CHARLES SUMNER, an American lawyer and senator. Born in Boston, Mass., January 6, 1811; died, March 11, 1874. From his "Prophetic Voices Concerning America." By permission of Messrs. Lee & Shepard, Publishers, Boston. Before the voyage of Columbus in 1492, nothing of America was really known. Scanty scraps from antiquity, vague rumors from the resounding ocean, and the hesitating speculations of science were all that the inspired navigator found to guide him. GREATEST EVENT. The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is the greatest event of secular history. Besides the potato, the turkey, and maize, which it introduced at once for the nourishment and comfort of the Old World, and also tobacco--which only blind passion for the weed could place in the beneficent group--this discovery opened the door to influences infinite in extent and beneficence. Measure them, describe them, picture them, you can not. While yet unknown, imagination invested this continent with proverbial magnificence. It was the Orient, and the land of Cathay. When, afterward, it took a place in geography, imagination found another field in trying to portray its future history. If the golden age is before, and not behind, as is now happily the prevailing faith, then indeed must America share, at least, if it does not monopolize, the promised good.--_Ibid._ THE DOUBTS OF COLUMBUS. Prof. DAVID SWING, a celebrated American preacher. Born in Cincinnati in 1830; graduated at Miami University in 1852; was for twelve years Professor of Languages at this university. In 1866 he became pastor of a Presbyterian church in Chicago. He was tried for heresy in 1874, was acquitted, and then withdrew from the Presbyterian church, being now independent of denominational relations. Columbus was not a little troubled all through his early life lest there might be over the sea some land greater than Spain, a land unused; a garden where flowers came and went unseen for ages, and where gold sparkled in the sand. THE ERROR OF COLUMBUS. From a sermon by Prof. SWING, printed in Chicago _Inter Ocean_,1892.