Rise and Fall of "Free Religion."

"Free Religion" is some fourteen years old. It leaped full-grown from the brains of a few cultured people who could no longer submit to the tyranny of Jesus Christ. "Let us come together," said this goodly number of emancipated souls, "and rejoice over our deliverance. Let us seek the universal religion, in which shall appear no Lord or Master." There were choice spirits in this new movement, of either sex. Even Orthodoxy treated them with respect. The first meeting at Horticultural Hall were enthusiastic. Emerson graced them with his presence. Lucretia Mott stood in the midst of them like a benediction. John Weiss, Frothingham, Wasson, Bartol, Higginson, Aboot, were there, and spoke with effect. The hall was filled at every occasion. The people came from the west and east, were caught up by the new enthusiasm, and the evening festivals were love feasts. Many things were said good to hear. The key-note was "freedom." The question uppermost was this: What emancipates human beings into the freedom of intelligence
and love?

It was a new story, and every one was filled with it. The spontaneity of the movement was a seeming guarantee of its genuineness. That is, no design upon the future of appeared in view. The future, like the present, was to be left open and free. In plainer terms, no sect was to be founded. "Organization" was a word but little emphasized. Thus the matter lay in the popular mind.

But the plotters were there in masks which not only "deceived the elect," but even themselves: men with a touch of poetry, but, for the most part, gifted with talents for mechanics, - the kind of men that, in all ages, have built the other sects. They were soon restive in the presence of mere sentiment, even though it possessed that virtue which uplifts and en-nobles mankind. "Free Religion?" they began to murmur: "what is it good for, if it cannot be put through the world? Organize! organize! ye free men and women; enlist for the crusade!"

Year by year these words have fallen on Free Religions ears, and the temper of the meetings has much changed. The early, fresh, invigorating life is dead. Of all the choice spirits then leading the joyous throng into pastures new, scarce one is now to be seen. The faithful secretary sticks to his post, bound in sober duty to keep up his yearly report of a decided progress. But the others, where are they? New faces; new voices; new topics. The poetry, the inspiration all gone. The dead-level at last reached, - that awful desert-place where all other sects and churches have been built!

Alas!

And yet, what do we hear?

It is the voice of the new president arguing against his own nature, - as we must think, - declaring that there has been a "new birth."

"Birth?" cries the old voice heard at the beginning; "if this be birth, what is death?"

And it begins to appear plain to many eyes how there has been in reality only a slowly-dying cause.

"Lapse," Dean Alcott might prefer to say. But his speech, like our own, would not be entirely accurate. There is neither lapse nor death. Little and great efforts have their day, and cease to be; but the old spirit of freedom is from everlasting to everlasting, surviving all calamity, and will not succumb.

"Free Religion" is feebly trying to do over again much the same work that has so exercised the Unitarian brain for the last fifty years, and, curiously enough, even the name, which was thought to be original, if not consciously borrowed, is a Unitarian tradition. Fifty years ago, Mr. Reed, announcing the platform of the "Christian Register," declared that that then liberal movement was inspired by "free religious thought."

But the mission of both movements is to die. Paralyzed already, demise is certain.

The future will compress the history of Free Religion into one short paragraph.

How do we know?

Can we gather grapes from thistles, or freedom from a machine? Woe to all good souls whom the machine-spirit seizes!