It came to the stern old Roman with his Saturnalia, when for once in all the year the slave and the plebeian might speak their minds without fear. It came to the dark-eyed Hebrew with his feasts of tabernacles, his feast of the harvest and the vintage, and over his joyaunce a sacred shadow rested, as of One who was over these things, who both made and consecrated the joy. Spirit of joy! Wide as the world! Offspring of heaven! That descendest with airs redolent of thy native home, and comest to give to the toil-worn brickmakers of the earth a little rest! Forgive us, foolish dwellers in the clay, if ofttimes we take thy festal garlands, and drag them in the mire! drunk with the wine of thy pleasures, we turn thy gifts to ashes and to mourning. Come thou, nevertheless! and stay not, turn not away for our folly, come with thy love-light, and smile-light, and make the whole earth green with thy summer of delight. It were a theme worthy of the place and time, if we could sketch out the progress of mankind; to show how God laid the foundations of the human race in the barbaric ages, strong, savage human bodies being the stones thereof; how in due order, order as sure and stately as that of the geologic eras, arose the Roman and the Greek, the types of full developed body and mind together: how in the fullness of time Christianity revealed the mighty powers of heart, conscience and soul, which before were lying dormant in the human race; so that now at last upon us has fallen the task of developing the whole of man,--body, mind, heart, conscience and soul. But my time, if not your patience, fails me: so I leave it as a hint for future thought, and will in conclusion utter a few words of courage and hope for mankind, which each event of to-day seems to strengthen and enlarge. Yes, it is no longer fitting, that for the future we should have few hopers and many fearers. Nay, rather let us all join hands to-day, and form a great Electric Cable of Hope, that shall stretch from sea to sea, from shore to shore. For it is certain, then, that the planet upon which God has placed us, is absolutely well fitted for the development of the human race. The more Science investigates, the more wonderful seems the adaptation of Human Nature to the world in which it is placed. The more refined a man becomes, the more delicate his insight into Nature, the more satisfied, the more overjoyed is he with her exhaustless charms. It is only our sin, our folly, our ignorance, which perpetually befools us, and robs us of our inheritance.