But the world is fast outgrowing the ignorance and superstition of the past and this is a fortunate and happy age in which to live. This is pre-eminently the age of electricity--of mind and invisible forces--as the past century was an age of matter. The whole world is feeling the electric thrill of a new life. New voices call us, new inspirations are in the air, new thoughts crowd upon the thinking mind. The reasoning soul catches whispers from the stars and celestial benedictions from the radiance of the sun. Man is a heaven-bound spirit in an electric body woven of dust and air, of infinite ether and eternal atoms, sifted through boundless space, and tossed from suns to worlds; and he is climbing to loftier spiritual heights and a diviner atmosphere. The great men of the past had false ideals. They were the ambitious conquerors, who despoiled their own race and deluged the world in blood. Their thrones were built on pyramids of human skulls swimming in a sea of human blood and tears. Their triumphal march was heralded by the clanking chains of miserable captives, and the wailing cries of widows and orphans. For many ages human slavery, grinding poverty and abject misery were the common heritage of the despoiled masses who lived in hovels, were made food for cannon, or were sold into bondage for debt, while a few fortunate rulers reveled in luxury and swayed despotic power. Up to the recent centuries the chief vocations of men were the soldier and the priest--the one for slaughter and the other to appease the gods. But the evolving ages have changed the ideals of the world, and liberty and justice are no longer a dream; but "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." The time is near at hand when the ideals of men will be so exalted and their consciences so alive to the demands of love and justice that no man of wealth can sleep in his luxurious home or feast on choice viands and know of any human creature or dumb animal suffering from cold and want without first ministering to their needs. This is the law of love written in every enlightened heart, as it is written in the books of the New Testament.