We live in the most important age in the history of the world. No age preceding it was marked with such signal events. No other era in the history of civilization has been characterized by such agitation of human thought; such a universal tendency to investigation; such a general awakening upon all important subjects of human inquiry; such a determination to grow in knowledge, and cultivate the immortal intellect, and mount to higher plains of development. The world of mind is in commotion. All civilized nations are agitated from center to circumference with the great questions of the age. And what does all this prove? Why, that man is a progressive being; that the tendency of the human mind is onward and upward; and that it will not always consent to be bound down in ignorance and superstition. And, thanks to the genius of the age, it is the prophecy of the glorious reformation and regeneration of society,--an index of a happier era in the history of the human race. Old institutions are crumbling, and tumbling to the ground. The iron bands of creeds and dogmas, with which the people have been so long bound down, are bursting asunder, and permitting them to walk upright, and do their own thinking. In every department of science, in every arena of human thought and every theater of human action, we see a progressive spirit, we behold a disposition to lay aside the traditions and superstitions of the past, and grasp the living facts of the age. We everywhere see a disposition to abandon the defective institutions, political and religious, which were gotten up in the childhood of human experience, and supplant them with those better adapted to the wants of the age. In a word, there is everywhere manifested a disposition and determination to unshackle the human body, and set free the human mind, and place it with its living aspirations on the road to the temple of Truth. An evidence of the truth of these statements the reader can gather by casting his eyes abroad, or by reading the periodicals of the day. At this very time nearly all the orthodox churches are in a state of commotion. The growing light and intelligence of the age, penetrating their dark creeds and dogmas, are producing a sort of moral effervescence. The question of "hell" is now the agitating theme of the churches. Posterity will ridicule us, and class us with the unenlightened heathen, for discussing a question so far behind the times, and one so childish and so absurd in this intelligent and enlightened age. To condescend to discuss such a question now must be Well enough for scientific and intelligent minds. And other important religious events mark the age. When the Roman-Catholic Church, through its Ecumenical Council, dragged the Pope from his lofty throne of usurped power, and robbed him of his attribute of infallibility, it proclaimed the downfall of the Pope and the _death-knell_ of the Church. Already thousands of his subjects refuse