work for her and to give his life that she may have a life of joy. Is there anything more spiritual than that--anything higher? They marry. He clears some land. He fences a field. He builds a cabin; and she, of this hovel, makes a happy home. She plants flowers, puts a few simple things of beauty upon the walls. This is what the preachers call "worldliness." Is there anything more spiritual? In a little while, in this cabin, in this home, is heard the drowsy rhythm of the cradle's rock, while softly floats the lullaby upon the twilight air. Is there anything more spiritual, is there anything more infinitely tender than to see husband and wife bending, with clasped hands, over a cradle, gazing upon the dimpled miracle of love? I say it is spiritual to work for those you love; spiritual to improve the physical condition of mankind--for he who improves the physical condition improves the mental. I believe in the plowers instead of the prayers. I believe in the new firm of "Health & Heresy" rather than the old partnership of "Disease & Divinity," doing business at the old sign of the "Skull & Crossbones." Some of the ministers that you have interviewed, or at least one of them, tells us the cure for worldliness. He says that God is sending fires, and cyclones, and things of that character for the purpose of making people spiritual; of calling their attention to the fact that everything in this world is of a transitory nature. The clergy have always had great faith in famine, in affliction, in pestilence. They know that a man is a thousand times more apt to thank God for a crust or a crumb than for a banquet. They know that prosperity has the same effect on the average Christian that thick soup has, according to Bumble, on the English pauper: "It makes 'em impudent." The devil made a mistake in not doubling Job's property instead of leaving him a pauper. In prosperity the ministers think that we forget death and are too happy. In the arms of those we love, the dogma of eternal fire is for the moment forgotten. According to the ministers, God kills our children in order that we may not forget him. They imagine that the man who goes into Dakota, cultivates the soil and rears him a little home, is getting too "worldly." And so God starts a cyclone to scatter his home and the limbs of wife and children upon the desolate plains, and the ministers in Brooklyn say this is done because we are getting too "worldly." They think we should be more "spiritual;" that is to say, willing to live upon the labor of others; willing to ask alms, saying, in the meantime, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." If this is so, why not give the money back? "Spiritual" people are those who eat oatmeal and prunes, have great confidence in dried apples, read Cowper's "Task" and Pollok's "Course of Time," laugh at the jokes in _Harper's Monthly_, wear clothes shiny at the knees and elbows, and call all that has elevated the world "beggarly elements."