He, who now at three score and ten, remembers when the sound of the flint and steel was a necessary prelude to the morning fire, when the open fire place with its crane and pot hooks was the only resource for warmth and cooking, when the largest city on the American continent was without sewers or water conduits, when a river steamer was a wonder upon which the curious gazed, and ocean ones unheard of, when railroads were in an experimental stage, when the belief that ghosts flitted about the graveyards was unquestioned and undenied, when Satan was said to have stalked upon the earth in person, his presence seriously considered and accounted for by many of the churches, when witchcraft, only in the throes of death but not yet buried, had many adherents in animated defence, when the electrical experiments of Franklin were reckoned in some places as the trifling of an infidel with the spirit of evil, can best appreciate, by the comparison which reminiscence affords, of these wonderful changes in thought, and the significant accompaniment of increased mental activity in all things benefitting the race. The close relations exhibited in this comparatively brief period between the growth of rationalism, and that accelerated movement all along the line of science, learning, and everything tending to place humanity on a higher plain, is more than a mere coincidence. It is the operation of cause and effect, better understood and acknowledged upon a closer examination. The bursting forth, as it were, during this century of the united energies of mankind in the direction of knowledge, is an expansion after the removal of a pressure that has borne down upon them for ages. Those great things that men have accomplished lately, they were as capable of centuries ago, and it is not surprising that they had not until recently made greater advances, when we estimate the weight of opposing forces. There had been for centuries nothing more discouraging to the formation of scientific hopes and ambitions than the theological methods of thought, and the atmosphere which surrounded them. The more that atmosphere was saturated with the doctrines of the churches, the more repellent it was to any intellectual effort toward outside things, and especially one requiring such a monopoly of mental energy and attention as to interfere with the Christian ideas of constant and unremitting devotion. There was no cultivated field, during the thousand years of supreme church jurisdiction, where an independent scientific ambition could germinate. Within the church such an ambition was impossible. It was not only against the spirit, but the very letter of its teachings. Its foundation was laid by its victory over science, in its overcome of which, it proclaimed divine assistance and authority. It already possessed a knowledge of all things appertaining to the earth and the “firmament” above it which the Almighty desired men to know. The earth was not round, it was the