On the startled ear of humanity rings out the iron tread of merciless invaders, putting man to the rack for his conscience, or forcing from the lips of manhood shameful confessions,--Galileo kneeling at the feet of priestcraft, and giving the lie to science. But the lofty faith of the pious Polycarp proved the triumph of mind over the body, when they threatened to let loose the wild beasts upon him, and he replied: "Let them come; I cannot change at once from good to bad." Then they bound him to the stake, set fire to the fagots, and his pure faith went up through the baptism of fire to a higher sense of Life. The infidel was blind who said, "Christianity is fit only for women and weak-minded men." But infidels disagree; for Bonaparte said: "Since ever the history of Christianity was written, the loftiest intellects have had a practical faith in God;" and Daniel Webster said: "My heart has assured and reassured me that Christianity must be a divine reality." As our ideas of Deity become more spiritual, we express them by objects more beautiful. To-day we clothe our thoughts of death with flowers laid upon the bier, and in our cemeteries with amaranth blossoms, evergreen leaves, fragrant recesses, cool grottos, smiling fountains, and white monuments. The dismal gray stones of church-yards have crumbled into decay, as our ideas of Life have grown more spiritual; and in place of "bat and owl on the bending stones, are wreaths of immortelles, and white fingers pointing upward." Thus it is that our ideas of divinity form our models of humanity. O Christian Scientist, thou of the church of the new-born; awake to a higher and holier love for God and man; put on the whole armor of Truth; rejoice in hope; be patient in tribulation,--that ye may go to the bed of anguish, and look upon this dream of life in matter, girt with a higher sense of omnipotence; and behold once again the power of divine Life and Love to heal and reinstate man in God's own image and likeness, having "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." The University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A.