As a nation we are nearing our first centennial birthday. A hundred years have come and gone since political freedom was evolved from the womb of civilization. Great as its mission was, great as its results have been, shall the car of progress stop there? Is there nothing more for humanity to accomplish? I tell you there are still mightier and more glorious things to come than human tongue hath spoken or heart conceived. Little did our noble sires imagine what a century would do with what they set in motion. From three to forty millions is a grand, I may almost say a terrible, stride. But with this step we cannot stop. We must open new channels for the expansion of the human soul. Up to this time we have expanded almost wholly in a material and intellectual sense. There is a grander expansion than either of these. Wealth and knowledge have brought us power, but we lack wisdom. To material prosperity and intellectual acquirements there must be added moral purity, and then we shall get wisdom. Everybody appears to live as though this life were all there is of life, and that to get from it the most physical enjoyment were the grand thing to be attained. Wealth has been made almost the sole aim of living, whereas it should only be regarded as the means to a better end; as the means by which to accumulate an immense capital with which to begin life in the next and higher stage of existence; and he or she lives best on earth who does the most for humanity. In this view, what are professing Christians—the churches—doing for the general good to-day? What good can come from preaching without practice, since, though people may be able to say, “All of these have I kept from my youth up,” Christ, when he shall come, will reply to them: “Go sell all thou hath and give to the poor, and come and follow me.” What clergyman in this city dare stand in his pulpit Sunday after Sunday and insist upon such practice? or what one dare to insist that his church should have all things in common? or what one dare to eat with publicans and sinners, or say to the woman, “Neither do I condemn thee.” Or which one of the people dare go to her poor, enslaved and suffering sisters and take them to her heart and home? or be the good Samaritan? I tell you, my friends, beware lest those whom you scorn to know be before you with Christ, who knows the heart. It is not what you pretend that shall make you Christian, but what you do, and if you do right, though the world curse you, yet shall you lay up treasures in Heaven thereby. Therefore, I say that the Christianity of to-day is a failure. It is not the following of Christ, nor the practice of his precepts. True religion will not shut itself up in any church away from humanity; it will not stand idly by and see the people suffer from any misery whatever. It is its sphere to cure all ills, whether moral, social or political. There are no distinctions in humanity. Everything to be truly good and grand,