The gospel is able to reconstitute society by reconstructing the character of individuals. Through its effect on persons it opens the way for vast national advances. It touches not merely the higher themes, but all the themes that are associated with those, and immediately pertinent to the interest of mankind. It teaches frugality and industry, and honesty, by express command, and by the divine example of Him who brought it to us. It turns men, as has been forcibly said, "out of the trails of blood and plunder into the path of honest toil." It is a gospel for every creature, that is, for every created thing; and gardens bloom in a lovelier beauty under its influence, and harvest festivals, of which the country is full to-day, are only its natural and beautiful fruit and trophy. It exalts womanhood; and by the honor it puts on womanhood, and by the honor it puts on childhood, it inaugurates the new family life in the world. It honors, as no other religion does or ever did, the essential worth of the immortal spirit in man; and it forces him, pushes him, crowds him, into thoughtfulness and educational discipline, since it will not allow him to be manipulated into paradise by any priestly hand, but comes to him in a Book, and sets him to work to investigate its contents, to inquire concerning it, to look out widely around it, and to inform himself by careful thought of what it is and what it means. There is the basis of colleges and theological seminaries, and I hope there will be no quarrel between them! There is the basis of all the educational institutions and influences that are worthy in the world. Christianity brings them. It generates by degrees a new social conscience. It unites communities, on which it has operated, in new relationships to each other. International alliances become possible, become vital. International law becomes a reality and a power; beneficence is stimulated, and law becomes ethical. As we have seen recently, in the prodigious excitement of feeling throughout civilized countries in consequence of the apparent gross injustice done to a single French officer by a military court, the time is coming, tho it has not yet fully come, when mankind shall be one in spirit, and an "... instinct bear along, Round the earth's electric circle, One swift flash of right or wrong."