to complete the operation could only hasten death. So the patient had to linger on in almost unimaginable torture, knowing that the pain could only end in death, seeing her relatives worn out by watching, and agonised at the sight of her sufferings, and yet compelled to live on from hour to hour, till at last the anguish culminated in death. Is it possible for any one to believe that it would have been wrong to have hastened the inevitable end, and thus to have shortened the agony of the sufferer herself, and to have also-spared her nurses months of subsequent ill-health. It is in such cases as this that euthanasia would be useful. It is, however, probable that all will agree that the benefit conferred by the legalisation of euthanasia would, in many instances, be very great; but many feel that the objections to it, on moral grounds, are so weighty, that no physical benefit could countervail the moral wrong. These objections, so far as I can gather them, are as follows:-- Life is the gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and must only be taken back by the giver of life.* * We, of course, here, have no concern with theological questions touching the existence or non-existence of Deity, and express no opinion about them. Euthanasia is an interference with the course of nature, and is therefore an act of rebellion against God. Pain is a spiritual remedial agent inflicted by God, and should therefore be patiently endured. _Life is the gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and must only be taken back by the Giver of life_. This objection is one of those high-sounding phrases which impose on the careless and thoughtless hearer, by catching up a form of words which is generally accepted as an unquestionable axiom, and by hanging thereupon an unfair corollary. The ordinary man or woman, on hearing this assertion, would probably answer--"Life sacred? Yes, of course; on the sacredness of life depends the safety of society; anything which tampers with this principle must be both wrong and dangerous." And yet, such is the inconsistency of the thoughtless, that, five minutes afterwards, the same person will glow with passionate admiration at some noble deed, in which the sacredness of life has been cast to the winds at the call of honour or of humanity, or will utter words ot indignant contempt at the baseness which counted life more sacred than duty or principle. That life is sacred is an undeniable proposition; every natural gift is sacred, _i e._, is valuable, and is not to be lightly destroyed; life, as summing up all natural gifts, and as containing within itself all possibilities of usefulness and happiness, is the most sacred physical possession which we own. But it is _not_ the most sacred thing on earth. Martyrs slain for the sake of principles which they could not truthfully deny; patriots who have died for their country; heroes who have sacrificed themselves for others' good;--the very flower and glory of humanity