As a people, we have disestablished the Church; but, so far from having disestablished the works of mercy which were once, if I may so speak, the specialty of the Church, we have practically endowed them for all time.

There has happened on a large scale in America, with reference to many kinds of beneficence, what often occurs in a small way, and in connection with some single good work, in a detached city or town. A church or a synagogue, we will suppose, zealous in behalf of the better instruction of the young, starts on its own account a manual-labor school or a cooking-school or a sewing-school, in the hope that, by illustrating in this practical way the value of such teaching, it may sooner or later succeed in persuading the town itself, in its corporate capacity, to sanction and adopt the device. Trace back our educational legislation, our reformatory legislation, our charity legislation, to their real source, and you will find yourself standing, before you know it, with one foot across the threshold of the Church. It is significantly written that the blind and the lame came to Jesus "in the temple" to be healed; yes, and it was that very temple where, as a child, he had excused himself for lingering, on the plea that he must be about his Father's business.

That business was a business of which the ancient State knew nothing or next to nothing. That the modern State has accepted so generally the honorable task of attending to it is one of the most signal illustrations of the persuasiveness of the cross. The heathen State was coercive, punitive; it was a terror to evil doers, but it made no effort to win them to a better life. It had no scruple about sending out its decrees that all the world should be taxed; but it would not lift so much as a finger to ease the heavy burdens of the poor. What would a Roman senator, of the year of our Lord one, have said to a proposition to educate all the children of the Empire at the public cost, or to provide homes for the blind, colonies for the epileptic, retreats for the insane?

The propositions which your Conference of Charities and Correction holds to be self-evident, at least practically indisputable, he, the senator, would have accounted not merely fallacious, but pestilent. So much in nineteen centuries has the State gathered from the Church! You do well and wisely to devote one evening of your annual reunion to worship within consecrated walls; for it is to the Church, using the word in that large sense which makes it inclusive

of Judaism before our era as well as of Christianity since, it is to the Church of God philanthropy goes back to find a birthday and a cradle. Moses legislated for the poor, the prophets were their friends, Christ welcomed them to his kingdom and made them sharers of his throne.

But, while this lifting of a burden off from the shoulders of the Church and devolving it, by law, upon the community as a whole, is a step forward, in so far as it not only frees the Church, to a great extent, from the task of "serving tables," and sets it free to give itself "wholly to the word of God and to prayer," but also reads like a glad prophecy of the day when in all respects, as well as in this single one respect, the kingdom of God shall come; there is yet a danger to be feared. Knowing what human nature is, even in Christian countries, we shall do well always to be awake to the peril of a cold, hard, and perfunctory doing of our duty toward the criminal, the orphaned, and the destitute. It will be little to the State's credit. if, after having said to the Church: "Go to! Let me henceforth be almoner and hospital steward, and go thou and pray yonder!" it should be found discharging the functions of these sacred posts in a loveless way, and more in the spirit of Judas, the economist, than of those better-minded disciples who helped Jesus in the distribution of the loaves. And here, again, the Church's responsibility comes in; for who shall warm the State, at such hours of chill collapse, into a better, healthier condition unless she, the Church, lift up her voice, and plead? It is all very well to talk about the absolute and complete severance of religion and the State; but the thing is not possible, least of all possible in a republic, which must, by an irresistible fatality, sink into a "syndicate" the moment the high promptings of the Spirit are disowned.

Churches can be disestablished and disendowed, ecclesiastical hierarchies can be outlawed and overthrown; but not until the father's commandment shall have been rescinded and the mother's law annulled can present-day nations of the sort that make up Christendom repudiate religion, and survive.

Of the famous worthies who in our day have clearly discerned this truth, and through evil report and good report have clung to it, there has been none greater than the statesman the number of whose many years the bell of Hawarden church tolled out on the morning of Ascension Day.

By an interesting coincidence, which future historians will not fail to note, it was in the same little Welsh village that within the short space of two years a great archbishop and a great prime minister came to their deaths. Benson breathed his last before the altar, Gladstone in the castle, the altar, one where the statesman was no stranger, the castle, one where the prelate had ever been a welcome guest. That the head of the Church and the head of the State should within so brief a space of time have been identified in their deaths with one spot seems strikingly significant.

