Brethren by procreation, but by destiny foes, as we behold them there the so-called New and Old thus so strangely brought together, naturally enough we ask ourselves, Whence came the one, and whither tends the other? Whence came these dusky denizens of the forest, and for how many thousands of ages has the feeble light of their intelligence struggled with the darkness, dimly flickering, now gathering strength, now falling back into dense obscurity; how long and in what manner has the divine spark thus wrestled with its environment? And whither tends this fierce flame of human advancement which just now bursts its ancient boundaries, sweeps across the Sea of Darkness, absorbs all lesser lights, and dazzles and consumes a hemisphere of souls? More especially, when we look back toward what we are accustomed to call the beginning, and mark the steady advance of knowledge, the ever-increasing power of mind; when we consider the progress of even the last half century, and listen to the present din and clatter of improvement, do we raise our eyes to the future and ask, Whither tends all this? Whither tends with so rapidly accelerating swiftness this self-begetting of enlightenment, this massing of human acquirements; whither tends this perpetually increasing domination of the intellectual over the material? Within the past few thousand years we have seen our race emerge from barbarism, and notwithstanding the inherent tendency to evil ever present in our natures, we have seen mankind put on civilization and accept for their faith Christianity, the purest and highest type of religion. We have seen nations cease somewhat their hereditary growlings, and brutal blood-sheddings, and mingle as brethren; we have seen wavy grain supplant the tangled wildwood, gardens materialize from the mirage, and magnificent cities rise out of the rocky ground. Thus we have seen the whole earth placed under tribute, and this mysterious reasoning intelligence of ours elevating itself yet more and more above the instincts of the brute, and asserting its dominion over nature; belting the earth with an impatient energy, which now presses outward from every meridian, widening its domain as best it may toward the north and toward the south, building equatorial fires under polar icebergs. All this and more from the records of our race we have seen accomplished, and yet do see it; civilization working itself out in accordance with the eternal purposes of Omnipotence, unfolding under man's agency, yet independent of man's will; a subtile, extraneous, unifying energy, stimulated by agencies good not more than by agencies evil, yet always tending in its results to good rather than to evil; an influence beyond the reach or cognizance of man, working in and round persons and societies, turning and overturning, now clouding the sky with blackness and dropping disorder on floundering humanity, but only to be followed by a yet