THE EIGHTIETH MILESTONE AND THE END.

On October 31, 1905, I celebrated my eightieth birthday.  Twelve months earlier, writing to a friend, I said:—­“I entered my eightieth year on Monday, and I enjoy life as much as I did at 18; indeed, in many respects I enjoy it more.”  The birthday gathering took place in the schoolroom of the Unitarian Church, the church to which I had owed so much happiness through the lifting of the dark shadows of my earlier religious beliefs.  Surrounded by friends who had taken their share in the development of my beloved State, I realized one of the happiest times of my life.  I had hoped that the celebration would have helped the cause of effective voting, which had been predominant in my mind since 1859.  By my interests and work in so many other directions—­in literature, journalism, education, philanthropy, and religion—­which had been testified to by so many notable people on that occasion, I hoped to prove that I was not a mere faddist, who could be led away by a chimerical fantasy.  I wanted the world to understand that I was a clear-brained, commonsense woman of the world, whose views on effective voting and other political questions were as worthy of credence as her work in other directions had been worthy of acceptance.  The greetings of my many friends from all parts of the Commonwealth on that day brought so much joy to me that there was little wonder I was able to conclude my birthday poem “Australian spring” with the lines:—­

    With eighty winters o’er my head,
    Within my heart there’s Spring.

Full as my life was with its immediate interests, the growth and development of the outside world claimed a good share of my attention.  The heated controversies in the motherland over the preachings and teaching of the Rev. R. J. Campbell found their echo here, and I was glad to be able to support in pulpit and newspaper the stand made by t he courageous London preacher of modern thought.  How changed the outlook of the world from my childhood’s days, when Sunday was a day of strict theological habit, from which no departure could be permitted!  The laxity of modern life, by comparison is, I think, somewhat appalling.  We have made the mistake of breaking away from old beliefs and convictions without replacing them with something better.  We do not make as much, or as good, use of our Sundays as we might do.  There is a medium between the rigid Sabbatarianism of our ancestors and the absolute waste of the day of rest in mere pleasure and frivolity.  All the world is deploring the secularizing of Sunday.  Not only is churchgoing perfunctory or absent, but in all ranks of life there is a disposition to make it a day of rest and amusement—­sometimes the amusement rather than the rest.  Sunday, the Sabbath, as Alex McLaren pointed out to me, is not a day taken from us, but a day given to us.  “Behold, I have given you the Sabbath!” For what?  For rest for man and beast, but also to be a milestone