The men who felled the forests, cultivated the earth, spanned the rivers with bridges of steel, built the railways and canals, the great ships, invented the locomotives and engines, supplying the countless wants of man; the men who invented the telegraphs and cables, and freighted the electric spark with thought and love; the men who invented the looms and spindles that clothe the world, the inventors of printing and the great presses that fill the earth with poetry, fiction and fact, that save and keep all knowledge for the children yet to be; the inventors of all the wonderful machines that deftly mould from wood and steel the things we use; the men who have explored the heavens and traced the orbits of the stars--who have read the story of the world in mountain range and billowed sea; the men who have lengthened life and conquered pain; the great philosophers and naturalists who have filled the world with light; the great poets whose thoughts have charmed the souls, the great painters and sculptors who have made the canvas speak, the marble live; the great orators who have swayed the world, the composers who have given their souls to sound, the captains of industry, the producers, the soldiers who have battled for the right, the vast host of useful men--these are our Christs, our apostles and our saints. The triumphs of science are our miracles. The books filled with the facts of Nature are our sacred scriptures, and the force that is in every atom and in every star--in everything that lives and grows and thinks, that hopes and suffers, is the only possible god. The absolute we cannot know--beyond the horizon of the Natural we cannot go. All our duties are within our reach--all our obligations must be discharged here, in this world. Let us love and labor. Let us wait and work. Let us cultivate courage and cheerfulness--open our hearts to the good--our minds to the true. Let us live free lives. Let us hope that the future will bring peace and joy to all the children of men, and above all, let us preserve the veracity of our souls. HOW TO REFORM MANKIND. * This address was delivered before the Militant Church at the Columbia Theatre, Chicago, Ills., April 12, 1896. I. "THERE is no darkness but ignorance." Every human being is a necessary product of conditions, and every one is born with defects for which he cannot be held responsible. Nature seems to care nothing for the individual, nothing for the species. Life pursuing life and in its turn pursued by death, presses to the snow line of the possible, and every form of life, of instinct, thought and action is fixed and determined by conditions, by countless antecedent and co-existing facts. The present is the child, and the necessary child, of all the past, and the mother of all the future.