is likely to lose or gain by that modification of religious beliefs, wherein only the truth shall remain. If we cannot foretell this future condition with certainty, it is largely foreshadowed by past and present experience. What the world has lost in the modification of religious beliefs, would be hard to find, what it has gained would take volumes to recount. In the most important of all human interests, liberty of person, liberty of conscience, and liberty of speech, there has been, as yet, no adequate acknowledgement by mankind of the great services of the silent and avowed skepticism which brought about the consummation of these blessings. The writings of Moses, the recorded wisdom of Solomon, the encyclicals of popes, and the sermons of bishops and priests, both Protestant and Catholic, in their rising up of the lowly, in their encouragement of brotherhood, and in that exact and even justice to all men, so far as their practical services to humanity in these directions can be measured, sink into an empty insignificance, when compared with those organic declarations and laws, upon which this great republic was founded, and which were the outcome and product of a then recent enlightenment, due to the combined efforts of European skeptical writers, who by their genius of sarcasm and incisive argument, were disturbing the old theological modes of thought, and awaking the world to wide strides in rationalism. That these new American rules of political equality, beacons of liberty for men to follow and admire, obtained their inspiration and incentive from those new lights in literature, which, at that time, were stirring the world of thought, there can be no question. In these famous American documents, were embodied the practical carrying out of principles, enunciated, and suggested by the European writers, and the most active of the men engaged in the noble work of forming the new government, are known to have been disciples of these leaders of anti-theologic thought. Our Declaration of Independence and Federal Constitution, stand, to-day, grand achievements of modern scientific thought, and conspicuous triumphs of rationalism, over old methods, foreshadowing in these, its great works, a better wisdom to govern the affairs of men, than all the ages guided by Hebrew tradition. Yet, in these documents will be seen an overflowing of natural religion, and the spirit of the Master. “Do unto others as ye would that others shall do unto you.”