The latest period in Unitarian hymnody, covering the last half-century, is notable for the productions of two writers, Rev. Marion Franklin Ham (1867-1957) and Rev. John Haynes Holmes, (1879-still living). Although he had published a volume of poems in 1896 Dr. Ham did not begin to write hymns until 1911, but thereafter he produced a succession of beautiful religious lyrics, eight or ten of which have come into use. Some of them are utterances of a profound mystical insight akin to that of Eliza Scudder, but others are expressions of a world-wide theism, and one has been translated into Japanese. Rev. John Haynes Holmes has been a more prolific writer, author of about 45 hymns, many written for special occasions, but 10 or 15 others have come into general and widespread use. His hymns are in a quite different key from those of Dr. Ham’s quiet mysticism, generally being stirring calls to social justice and the service of mankind, though a few are hymns of gratitude for the simple joys of life. While he has infrequently attained the felicity of phrasing which results in a memorable line his hymns are cast in vigorous and often stirring verse, expressing a noble altruism and a wholesome attitude towards life. M. F. Ham and J. H. Holmes are the latest notable figures in this era of 150 years since the beginning of American Unitarian hymnody, throughout which scores of lesser writers have also contributed their offerings to the main stream. These writers are far too numerous to name in this outline sketch but their thumbnail biographies and notations as to their hymns will be found in the following catalogue. A survey of this whole era discloses the evolution in liberal religious thought from the period when the emphasis was on the sinfulness of man and the redemptive function of the Christian Church, to the vision of a world wide religion taking in many forms, and manifested in that service of mankind which found expression in the “social gospel” in the first half of this century. The production of so great a number of fine hymns (and of a long series of hymn books of a superior type) over so long a period, by persons belonging to one of the smallest Protestant denominations, commonly considered coldly intellectual rather than emotional in its approach to religion, is a phenomenon unique in the history of hymnody. When the first edition of the _Pilgrim Hymnal_ was published in 1910 it listed both the nationality and the church membership of the authors included, which led to the disclosure that nearly half the American authors were Unitarians who had contributed considerably more than half the hymns of American authorship. In answer to critics Dr. Washington Gladden replied that this was due to the simple fact that the Unitarians had written a larger number of the best hymns than had the American writers in other denominations.