To give further effect to its conception of a religious society as a body of workers, bent upon learning by doing and promoting piety by service, the society opens to its members many other fields of education and philanthropic activity. Here the women of the society take a prominent part. Most of the philanthropies are affiliated under a general representative body, known as the Women's Conference. Fortunate in drawing an unusual number of young men to its ranks, the society has a strong Young Men's Union which contributes largely to the support of two neighborhood houses: the Hudson Guild on the West Side, of which Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott, one of Professor Adler's associate lecturers, is the head worker ; and the Down-Town Ethical Society, on the lower East Side. The Union also owns and supports a summer home on its farm of 70 acres at Moun tainville, N. Y., where a farm school is held, and a summer holiday is given to groups of the boys and girls who belong to the Neighborhood clubs. The larger policies and relations of all the 'working bodies of the society are considered and shaped by a Council of Fifty, composed of representatives from all of them. One other event in the history of the society that calls for mention is the recent appointment of Professor Adler to the newly created chair of political and social ethics at Columbia University. As the chair was endowed with a view to Professor Adler's tenure of it at the instigation of some members of the well-known Committee of Fif teen appointed by the chamber of commerce to deal with the social evil in New York, of which committee Professor Adler was an active mem ber, this appointment is a remarkable public tribute to the large public place which the founder of the ethical movement has won for himself and for it.
Early in the history of the society, a number of young men, including William M. Salter and Walter L. Sheldon, were at traded to it, and, after a period of apprentice ship in New York, went forth to found societies in Chicago, Philadelphia and Saint Louis, and across the seas to London. To these have been added organizations in Brooklyn, Newark, the Bronx and Wilmington, Del., the heads and lecturers of these being in New York, Dr. Felix Adler, Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott, Dr. David Saulle Muzzey and Mr. Alfred Martin; in Philadelphia, Mr. E. Burns Weston; in Saint Louis, Mr. Percival Chubb; in Chicago, Mr. Horace J. Bridges; in Brook lyn, Dr. Henry Neumann; in Newark Mr. George E. O'Dell. These American societies, while loosely federated in a union, maintain an individuality of their own, and have developed different forms of activity according to local needs and circumstances. Local settlement work was done in Saint Louis as early as 1889, when Earners' Self Culture Clubs') were established in four sections of the city. They all hold Sunday exercises, which consist for the most part of music, readings and an ad dress. All admit to membership on a simple declaration of devotion to the ethical ends. All
attach great importance to the moral and reli gious education of the young, and maintain well-organized Sunday schools and associations and dubs of young men and young women devoted to the same end and to various kinds of practical work. From the pub lishing and literary headquarters of the Ethi cal Union in New York is issued monthly, The Standard, the organ of the movement. Among the literary products of the American societies are Professor Adler's (The Religion of Duty,' 'Moral Instruction of Children' and 'Life and Destiny,' etc. Mr. Salter's 'Ethical Religion) ; Mr. Sheldon's 'An Ethical Move ment' ; 'An Ethical Sunday School) ; 'Old Testament Bible Stories as a Basis for Ethical Instruction of the Young,' etc., several volumes by Mr. Martin and others.
That the movement initiated in America ex pressed no merely local phase of religious de velopment is evident by its still more rapid spread in Europe. American influences led to the establishment in 1886 of the London Ethical Society with which Professors Muirhead, Bosanquet, Bonar and others, upon whom the ethical influence of Thomas Hill Green of Oxford had been profound, were identified; and under its auspices lectures were given at Toynbee Hall and elsewhere by many men at the universities and in public life who felt the importance of the new ethical propaganda, such as Seeley, Caird, Leslie Stephen, etc. About the same time Dr. Stanton Coit went over from New York to assume (vice Mr. Moncure D. Conway) the leadership of the congregation at South Place Chapel, then renamed the South Place Ethical Society, which, after a brief pastorate, he resigned to push the ethical cause in other ways.
Under his leadership ethical societies multi plied rapidly in London and in the provinces. A union of ethical societies (14 or more), and a moral instruction league (to introduce systematic non-theological, moral instruction into all schools), since become a separate or ganization, were established. There has also been a considerable output of literature. Special mention should be made of the vain able series of books of ethical instruction by Mr. F. J. Gould.
The new movement was finding, meanwhile, favorable soil on the Continent. A centre of activity was established at Berlin, where Pro fessor Gizycld, Prof. William Foerster, and others identified themselves with the cause. Other societies were in time established in Germany, and in Austria at Vienna, in Italy at Venice and Rome, in Switzerland and Ziirich and Lausanne; and in France through the Union pour L'Action Morale (1891) which found spokesmen in M. Emil Desjardins (notably in his-stirring brochure (Le Devoir Present' ), and in other well-known writers. In Germany the movement languished until only a small group in Berlin under the courageous leadership of Professor Foerster became the only noteworthy survivor.