have appeared very terrible to the ignorant fishermen he had to deal with. It may still leave a strongly unpleasant impression on a great many of our ignorant population. Very few sensible people take any stock in John's incoherent, erratic flight of imagination. It may be regarded as a very curious composition of antiquity--senseless, useless, meaningless; admirable in its way, but nothing more than a production of an overwrought, unbalanced, over-stimulated, and over-exalted imagination. We may distinctly perceive the progress that had been made in the evolution of the imagination, in the multiplication of ideas, in the amplification of thought, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to David, from David to Isaiah, from Isaiah to John. The nervous system, the brain, had undergone some modifications among these people, but not of a nature that was likely to be a lasting benefit to humanity. On the contrary, these speculative ideas caused a great deal of friction of thought, bitter quarrels, hatred, crime, and bloodshed. Neighboring nations, who had neither Jehova nor Christ, revealed to us the light of science that never produced a friction nor a quarrel--being based on eternal truth. From the very beginning of their conception to the present day this remains unchanged, unaltered and untouched, a monument of Truths, an inheritance for all future generations. The God-Christ-Holy-Ghost idea has ever been a source of greed, selfishness, intolerance, bigotry, quarrel, hatred, licentiousness, cruelty, and crime. Bickering and quarreling are still going on. And the grasping hand of greed holds the ignorant bigot by the throat to squeeze the last cent out of him, to enrich and aggrandize the most pernicious organization humanity was ever plagued with. Heresy, blasphemy, is as fashionable to-day as it was in the rankest days of popery. Fortunately the civil law reigns supreme, otherwise these ecclesiastical monomaniacs would be at each other's throats. At this stage of scientific civilization, we can afford to look on at the theological quarrels and antics as a result of a nervous craze that is perfectly harmless. After all it is but the physiological effect of an educational training, the development of the faculties and the evolution of the imagination; the brain functions in proportion to the progress made in the culture in general, harmonizing with the times, circumstances, and conditions of the period in which we live. Every age has its turn in the evolution of the mental faculties, and it must go through its stage. The visionary period, the result of a theological hallucination of an over-exalted imagination, can occur only under certain favorable conditions, viz., on the one hand a highly susceptible nervous temperament, a strongly biased educational training, and an enthusiastic excitability, and on the other, an ignorant, bigoted, poor, and helpless population. SHADES OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT.