The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-06-04
THE HUMAN PROCESSION

MT. Arnold Bennett, the English novelist, is not the only man who has discovered How to Live on Twenty four Hours a Day. Benjamin Fay Mills, the creedless clergyman and apostle of the art of living, shares in that secret, and for sixteen years has devoted himself to the propaganda of the new religion" which enables Christian and Jew, Buddhist and The oosoph1st, atheist and agnostic to meet on common ground. The man whom the late Edward Everett Hale called the most wonderful preacher Tn America, perhaps in the world" was born in RahWay, N. J., ffty-six years ago to-day, and at twenty-one was ordained to the ministry of the Congregational church. His first charge was in Rutland, Vt, and after ward he was for many years an evan gel1st- He was one of the cham p1ons Of Christianity at the worlds congress of religions, held in Chtca- go in connection with the worlds fair. That congress marked the turning point in his career. He heard the great religious teachers of all nations expound their phi1osophies and creeds. Later he listened to Robert Ingerso1I, and came under the spell of that most gifted of American orators. He stud jed the scriptures and sacred works of Buddha and Krishna and Mohammed, the philosophies of Emerson, Confu- cius and Tolstoy, the negations of Voltaire. Renan and Ingersoll. He investigated the work of the liberal congregations and ethical societies. of pr. Adler in New York, pr. Man gasarian in Chicago, Dr. Roberts and his Church of This World. in Kan sas City. The result was that in 1897 MT. Mills left the orthodox church and inaugurated an indepen- dent religious movement in Boston, holding meetings in the Boston Music Hall and the Hollis Street Theatre. as pastor of the First Unitarian Church in the California city, and in 1904 founded the Los Angeles Fellow ship. Since then he has Iectured be- fore large and enthusiastic audiences of all classes of people in most of the important cities of the United, States and Canada He breaches a rational optimism, opposes no religion, and takes his texts from all of them. He is not a faddist or dreamer, but practical man, with a practical phil osophy of work and play, smiles and laughter, good food and fresh air: and sunshine-and more smiles.
 Citizens of the George Junior Re- public at Freevil1e, N. Y.. and similar republics in other sections, will eel ebrate to-day the forty-seventh birth QSAy,l or the IaCners or Che1r country William Reuben George. Daddy George is the afectionate name be- slowed upon him by the youngsters he has helped to help themselves Turning bad kids into good kids has been his principal occupation since 1890. when he took the first bunch of incipient criminals to the country and transf ormed them into useful citizens. The original republic was successful from the first, although at the time of the Bryan campaigns 1t was divided into warning factions by the free tin'' issue, the Demo crats demanding the free coinage of tin at the ratio of sixteen to one. The idea originated by Daddy George has spread all over America, and even to England. In the latter country, Sir Robert Baden-PowelI, head of the Boy Scouts, has recently founded the Wadhurst Republic. in Sussex, where forty-two lads are being taught prac- tica1 agriculture and the principles of government Daddy George Is the head of an association. of junior re- pubIics extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific.