There is left the most important of all questions which I have raised—­the continued connection of this church with the Unitarian denomination.  It is to me an occasion for surprise that some of you should have imagined that I was desiring, or expecting, action on this matter 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 indefinite period.  By the inward consent of converted minds, or the outward logic of inexorable events, this problem will be settled in due time, and with perfect amity and concord.