ed in vain; and still more profitless were the
disquisitions of the scholastics of the Middle Ages, since they were
chiefly used to prop up unintelligible creeds. Theology is not of much
account, since it pertains to mysteries we cannot solve. It is not with
heaven or hell, or abstract inquiries, or divine certitudes, that we
have to do, but the things of earth,--things that advance our material
and outward condition. To be rich and comfortable is the end of
life,--not meditations on abstract and eternal truth, such as elevate
the soul or prepare it for a future and endless life. The certitudes of
faith, of love, of friendship, are of small value when compared with the
blessings of outward prosperity. Utilitarianism is the true philosophy,
for this confines us to the world where we are born to labor, and
enables us to make acquisitions which promote our comfort and ease. The
chemist and the manufacturer are our greatest benefactors, for they
make for us oils and gases and paints,--things we must have. The
philosophy of Bacon is an immense improvement on all previous systems,
since it heralds the jubilee of trades, the millennium of merchants, the
schools of thrift, the apostles of physical progress, the pioneers of
enterprise,--the Franklins and Stephensons and Tyndalls and Morses of
our glorious era. Its watchword is progress. All hail, then, to the
electric telegraph and telephones and Thames tunnels and Crystal Palaces
and Niagara bridges and railways over the Rocky Mountains! The day of
our deliverance is come; the nations are saved; the Brunels and the
Fieldses are our victors and leaders! Crown them with Olympic leaves, as
the heroes of our great games of life. And thou, O England! exalted art
thou among the nations,--not for thy Oxfords and Westminsters; not for
thy divines and saints and martyrs and poets; not for thy Hookers and
Leightons and Cranmers and Miltons and Burkes and Lockes; not for thy
Reformation; not for thy struggles for liberty,--but for thy Manchesters
and Birminghams, thy Portsmouth shipyards, thy London docks, thy
Liverpool warehouses, thy mines of coal and iron, thy countless
mechanisms by which thou bringest the wealth of nations into thy banks,
and art enabled to buy the toil of foreigners and to raise thy standards
on the farthest battlements of India and China. These conquests and
acquisitions are real, are practical; machinery over life, the triumph
of physical forces, dominion over waves