Published weekly. Price $1.50 a year, or 5 cents single copy Entered at the Post-office, Boston, Mass., as second-class mail matter. Life. 237 pages. 1890 1.00 1892 .25 1.00 25 1893 1.00 Four Great Questions concerning God. 86 pp. 1891. Paper MISCELLANEOUS. 1878 Light on the Cloud. 175 pages 1876. Full gilt Sacred Songs for Public Worship. A Hymn and Tune Leather Unitarian Catechism. With an Introduction by E. A. Horton. 20 cents. Per doz., Price. Paper, per copy, Cloth, 1.25 1.50 1.50 .50 .75 1.00 1.50 1.50 2.50 Mr. Savage's weekly sermons are regularly printed in pamphlet form in "Unity Palpit." Subscription price, for the season, $1.50; single copies, 5 cents. GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. LUCY STONE. I SHALL take two texts this morning, one being her own last words, "Make the world better"; and the other from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the eighteenth and nineteenth verses,-"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor: he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." I presume that there are certain people who will feel that my sermon this morning is not properly a sermon, that it ought to be called a lecture, and that the proper time for it is some week-day and the proper place for it somewhere else than in a church. And yet it seems to me that these people must curiously narrow the range of religion, the meaning of preaching, and the scope of the divine work in the world. If I had announced that I would preach on Sarah the wife of Abraham, or Miriam the sister of Moses, or Rebekah or Deborah the prophetess, or Ruth or Naomi, or, coming to the New Testament, on Mary or Martha or Dorcas or any one whose name is mentioned within the lids of the Bible, no one in any of the churches would think that it ought to be called anything but a sermon. Let us rouse ourselves from the spell of the traditions of the past enough to face what is really true. As indicating this kind of feeling, I remember that some years ago a friend told me that Dr. E. E. Hale offended many persons in a church where he preached in another city because he talked about Boston and New York. If he had talked about Jerusalem or Babylon, all would have been well; but there seemed to be a touch of secularism in his speaking of the actual life of the actual world. This, then, is the statement that I wish to make in comparing Lucy Stone with the names of any of the women mentioned in the Bible: that not one of them all ever accomplished a hundredth part for the service of God and the help of humanity that was accomplished by Lucy Stone. Shall we preach about them, then, and call that proper for the church on Sunday, and, if we preach about her, shall we call it secular, and something fit only for another day of the week? I propose at the outset to give you a brief framework of her life, and then I wish, as far as I can, to measure some of the more important changes that have taken place since she began her work up to the time when she laid it down. And, then, I shall ask you to note some of the qualities of this quiet little woman, and see wherein lay the secret of her power. She was born on a farm near the town of West Brookfield in this State, on the 13th of August, 1818. She came of good, sober, earnest New England stock. One of her ancestors was a Revolutionary soldier; and the kind of people that they were is the same kind of people that those of us who have been born and have lived in the country, and know something of the farming life of New England, have been familiar with all our lives. Her father and mother were members in good standing in the Orthodox Congregational church of West Brookfield. You are not to think from what I am about to say that they were poor. They were not poor. They were prosperous, as farmers went in those days. And yet so hard was the life of the women on the farm that Lucy's mother, the night before Lucy was born, milked eight cows, and had undoubtedly accomplished much more inside the house before the rest hour had come. And when little Lucy appeared, and her mother was told that it was a girl, she said: “Oh, I am so sorry! A woman's life is so hard.” Little Lucy herself was a healthy, earnest, studious child. She grew up in an atmosphere of religious life, and became herself, while still a girl, a member of the same church to which her parents belonged. As indicating the intense endowment of independent thoughtfulness which belonged to her, the story is told that she began her attempt to win the right of women to express their opinions even at that early age. One of the deacons of the church was on trial for the crime of sympathizing with the Abolitionists. (This will throw a little light on the Christianity of that day.) He was being tried because he had entertained Abolitionists at his house, and had otherwise showed sympathy with them; and, when the matter of what should be done with him was put to vote, Lucy Stone, in the innocence of her heart, being a church member, and believing she had a right to express her opinion, raised her hand also. Whereupon the minister rose; and, pointing over the heads of the people at her, he said, "Don't you count her." And, when the question was raised as to whether she was not a church member, the reply was, "Yes, but not a voting member." But, six more votes being called for during the meeting, Lucy still raised her hand just the same, though she knew it would not be counted. The father and this indicates that they were not poor,helped her brother to go to college; but, when Lucy expressed the wish to be educated in the same way, his answer was, turning to his wife, "Is the child crazy?" Mrs. Livermore told me the other day, as showing the limit of women's education at that time, that, when she was a girl, she earned a medal, the last and highest thing that a girl could get in any public school. She was then fourteen and a half years old. If she had not gained it at that time, she could have studied till she was sixteen, and then tried again for it; but, having earned the medal at the age of fourteen, the State had nothing more to do with her. In that day there was no school in Massachusetts, no public school, that attempted to educate a girl beyond those simple rudiments that she had already attained at that early age. Little Lucy, in determining to be educated, was obliged to take the matter into her own hands; and as indicating one |