For with Gladstone, from his early days at Oxford down to those latest ones spent in dignified retirement among his books, no subject had such engrossing interest as the one which you and I, moved thereto by the proprieties of the occasion, have been pondering together here to-night. "The State in its Relations with the Church" furnished the title for his earliest book, the State in its relations with the Church supplied the field for no small portion of his political activity, destructive as well as constructive, and to the State in its relation with the Church the ripest thought of his old age was given. Many of his opinions in the course of his long career he had the courage to change; for, as his friend the laureate has it,

"We all are changed by still degrees;

All but the basis of the soul."

But by one tenet he abode from the beginning to the end, abode, because it was, indeed, with him, part of that same "basis of the soul." At eighty-eight, as firmly as at one-and-twenty, he believed with all the strength of his great heart that to fear God and to keep his commandments is as truly a necessity for nations as it clearly is the whole duty of man! Rest, then, O sufferer,

"passed through anguish mortal;

Rest, then, O saint, sublimely free from doubt;

Rest, then, O patient thinker, o'er the portal
Where there is peace for brave hearts wearied out."

III.

Reports from States.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON REPORTS

FROM STATES.

Your Committee on Reports from States has received forty reports out of a possible fifty-two. Most of the delinquents are in States and Territories that have little to report, only four being rich and populous States having important institutions.

The reports are of unusually good quality. For example, the reports of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Idaho, Louisiana, and Ontario, are models of concise statements of progress.

State boards of charities have been established during the year in Louisiana, Iowa, and Washington. The Louisiana Board is provided for in the new State constitution. The Iowa and Washington Boards are State boards of control, as well as boards of charities. The Iowa Board will manage the Normal School and the State University, as well as the charitable institutions.

There are now sixteen State conferences of charities, besides the Southern Conference and the Canadian Conference, both of which have formed preliminary organizations. Two new conferences were organized during the year in Iowa and Maryland; and State conferences are proposed in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. The State conferences are improving from year to year in the quality of their work and in the consequent interest taken in them. They are marked by fewer and shorter papers and more free discussion. More attention is paid to the needs of people living in smaller communities and managing small societies and institutions.

Although this is the "off year" in many States where biennial sessions of the legislature are held, considerable important legislation is reported.

SUMMARY BY SECTIONS.

In accordance with the plan inaugurated last year on suggestion of Mr. F. B. Sanborn, we present a brief summary of the State reports by geographical sections.

THE NORTH ATLANTIC STATES.

State Boards. In Massachusetts the State Board of Lunacy and Charity will undoubtedly be made a State board of charity only, its functions as a board of lunacy being assigned to a new "board of insanity." In New Hampshire the State Board of Charities was cordially indorsed by the last legislature.

The Insane. The trend in the North Atlantic States is in the direction of State boards of lunacy. New York and Pennsylvania already have such boards. The State Board of Insanity" which has been established in Massachusetts will consist of five persons, two of whom must be "experts" in insanity. The board is to have general supervision of all public and private institutions for the insane and feeble-minded, and is to act as a commission in insanity, with powers of discharge and transfer. Building plans must have its approval. Connecticut is considering the question of building another State hospital. In New Hampshire the federation of women's clubs has taken up the matter of the care of the indigent insane, and is moving actively for a reformation.

Epileptics.-The Massachusetts State Hospital for Epileptics has just been opened, but it can provide for only about half of the epileptics now in institutions for insane. The law provides for voluntary commitment of epileptics during treatment. The New Jersey legislature appropriated $10,000 toward establishing an epileptic colony.

Dependent Children.— Connecticut is trying the plan of boardingout children in families instead of enlarging the New Haven County Home, with satisfactory results. In New Jersey a State commission has made an elaborate report on the care of dependent children, and has recommended a "State board of children's guardians to maintain a general supervision over all children adjudged public charges because of destitution," with county branches of the State