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If we may be said to have a test, it is one that applies to the heart and the life, not to the head, nor of its speculations. Our platform is broad as Humanity and comprehensive as Truth. * We open the door to all who recognize the Equal Brotherhood of the Human Family, without regard to sex, color or condition, and who acknowledge the duty of defining and illustrating their faith in God by lives of personal purity and works of beneficence and charity to mankind. ** We do not seek to bind our Association together with external bands nor by agreement in theological opinions. Identity of object, oneness of spirit in respect to the practical duties of life, the communion of soul with soul in a common love of the beautiful and true, and a common aspiration after moral excellence, these are our bonds of union; and when these shall die out in our hearts, nothing will remain to hold us together; and those who come after us will not be subjected to the trouble of tearing down a great ecclesiastical edifice constructed by us before they can make provision for the supply of their own religious

wants.

The name of our Association is suggestive of its history and principles. As a sign of our adherence to the great moral testimonies which the Society of Friends have so long professed, as well as for historical reasons, we have adopted in part the name chosen by Fox, Penn and other reformers of a past generation, for the Societies which they founded. The term "Progressive" is intended as a recognition of the fact that our knowledge of truth is limited, and as an indication of an honest purpose on our part to avail ourselves of whatever new light may be shed upon our path. ***

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As a Yearly Meeting we disclaim all disciplinary authority, whether over individual members or local Associations. * * * It will be our aim to cherish freedom of thought and speech on every subject relating to man's highest welfare. * * We know no question too sacred for examination, nor in respect to which human reason should yield to human authority however ancient or venerable.

Dear Friends! are these ideas of a church Utopian? Are

we dreamers and enthusiasts? or is the day, foretold by ancient prophets and bards, beginning to dawn upon our darkness and to light the dull horizon with its reviving rays? Are we always to walk amid shadows and shams? Do we not hear the voice of God speaking to us in the deep silence of our souls, and uttering itself in the events that are passing before us, bidding us awake from our slumbers, to cast away our doubts, and purify ourselves for the work of building up a pure Christianity upon the earth? Are not the fields everywhere white unto harvest? And are there not all around us men and women whose hearts God hath touched with holy fire, and who stand ready to enlist in this glorious cause? What if our numbers are few, and the hosts of superstition and sin stand in menacing array? What are these, when we know that the truth we promulgate is "a part of the celestial machinery of God," and that, "whoso puts that machinery in gear for mankind hath the Almighty to turn his wheel?"

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Signed on behalf of the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends, held at Old Kennett, Chester Co., Pa., by adjournments from the 22nd to the 25th of Fifth month, 1853.

JOSEPH A. Dugdale,
SIDNEY PEIRCE,

Clerks.

MISS AMANDA M. TURNER sang from "The Holy City""Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath for him.”

The Presiding Clerk, FREDERIC A. HINCKLEY, delivered the commemorative address here given:

COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS.

BY FREDERIC A. HINCKLEY.

I salute Longwood! I salute my comrades among the living! I salute the consecrating memories of our saints! I feel the touch of reverence as in her name, and your name, and their name, I look forth from the summit of the years.

Half a century has come and gone since the "General Re

ligious Conference," which gave birth to this Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends, was held in the old Kennett Meetinghouse, near Hamorton. How many changes, public and private, have taken place in that time! How many old conditions have gone; how many new conditions have come! How our own and the nation's social ideals have been exalted! Into this movement our fathers went-enveloped of it we appear to-day, in the profound conviction that beneath and within all outward forms and expressions; deeper than all material defeats and successes

"Th' eternal step of Progress beats

To that great anthem, calm and slow,
Which God repeats."

What was the call which summoned this movement into being? What the mood in which that call was answered? What has been the spirit of its life? What the methods of its expression? and what is the true way in which to celebrate its golden anniversary? These are the questions which I am to try to answer now.

FIRST, OF THE CALL.

When this meeting was organized, fifty years ago, four millions of human beings were held in bondage in this country, because of the color of their skin. Under that system which John Wesley had declared "the sum of all villainies," and which had made Jefferson say, "I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just," men, women and children were sold on the auction block, husbands and wives were separated from each other, the learning of the alphabet was forbidden, and the passions of men were often allowed to break down the sanctities of life. It had long been claimed by the owners of slaves that it was there right to follow runaways into the free States, seize them wherever found and carry them back into slavery. At the time of which we are speaking, the fugitive slave bill, which had been enacted by Congress, and approved by the President, for the purpose of legalizing the pursuit and rendition of fugitive slaves, was three years old. It was one year before Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston, marched down State Street under circumstances of the greatest ex

citement, and carried back to slavery. It was about one year before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the beginning of the struggle to make Kansas a free State. It was three years before the assault on Sumner in the Senate chamber and the Fremont campaign. It was six years before the attack on Harper's Ferry, and the martyrdom of John Brown. It is difficult for those whose memories do not go back so far, to imagine the intensity of feeling with which the slave-holder was pushing his institution forward into new territory and into larger recognition by the National Government. It is difficult for such to realize how indifferent to all moral considerations the North, under the spell of pecuniary interests, was; and what a degree of heroism was required on the part of the little company who thought it an imperative duty to plead for immediate emancipation, and to help on in every way possible the flight of runaway slaves toward freedom. It required a ride of only a dozen miles from this neighborhood to reach the soil of a slave State, and when fugitives were pushing on toward a land of liberty they were very likely to cross the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Of course, that great systematic movement to pass fugitives from one point to another with all the assistance possible, which was called the Underground Railroad, found a field of active operations in this vicinity. The Longwood Yearly Meeting had in it from the first men and women who were very active at the risk of their lives in this work, and the youngest here, have heard told again and again the heroic history of those days. Such was the condition of the chattel slave question, and such the heroic quality which pervaded the atmosphere when this movement first came into being.

It was also a period of much agitation of the ever old and yet ever new Temperance question. The Maine Liquor Law was about two years old, and a growing and vigorous attempt was being made to supplement moral suasion with legal suasion. The evils of the drink habit and the pandering to vice and crime of the drink traffic were being everywhere felt and emphasized. And there were many men and women

among reformers throughout the country, and a large share of them through this region, who felt that it was a duty of the first importance to do what could be done to abolish intemperance as a twin evil of slavery itself.

Another of the great evils always recognized among Friends is found in war. It was in 1845, eight years before the birth of this movement, that Mr. Sumner delivered his epoch-making oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations," which became at once one of the text-books of the Peace agitation. It was only about two years later that the country was stirred by the war with Mexico in a way that served to quicken anew the consciences of those who opposed the trial by battle, and stood for the desirability and the entire feasibility of the appeal to reason. War is an unmitigated evil; the method of peace, the only heavenly way-that was a sentiment which found many advocates among those who were to be fathers and mothers of what we like to call to-day the Longwood Movement.

There was also a growing sensitiveness to the barriers which stood in the way of womankind. The general feeling that woman's sphere should be limited to the home was being questioned. Five years before the beginning of this movement the first Woman's Rights Convention had been held at Seneca Falls, under the leadership of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That convention had affirmed that woman should have an equal opportunity with man in the world of education, in industrial and professional life, and that she should exercise with him the sovereignty of citizenship. The ideas concerning the place of woman in the world are so different now from what they were then, it is hard to appreciate the change which has taken place. It was the dawn of a growing conviction in those times that woman is neither inferior nor superior to man, but an equal by his side. Within fifty years wherever intelligence and conscience prevailed, the words subjection and subordination were to be buried out of sight, and the words equality and mutuality were to take their places. The thought which Tennyson had sung so beautifully