The preface by Mr. Savage gives the reasons, clearly and concisely, why a book like this is needed. It answers a great demand, and it will supply a serious deficiency. Having had the privilege of reading the contents very thoroughly, I gladly record my satisfaction in the character of the work, my hope of its wide acceptance and use, my appreciation of the author's motives in preparing it. The questions and answers allow of supplementing, of individual handling, of personal direction. It is not a hard-andfast production. There is a large liberty of detail, explanation, and unfolding. The doctrinal positions are in accord with rational religion and liberal Christianity, the critical judgments are based on modern scholarship, and the great aim throughout is to assist an inquirer or pupil to a positive, permanent faith. If any one finds comments and criticisms which at first sight seem needless, let it be remembered that a Unitarian catechism must give reasons, point out errors, and trace causes: it cannot simply dogmatize. I am sure that in the true use of this book great gains will come to our Sundayschools, to searchers after truth, to our cause.

EDWARD A. HORTON.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

This little Catechism has grown out of the needs of my own work. Fathers and mothers have said to me, "Our children are constantly asking us questions that we cannot answer. Perfectly natural! Their reading and study have not been such as to make them familiar with the results of critical scholarship. The great modern revolution of thought is bewildering. This is an attempt to make the path of ascertained truth a little plainer.

This is the call for help in the home. Besides this, a similar call has come from the Sunday-school. Multitudes of teachers have little time to ransack libraries and study large works. This is an attempt, then, t help them, by putting in their hands, in brief compass, the principal things believed by Unitarians concerning the greatest subject.

The list of reference books that follows the questions and answers will enable those who wish to do so to go more deeply into the topics suggested.

It is believed that this Catechism will be found adapted to any grade of scholars above the infant class, provided the teacher has ome skill in the matter of interpretation.

GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass.

Published weekly.

Price $1.50 a year, or 5 cents single copy

Entered at the Post-office, Boston, Mass., as second-class mail matter.

BEING ONE'S SELF.

"Why then of yourselves judge ye not what is right?".

-

LUKE xii. 57.

EVOLUTION everywhere and always consists of a series of progressive changes from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, as the scientific men tell us. That is, it is a series

of changes from the simple to the complex, from sameness to variety. If, for instance, we could have watched the process of growth by which a nebula once became this solar system of ours, we should have seen that the nebula was apparently alike in all its particles and parts; and, by the process of change that went on, at last we had our sun, the planets and their moons, the comets and asteroids, all of these different bodies that make up the solar system. And, if we could have watched the change still further when we came to our earth, we should have seen for a long period of time a molten globe, apparently homogeneous in all its parts. At last, however, land appears, and water, and an atmosphere, and the water is separated and divided, and we have oceans and lakes and rivers and brooks; and the land takes on a variety of forms, and we have plains and valleys and mountains. And not only this, that the land takes on a variety of forms so far as its superficial aspect is concerned ; also there is a series of changes by which in different parts of the earth there are different kinds of soils, and an almost innumerable variety of metals and minerals, granites, flints, precious stones, iron, silver, gold, copper, and all the diversity of ores. The change that has been going on has been from sameness to variety, from simplicity to complexity everywhere.

And, when life appeared on the earth, the first forms were