OF THE Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting OF PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS, HELD AT LONGWOOD, CHESTER CO., PA. 1886. "Serves best the Father he who best serves men, ADVANCE STEAM-POWER PRINT, REPORT. FIFTH-DAY MORNING. The Thirty-fourth Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends convened in the Meeting-house at Longwood, Chester County, Penn., on Fifth-day the 3rd of Sixth Month, 1886, at 10.30 o'clock, a. m. The Presiding Clerk, MR. HINCKLEY, read the Annual Call as follows: The Thirty-fourth Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends will be held at Longwood, Pa., near Rosedale Station, on the Philadelphia & Baltimore Central R. R., on Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh days, the 3rd, 4th and 5th of Sixth Month (June) 1886. The struggle for freedom still continues, the fellowship of the spirit is still an ideal, the supremacy of character is still questioned. We must look out, and on, and up, if we would see the light. We must feel that "The Past and the Time to be are one, And both are Now," if we would make the world better for our living in it. All interested in the search for the better life are cordially invited to attend the meeting and take part in its discussions. FREDERIC A. HINCKLEY, Clerks. MARY M. BAILY, After singing by Mrs. E. Mendenhall-"The Choice"-Mr. Hinckley, made the following address: One of our dearest American poets, friends, has sung "Oh, what is so rare as a day in June ?" This is not exactly one of the ideal June days, and yet I am sure that spite of the clouds and rain nothing is so rare as this day in June, when, after months of separation you and I meet on this historic spot and in this garden of nature to take counsel concerning great thoughts and great feelings which we cherish in common. I remember in a club to which I belonged in Boston, we once had a meeting where a very much loved and venerated minister, who sometimes dreams when he speaks-gets off his feet as we say and up into the air-entertained us in a poetic strain for a good while and that after he was done a commonsense sort of Englishman said, "I never can understand what the Doctor says; I don't think he understands it himself; but somehow, it always makes me feel good to hear him." Now I think if we do not fully understand each other in all we may say during the sessions of this meeting; if we do not thoroughly comprehend and solve the questions we discuss; we shall all be made to feel good by coming here; we shall all go away feeling better because we have been here. The fellowship of the spirit as we understand it to-day never could exist under the old forms, where the terror of some future punishment or the whip of some creed was held over man; when he was told you must go this way or that way simply because the creed says so, or the church says so, or the Bible says so, or something else or somebody else says so. That is not the condition of things in which we meet here. We are here in the spirit of the largest liberty. We are here to tell the truth as it is given us to see it without reservation. We believe in saying just what we think; we believe in trusting the human mind to go alone fearlessly in all the lines of investigation and to report as fearlessly what it finds, or thinks it finds, to be true, Because we meet in this love of, and devotion to, free thought, we have the foundation laid upon which to build the true fellowship of humanity. We are here also to emphasize the idea of duty, of obedience to, and service of, the moral order. Not that some authority back of us or before us has said, this you must do or this you must not do, but because there is something within us which affirms that right is right and wrong is wrong and that the highest function of a man is to pursue the right and stand by it regardless of |