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truth, virtue, beauty, which the human mind possesses, than that they are the inherent qualities of the eternal substance of all intelligence, brought to manifestation, through the human organism, in finite personality. This gives to man a base of everlastingness in the universe. And in that capacity of progress of which I have spoken, and to which we are able to assign no limit, that progress of the human type, through creative intelligence and choice, which corresponds to the anterior progress from type to type,-man carries the elements also not merely of everlastingness, but of personal continuance. As mechanical force rises into chemical force, and chemical force into what must still be called "vital force" (though what the term signifies may be in dispute), and vital force rises and expands in various forms of manifestation till it comes to its highest form in the personal consciousness of man, so, without any break in the law, may this new force of human personality open into some other form of life, and still preserve individual identity. The mighty energy that is enwrapped in the human will, the indomitable sense of duty that tramples down tempting pleasures and impels man to conflict and self-sacrifice for the right, the wealth of love that he lavishes and that no limit of years exhausts, the unsatisfied spirit within him forever peering over the walls of knowledge in search of new realms of truth, as these testify to a past eternity which has been used in producing them, so do they point forward to a future eternity which they are to use as conscious creative forces in the universe.- William F. Potter.

FUTURE OF EARTH AND MAN.

The earth's foundations were laid deep and enduring in the eternity of the past; and after unceasing preparations for untold ages, the grand factory for making men out of granite commences to produce tolerable specimens of the race, with the promise of vastly better in the future: but just as it does so, these people believe it will be burnt up, swept with universal

destruction, that it may be refitted for a handful of "saints," certainly no better than the average of their neighbors, who are to occupy it forever. No danger! That the earth will cease to exist as it began to be, there is no doubt; but its end lies far away in the ages to come, when its fruit is ripe and its work

is done.

A tree that takes twenty years to arrive at maturity will last for a hundred years at least; and since the earth has grown during many millions of years, as we now know, we may safely calculate on its continuance for millions of years to come. Our eyes have not yet beheld the whole of its surface.

Shall

our inheritance be taken from us before we have seen it? We have not used the stores laid up for us in this world's cellar; nay, we are finding new ones almost every day, and therefore have good reason to believe that we have not yet discovered all the treasures prepared for us. Shall the earth be destroyed before we have received its gifts or appropriated its blessings?

The world is a noble vessel, freighted with a thousand million souls, furnished with boundless stores in her deep hold, fairly started for a distant port, every sail at last set, having the best of captains, who will hardly run her upon a rock for the sake of making a raft out of the wreck for a handful of noisy passengers, leaving the rest to perish.

After we have decided that the world shall endure for ages, the question next arises, What will be its future condition? Is it the forest monarch, its trunk rounded to its full capacity, its branches matured, its fruit perfect, the years of the future adding nothing to its glory? or is it a tree with its heart unknit, its best branches undeveloped, its beauty unmatured, its fruit imperfect, waiting for that which time alone can bring?

Old as geology represents the world to be, it still more clearly shows its youth; and the philosopher calmly waits for its improvement, as an intelligent parent does for that of his child.

No man ever saw the earth in a better condition for man's occupancy than it is to-day.

"Abraham saw no fairer stars

Than those that burn for thee and me."

Amid countless mutations, it will still march on to its great and glorious destiny. Behind the eastern hills lie brighter days than have yet dawned, and the earth shall rejoice in their glory.

uses.

Progress is the law of our globe, as geology abundantly testifies. If we could but glance at its history for fifty or a hundred years, we might doubt it; but sweeping over the ages of the mighty past, and contrasting its early appearance with those widely succeeding, we can doubt no longer. We see it a puling infant in its fiery cradle, curtained with sulphurous clouds; then with the bare, flinty rock for its floor, and life as impossible as in a fiery furnace, its air more poisonous than the breath of a volcano, and its rain as corrosive as sulphuric acid. In time, rocks are ground to mud, and the simplest of plants spread their rootlets through it in search of nutriment. The air loses its sulphur and its carbon, which are stored away for distant The water becomes purer, and all elements better fitted for the development and sustentation of life, which advances from the seaweed to the cedar, the wheat, and the rose-bush; from the unsensitive radiate, through mollusk, fish, reptile, bird, and mammal, to intelligent man. If the world has thus improved in the past, what more reasonable than that it shall continue to improve in the future? If it has marched with such an unfaltering step in the pathway of progress for such an immense period, who can doubt that it will continue so to do? Why should progress cease at this period in the world's history? If there was any reason for improvement when there was nothing to behold it but the leaden eye of the fish, or to care for it but the dull reptile, how much more reason now that man is here, eagerly watching every advance, his happiness increasing at every step of its progress!

