Cyrus H. McCormick was not only the inventor of a great labor-saving device, but he helped his fellow-man in other ways. Philanthropy, religion, education, journalism, and politics received a share of his attention. More than thirty years ago he was already an active power for good in the councils of his church. In 1859 he proposed to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to endow with $100,000 the professorships of a theological seminary, to be established in Chicago. This was done, and during his lifetime he gave about half a million dollars to this institution--the Theological Seminary of the Northwest. The McCormick professorship of natural philosophy in the Washington and Lee University of Virginia, and gifts to the Union Theological Seminary at Hampden-Sidney, and to the college at Hastings, Neb., also attest his solicitude for the church in which he had been reared and of which he had been a member since 1834. In 1872 he came to the aid of the struggling organ of the Presbyterian Church in the Northwest, the _Interior_, and used it to foster union between the Old and the New Schools in the church, to aid in harmonizing the Presbyterian Church in the North and South, to advance the interests of the Theological Seminary, and to promote the welfare of the Presbyterian Church in the Northwest. Under his care and advice the _Interior_ grew to be a mighty voice, expressing the convictions, the aspirations, and hopes of a great church. [Illustration: Thomas A. Edison.] IX. THOMAS A. EDISON. [Illustration: Edison's Paper Carbon Lamp.]