It may be safely asserted that many people, especially in America, where food is abundant and the style of living luxurious, "dig their own graves with their teeth." Americans, as we all know, are disposed to live fast, and of course die prematurely. In short, we are a sanguine, impatient people; have morbid appetites, crave rich viands, seek wealth and office, and care for little else. In our successes we commit excesses. In the pure elixir of life we infuse drops of poison. Yet Nature proffers us the gift of long life, and waits our acceptance with a patient spirit. Though extreme longevity may not be desirable, yet many more than now do, might attain to the dignity of centenarians, if they would but live in obedience to physical law. In the elements of his physical nature, man is truly "of the earth earthy." Chemists say that a man of ordinary size is composed of forty pounds solid matter and five buckets of water, all of which may be converted into gas. However this may be, man is a delicate piece of mechanism, a combination of divine inventions. For example, his eye is a telescope, which penetrates the mysteries of the stars; his ear is a drum, which repeats every sound in nature; his heart a timepiece, which marks, with measured beat, the fleeting moments of his life; his vocal organs a harp with a thousand strings, which is capable of uttering the divinest music. And yet man in his moral nature, though created but "a little lower than the angels," is a profound puzzle. He advances many theories, questions even divine truth, yet believes in absurdities. Nor need we marvel at this, perhaps, when we recall the fact that mankind speak more than three thousand different languages, and profess more than one thousand different religions. Whether regarded as a common brotherhood, or as composed of distinct races, it is evident that the human family have made rapid advancement in the amelioration of their condition during the last century, through the instrumentalities of a world-wide commercial intercourse, and the consequent diffusion of nobler incentives to action. Yet of the one thousand millions that compose the great family of man, more than six hundred millions are still groping their way in the darkness of a moral midnight, awaiting the advent of the school-master and the promulgation of a purer and holier faith. Even in Christian countries, especially in the South-American States, and in many parts of Europe, the masses are almost universally illiterate and superstitious, and have so long been accustomed to oppression that they have become quite indifferent, if not insensible, to their natural rights; nor dare they, if they would, assert their manhood.