THE founders of Chautauqua looked forward to its third session with mingled interest and anxiety. It was the centennial year of American Independence, and an exposition was opening in Philadelphia, far more noteworthy in its buildings and exhibits than any previous effort in the annals of the nation. The World's Fair in the Crystal Palace of New York, in 1855, the first attempt in America to hold an universal exposition, was a pigmy compared with the immense display in the park of Philadelphia on the centennial year. Could the multitudes from every State and from foreign lands be attracted from Philadelphia five hundred miles to Chautauqua Lake? Had the quest of the American people for new interests been satisfied by two years at the Assembly? Would it be the wiser course in view of the competition to hold merely a modest little gathering at Fair Point, or to venture boldly upon greater endeavors than ever before; to enlarge the program, to advertise more widely, and to compel attention to the new movement? Anyone who knew the adventurous, aspiring nature of both Miller and Vincent would unhesitatingly answer these questions. The Assembly of 1876 was planned upon a larger scale than ever before. The formal opening took place on Tuesday evening, August 1st, in the forest-sheltered Auditorium, but two gatherings were held in advance and a third after its conclusion, so that the entire program embraced twenty-four days instead of seventeen. The first meeting was the Scientific Conference, July 26th to 28th, aiming both to present science from the Christian point of view, and Christianity from the scientific point of view, showing the essential harmony between them, without either subjecting conclusions of science to church-authority or cutting up the Bible at the behest of the scientists. There had been frequent battles between the theologians and the students of nature and the "conflict of science and religion" had been strongly in evidence, ever since the publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_ in 1859. Most pulpits had uttered their thunders against "Darwinism," even though some of the pulpiteers had never read Darwin's book, nor could have understood it if they had tried. And many professors who had never listened to a gospel sermon, and rarely opened their Bibles, had launched lightnings at the camp of the theologians. But here was something new; a company of scholars including Dr. R. Ogden Doremus of New York, Professor A. S. Lattimore of Rochester, Dr. Alexander Winchell of Michigan, and others of equal standing, on the same platform with eminent preachers, and no restraint on either side, each free to utter his convictions, and all certain that the outcome would be peace and not war.