,
I'd rather take the thing up and go through with it myself. I'd
find out more about it than any one could tell me, and I'd be sure
of what I know. That's the thing. Professor this or that will
controvert you out of the books, and prove out of the books it
can't be so, though you have it right in the hollow of your hand
all the time and could break his spectacles with it."

Thus it is that these authorities have been weighed in the balances and
found wanting. This is a marvelous age, an age of unsurpassed invention
and discovery of truth, but it is not the _ne plus ultra_ of human
wisdom--if we are to take any lessons from the past ages.

The wave theory of sound, which has been regarded as a settled
scientific fact since the days of Pythagorean, is now vigorously
attacked, and the adherents to the orthodox ground will have to rally
their forces and reconsider their proofs, if they save the theory from
slumbering among the follies of the past.

In the past few years the world has been startled by the bold theory of
evolution, as advocated by Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley and others. Many
have felt uneasy about the foundations of our faith. But such alarm is
all premature. The glaring contradictions of one another of these
modern apostles of a "gospel of dirt," and their self-stultification,
are enough to convince any thoughtful reader, that if the race has not
developed from apes, a few of them bear marks of descent from asses!
The credulity of this class of men is simply marvelous. They can
believe that a moneron can be developed into a man, but can not believe
in a miracle! Their wonderful development of a moneron into a man
terminates with the boundary line of time, and thus the _ne plus ultra_
is reached of their "infinite progression!"

In order to a proper appreciation of the present life, we must be
deeply impressed with the nature of that which lies beyond. No one can
well spend the present life who does not spend it in view of the life
to come. Man must properly appreciate himself before he can live in
harmonious relations with his being. No man can have that appreciation
of himself essential to a true life, who believes that his ancestors
were monerons and mud-turtles!

While there are many striking resemblances between animals and man,
just such as we should expect to find from the hand of the same
Creator, who began farthest from himself and worked to his own divine
model, yet there