Stephen Langton and the barons of England protested against the tyrannical power of King John. They did so at the peril of their heads. Yet they were possessed of this spirit of contemporaneous rebellion, and they fought against John and won from him that great charter of the liberties of men, that has been the basis of all proclamations of freedom ever since. Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Milton, and the other great commoners and democrats of England were in a state of contemporaneous protest and rebellion against the undue pretensions of King Charles I. Their protests might have cost them their lives--yet they protested. And they won a victory that has made republics possible throughout all time. So with the leaders of the French Revolution. There were many awful and bloody events connected with that great act of contemporaneous protest, but that the ultimate outcome upon mankind has been good most true-hearted thinkers agree. Yet the protests were made by the earlier agitators under great danger. When Patrick Henry, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and the other American revolutionists protested against King George's tyranny, and when the noble band met at Philadelphia and signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew they did it at the peril of their lives--yet they protested and won for mankind the victory that Joaquin Miller calls "Time's burst of Dawn." Had Langton, Cromwell, the French Revolutionists, Washington, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence failed, they would all have forfeited their lives for their temerity. It was an act of great moral courage to rebel. When Galileo rebelled against the dictum of the ecclesiastic authorities in regard to the movement of the earth, it meant his imprisonment, yet he rebelled and thus ushered in a new day of advancement in astronomical knowledge. Darwin did the same. Both men required daring and courage, yet they did not hesitate or falter. There are evils to-day that should be fought; fashions, customs, entrenched wrongs in existence _now_ against which manly men are called to be in contemporaneous rebellion. Those of us who live to-day are reaping great and blessed privileges, freedom, liberties, won for us as the result of the protests, rebellions, warfares of the moral heroes of the past; so should we further the progress of the world by protesting and fighting the existing wrongs, in order that future generations may be freer than we are, and may push on still further the glorious chariot of human progress.