directing attention, 

 suggesting plans, organizing expressions of opinion, 

 raising funds to carry out the foregoing objects, or 

 summoning, if it deem it needful, a special meeting 

 of the Conference. Further, that the committee 

 shall present to each Conference a full report of its 

 proceedings and the action it has taken for the ap- 

 proval or otherwise of the Conference." 



The annual meeting of the British and Foreign 

 Unitarian Association was held in London, begin- 

 ning June 1. Mr. T. Grosvenor Lee presided. The 

 general report included reports of the Book and 

 Tract Committee of grants during the year of 1,637 

 books and 113,286 tracts; of the Scottish Com- 

 mittee concerning efforts to develop the churches 

 especially at Paisley, Kirkcaldy, and Aberdeen ; of 

 the Indian Committee, describing the rise and pres- 

 ent condition of Unitarian work in India, which 

 was still on a modest scale. The annual subscrip- 

 tions had fallen off, but the chapel collections were 

 the largest recorded. Legacies amounting to 6,000 

 had been left to the association. In an address de- 

 fining the term " freedom " as used by Unitarians, 

 the president maintained that while they were^free 

 it was not the freedom that united them, but" the 

 truths to which it led them. Prof. J. Estlin Carpen- 

 ter maintained that the liberty held by Manchester 

 College, which he represented, was within limits 

 that presupposed the reality of theology. A paper 



by the Rev. Alexander Webster on " Our Church 

 Work in Spreading Religious Truth " was read in 

 the absence of its author. The report of the Tem- 

 perance Association showed a slight increase in the 

 number of local societies. The report of the Postal 

 Mission and Workers' Union was illustrated by the 

 citation of inquiries sent in for religious literature, 

 and insisted upon the efficiency of the work done 

 by the mission. The Sunday-School Association 

 reported that its receipts had amounted to 1.354. 

 UNITED EVANGELICAL CHURCH. The 

 second General Conference of the United Evangeli- 

 cal Church met at Johnstown, Pa., Oct. 10. The sta- 

 tistical reports showed that the number of members 

 was 59,190, and indicated a net gain of 8,950 in three 

 years, or since 1895 when the previous General 

 Conference met ; with 426 itinerant and 214 local 

 preachers; 5,234 adults and 8,165 infants bapti/ed 

 during the three years; 784 Sunday schools, with 

 10,602 officers and teachers and 74,651 pupils: and 

 24,507 members of the Keystone League of Chris- 

 tian Endeavor. The missionary treasurer reported 

 that there had been an annual increase of contiibu- 

 tions to the general treasury, and that the receipts 

 for the past year had been more than $11,000. The 

 entire amount of missionary money raised and ex- 

 pended in the conference societies and the general 

 society during the past year had been: Received, 

 $87,347; expended, $76,493. The Foreign fund 

 accumulated by the Woman's Missionary Society 

 was about $10,000. The amounts of collections I'm- 

 Church objects had been : For Conference treasury. 

 $9,516 ; for the Sunday-School and Tract Union. 

 $1,291: for educational purposes, $18.223: for 

 Church extension, $5,491 ; for missions, $106.267; 

 for building and repairing churches and par>"n- 

 ages, $355,975; for the Charitable Society, $1,094. 

 The Rev. Dr. I. L. Klephart attended the Confer- 

 ence as a fraternal delegate from the United Breth- 

 ren Church, and spoke in his address of the unity 

 in doctrine and spirit of the two Churches. The 

 Board of Missions was instructed by the Conference 

 to begin the necessary preliminary arrangements 

 for establishing a mission in some foreign field, 

 with recognition of the principle of the comity of 

 missions; the location of the mission and the time 

 for opening the same being left to its judgment. 

 It was also directed to send out no more mission- 

 aries than the income would assure support for; 

 and to assign the support of a definite part of the 

 work to the Woman's Missionary Society. The 

 Rev. T. W. Woodside, a minister of the United 

 Evangelical Church, but a missionary in Africa 

 in the service of the American Board, made a 

 proposition to open a new station in West Central 

 Africa, to be supplied and supported by this Church, 

 but to be conducted under the supervision and con- 

 trol of the American Board. The Conference, while 

 it expressed itself as preferring to direct and man- 

 age its own missions, not being yet ready for that, 

 authorized the Board of Missions to make an ar- 

 rangement with the American Board. A " t wcii- 

 tieth-century celebration" was determined upon, 

 to be held in the year 1900, under a proirramme to 

 be prepared by the Board of Missions. Resolutions 

 were passed discountenancing the " unevangelicaJ 

 practice" of not kneeling in public worship : em- 

 phasizing the duty of Conference trustees to report 

 their transactions to the Annual Conference ; urg- 

 ing the importance of the quarterly conference and 

 the duty of official members to support and attend 

 it; commending the itinerancy as the be>t safe- 

 guard to the original genius, life, and distinctive 

 features of the Church, and pledging fidelity to it; 

 condemning the license system for the sale of in- 

 toxicating liquors ; commending the National Anti- 

 Saloon League, to whose convention delegates \\ere 



