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183 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Bother, Book of Ethical Culture her husband. After Tondbert's death (655) she lived in seclusion at Ely till 660, when for political reasons she consented to a marriage with Egfrid, eldest son of Oswy of Northumbria, at that time a boy of about fourteen. Bede says that although twice married "she preserved the glory of perfect virginity." When Egfrid came to the throne (671), he sought the aid of Wilfrid of York (q.v.) to induce her to take her proper place as queen, but Wilfrid chose to treat the king's wish as impious and a serious quarrel resulted. About 672 Etheldreda received the veil from Wilfrid's hands at the monastery of her aunt, Ebba, at Coldingham. Her husband gave his consent, but after a year, fearing that she was not secure from him, Etheldreda fled to Ely. There, helped by her old friend Wilfrid, she founded a double monastery and spent the remainder of her life in the strictest asceticism. From her name, popularly corrupted into St. Audrey, comes the word " tawdry," used to characterize wares like those sold at St. Audrey's fair. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bede, Hint. acct. iv. 19, 20; W. Bright, Lectures on Early English Church History, pp. 286-289, Oxford, 1897; DNB, aviii. 19-21. ETHERIDGE, JOHN WESLEY: English Meth odist; b. on a farm, four miles from Newport, Isle of Wight, Feb. 24, 1804; d. at Camborne (50 m. w.s.w. of Plymouth), Cornwall, May 24, 1866. He was self-educated, began to preach in 1826, and continued nearly all his life a circuit preacher. Nevertheless his scholarship and learning won him the degree of Ph.D. from Heidelberg in 1847, and he found time to write books of value, the chief being: Horse Aramaicce, notes on the Aramaic dia lects and the Aramaic versions of Scripture with translations of the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle to the Hebrews from the Peshitto (London, 1843); The Syrian Churches, their Early History, Liturgies, anal Literature (1846); The Apostolical Acts and Epistles, from the Peshitto, etc. (1849); Jerusalem and Tiberias . . . a Survey of the Relig ious and Scholastic Learning of the Jews (1856); The Targunts of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel, etc. (2 vols., 1862-65). He wrote also biographies of Adam Clarke and Thomas Coke. BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Smith, Memoir o/ John Wesley Etheridge, London, 1871; DNB, aviii. 45. ETHICAL CULTURE, SOCIETIES FOR Origin and Spread of Movement (§ 1). American Societies (§ 2). Foreign Societies U 3). Aims ($ 4). The ethical movement had its beginning with the establishment in 1876 of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The founder was z. Origin Felix Adler, who was at the time a and Spread lecturer at Cornell University. Un of Move- able to identify himself with orthodox meat. Judaism, he felt the need of a move ment which should gather together the increasing number of the unchurched of all creeds and denominations and unite them on the basis of ethical endeavor. The key-notes of his inaugural address were the appeal to those present to unfurl a new flag of peace and conciliation over the bloody
j battle-grounds where religions had fought in the past; the urgent need of a stronger morality to grapple with moral perils of the hour, and the duty of caring for the weak and oppressed and for the moral education of the young. The motto of the new movement was " deed rather than creed," and it at once undertook practical educational and philanthropic work, such as district nursing, aid to crippled children, tenement-house reform, the establishment of a free kindergarten, etc. These initial undertakings have expanded and multiplied, although, in accordance with its general pioneering policy, the society has dropped such work as new public bodies have been established to promote. Its educational work has been its first care. The free kindergarten has gradually expanded until the large school on Central Park West includes elementary, secondary, and normal training departments. During the first ten years of its life, the movement spread by attracting to it four men, who, after serving their apprenticeship in New York, went forth to establish other societies. William M. Salter established a society in Chicago in 1882, S. Burns Weston one in Philadelphia in 1885, Walter L. Sheldon a third in St. Louis in 1886, while Stanton Coit, after having founded the Neighborhood Guild in New York (the first social settlement in this country), went to England and became the successor of Moncure D. Conway of South Place Chapel, London, and afterward the founder of several ethical societies in England and -the recognized head of the ethical movement there. Contemporaneously with the establishment of the first ethical society by Stanton Coit, there was established in England a London Ethical Society, among whose members were Bernard Bosanquet, Professors J. H. Muirhead, J. S. Mackenzie, G. F. Stout, Mrs. Sophie Bryant, and among other lecturers, Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Leslie Stephen, John Seeley, and Edward Caird. Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt is associate lecturer of the Chicago Ethical Society, which also includes on its staff of lecturers Prof. Charles Zueblin of the University of Chicago and Miss Jane Addams of Hull House. In addition to the four American societies named, there is a society in Brooklyn, N. Y., and branches of the New York society in the Bronx, Harlem, and Washington Heights. The number of the actually enrolled adherents is 2,057, to which the New York society contributes over 1,100. Various scattered adherents are attached to the movement as non-resident members of the New York society.
The New York society which naturally tends to become a type and model, is governed and administered by a board of trustees numbering z. American thirty and an advisory council of fifty.
Societies. In addition to its leader, Felix Adler, it has seven associate leaders, viz., John Lovejoy Elliott, Percival Chubb, Leslie Willie Sprague, Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, David Saville Muzzey, and Henry Moskowitz, and as especial assistant Alfred W. Martin. Among the more im portant organizations are: the Sunday School, of which John L. Elliott is the superintendent, and a system of supplementary ethical classes for young men, young women, and adults; the Women's Con-