Not only does the knowledge of the past that geology gives enable us to predict the general improvement of the earth as man's abode, but by it we can indicate more particularly the

direction that this improvement will take. First, volcanoes will die, and earthquakes cease.

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I regard man as the fruit of the tree of life; and, if he is, beyond the fruit the tree cannot go. A tree advances from root to stem, from stem to branch, from branch to leaf, and from leaf to blossom and fruit, each rising in importance above the other; but when the fruit is attained, all that can be done is to perfect it. The root of the great tree of life is the radiata, their raying, ramifying arms and fingers forming its spreading radicles; the trunk of this tree, the mollusca; their shelly covering, its bark. The jointed bodies of the articulates form its branches: the vertebrates are the leaves. Every leaf has a mid-rib passing through its center, from which ribs go to each side of the leaf to strengthen it, as in vertebrates the back-bone passes through the center of the animal, and ribs proceed from it on both sides. The blossoms are the mammalia or milk-producing animals; and its fruit, humanity, waiting for the ages to ripen it. This grand old tree has been advancing for ages, renewing its rootlets, shedding its old bark, losing unnumbered branches in the storms of the past, and dropping myriads of leaves and blossoms, but, with a sound heart, reproducing better than it lost, and fruiting in good time, with the promise of the best when that fruit is fully ripe. But what evidence is there that man is the fruit of this wonderful tree? What peculiarity is there in the fruit of a tree that distinguishes it from every other part? It contains a living principle which possesses unlimited duration, and, under favorable circumstances, may unfold into a tree equal or superior to that from which it sprang. Let a piece of the root be separated from the tree, and it speedily dies, and is resolved to dust: in like manner, bark, branches, blossoms, leaves, perish when their connection with the parent plant is dissevered. The fruit alone contains the power of continuous existence within itself. Drop it on the ground or bury it, and it lives and grows, and sends its type down the ages: so man. The polyp, the snail, the worm, the fish, reptile, bird and beast may die when death comes, and

return to the undistinguised dust from which they sprang; but man possesses that over which death has no power, and the extinction of one life is but the dawn of another of greater power and beauty. Some there are who doubt this: to such this argument will have no weight; but to those who believe in the soul's future, and to others who, like myself, know that we continue to live hereafter, the reasonableness of this will be apparent.—William Denton.

TRUE PRAYER.

In its essence, prayer is something deeper than words. Words are but one of many forms in which true prayer may find expression; nor has everything that passes for prayer a right to bear the name. Volubility of tongue is commonly in the inverse ratio to prayerfulness of spirit. When the soul prays best, the lips are sealed. A torrent of words poured forth with pious whine, shouted or screamed, perhaps, at the top of the voice, is too often the soul's ostentatious proclamation of its own prayerlessness. Deep feeling is no master of rhetoric. I would rather listen to the rumbling of cartwheels over stone pavements than to a rhetorical prayer. The one is honest, the other is dishonest, noise.

True prayer is the soul's deep homage to goodness and beauty and truth, the profound thirst for divine life, its thrill of reverential worship before infinite and eternal Being, its deep self-identification with the One and All. It is the unutterable repose of the tired spirit in the boundless and living Whole, the ending of ignorant struggle against the omnipresent Power that fills infinitude with itself and holds us all in the bosom of changeless law. It is not extinction of the private will, in hopeless submission to a Fate whose right is its might, but rather the glad identification of the private will with the deepest currents of the universe, its conscious and active trust in the "higher thoughts and higher ways" of the universal Mind. It is the mighty gravitation of the soul to its Source,

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