There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life: Reciprocity is that word.

When the ancestors of the four Christian Congressmen were barbarians, when they lived in caves, gnawed bones, and worshiped dry snakes, the infamous Chinese were reading these sublime sentences of Confucius. When the forefathers of these Christian statesmen were hunting toads to get the jewels out of their heads to be used as charms, the wretched Chinese were calculating eclipses and measuring the circumference of the earth. When the progenitors of these representatives of the "American system of religion" were burning women charged with nursing devils, these people, “incapable of being influenced by the exalted character of our civilization," were building asylums for the insane.

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Superstition.

Superstition has done enough harm already.

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* They have chained the Andromeda of joy to the cold rock of ignorance and fear, there to be devoured by the dragon of superstition.

The moment the idea is abandoned that everything in this universe is natural-that all phenomena are the necessary links in the endless chain of being-the conception of history becomes impossible that the ghost of the present is not the child of the past; the present is not the mother of the future. In the domain of superstition all is accident and caprice. Nothing happens by accident; nothing happens by chance.

Are men restrained by superstition? Are men re

strained by what you call religion? I used to think they were not; now I admit they are. No man has ever been restrained from the commission of a real crime, but from an artificial one he has. There was a man who committed murder. They got the evidence, but he confessed that he did it,

"Did you

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'What did you do it for?" Money." get any money?" "Yes." "How much?" cents." "What kind of a man was he?" "A laboring man I killed." "What did you do with the money?" "I bought liquor with it." "Did he have anything else?" "I think he had some meat and bread." "What did you do with that?" "I ate the bread and threw away the meat; it was Friday." So you see it will restrain in some things.

Whoever is superstitious is not quite civilized. Superstition is a souvenir of the animal world. Fear is the dungeon of the soul. Superstition is the dagger by which manhood is assassinated.

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What Civilization Owes to Great Discoverers and Thinkers.

The discovery of America whose shores were trod by the restless feet of adventure and the people of every nation-out of this strange mingling of facts and fancies came the great Republic. Every fact has pushed a superstition from the brain and a ghost from the cloud. Every mechanical art is an educator; every loom, every reaper, every mower' every steamboat, every locomotive, every engine, every press, every telegraph is a missionary of science and an apostle of progress; every mill,

every furnace with its wheels and levers, in which something is made for the convenience, for the use and the comfort and the well-being of man, is my kind of church, and every schoolhouse is a temple. Education is the most radical thing in this world. To teach the alphabet is to inaugurate a revolution; to build a schoolhouse is to

Thomas A Edison

construct a fort; every library is an arsenal filled with the weapons and ammunition of progress; every fact is a monitor with sides of iron and a turret of steel. I thank the inventors and discoverers. I thank Columbus and Magellan. I thank Locke and Hume, Bacon and Shakspeare. I thank Fulton and Watts, Franklin and

Morse, who made lightning the messenger of man. I thank Luther for protesting against the abuses of the church, but denounce him because he was an enemy of liberty. I thank Calvin for writing a book in favor of religious freedom, but I abhor him because he burned Servetus. I thank the Puritans for saying that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, and yet I am compelled to admit that they were tyrants themselves. I thank Thomas Paine because he was a believer in liberty.

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The Future.

We do not say that we have discovered all; that our doctrins are the all in all in truth. We know of no end

to the development of man. We can not unravel the infinite complications of matter and force. The history of one monad is as unknown as that of the universe; one drop of water is as wonderful as all the seas; one leaf, as all the forests; and one grain of sand, as all the htores.

We

We are not endeavoring to chain the future, but to free the present. We are not forging fetters for our children, but we are breaking those our fathers made for us. are the advocates of inquiry, of investtgation and thought. This of itself is an admission that we are not perfectly satisfied with all our conclusions. Philosophy has not the egotism of faith. While superstition builds walls and creates obstructions, science opens all the highways of thought. We do not pretend to have circumnavigated everything, and to have solved all difficulties, but we do believe that it is better to love men than to fear gods.

We are laying the foundations of a grand temple of the future not the temple of all the gods, but of all the people-wherein, with appropriate rites, will be celebrated the religion of Humanity. Wc are doing what little we can to hasten the coming of the day when society shall cease producing millionaires and mendicants--gorged indolence and famished industry-truth in rags, and superstition robed and crowned.

Nature, so far as we can discern, without passion and without intention, forms, transforms, and re-transforms forever. She neither weeps nor rejoices. She produces man without purpose, and obliterates him without regret. She knows no distinction between the beneficial and the hurtful. Poison and nutrition, pain and joy, life