Let us manfully, though sadly, give up a share for scientific progress (which is not an imaginary thing); and, on looking into it, let us reflect on the bitterness of that irony which so often leaves us to utter the word _equality_, coupled with that other word, _fraternity_, which is just as little understood. Hospitals will not answer the end for which they were instituted until the smallest of those who flee hither to hide their misery and sufferings obtain the same respect, deference, and care lavished on the man who owns a yearly income. Some time ago, a woman afflicted with an internal disease was carried to a hospital. The head-doctor examined her on the following morning, and immediately concluded that her case was too grave to be remedied. He declared any attempt made to operate on her would prove fatal and hasten death; the only thing he could do was to prescribe lenients, in order to alleviate intense agony so long as life held out. The young students around him urgently insisted on the operation being performed; whereupon the physician, turning towards them, and finding expostulation unprofitable, said: "If this patient were my wife, gentlemen, I should not attempt what you suggest, I should leave her in peace; you must, therefore, not expect me to do otherwise by this woman...." Such words as these should be engraved in letters of gold on the hearts of all practitioners. THE POOR MAN'S DEATH. A fact that has often been set forth by Christianity is that the secrets of man are revealed on his death-bed. Then it is that every syllable he utters, every motion of his spirit, are full of significance. The smallest sign is a ray of light by which a whole lifetime can be read; and, if the amount of faith in a man is thus disclosed, how easy it is to compute the amount of faith in a nation from what is supplied by observation in so many single cases! _O mors! bonum est judicium tuum!_--O death! thy judgments are equitable! No man is better qualified than the priest to look into this matter. A large portion of his time is spent by the dying, and my own personal experience has confirmed me in the following observations. The most striking features as regards faith in the dying are moral dejection and an almost total absence of hope. These are the inevitable consequences of the efforts which have for some time been made to uproot religious principle from the hearts of the people. It is no wonder that hope fled with her divine sister, faith. Can any thinker form a notion of the state of a man who has been down-trodden all his life, who has been looked on as a bearer of burdens and a _misérable_, and who has nothing to hope for in a future state? We read in Holy Writ that, when the waters of the deluge began to decrease, and Noe looked out of his ark after his arduous struggle with the elements, he saw a dove, bearing an olive-branch, fly towards him; the bird was the herald of good news, the harbinger of future deliverance.