amuse, and instruct you for the last eighteen months: have you learned
in that time to _trust_ us as we have learned to care for you? Do you
know us loyal patriots and true Christians, even if of a broad and
all-unsectarian faith? If we are too frank, it is because we are certain
that truth can never contradict itself, that nature must be one with
revelation, that he errs who fears the crucible of the savant or would
hold science in leading strings. THE CONTINENTAL seeks the light,
condemns to silence no new Galileo, tortures no creative Kepler, has no
fires for heretics, and nothing worse than an incredulous smile for the
shivering witches and mediums, the muscular demons of modern
spiritualism. It rejects no scientific investigation honorably pursued,
for all paths lead back to the Maker of the Universe, and the honest
seeker must find Him at the end of his route. That God is our Father,
that we are made in His triune image, that Christ is our elder Brother,
the great Regenerator of our race, is surely the ever open, ever mystic
secret of the universe!

We have travelled on together through a gloomy year. The air has been
sad with sighs, dim with tears, restless with great sobs of human
anguish. But we are drifting into calmer swells on the great Time-Ocean,
and the _crimson_ year of '64 is almost past. The dwellers of the Valley
already look for the morning star, while those upon the Hilltop hail the
auroral light of '65. Enshrined in and sparkling through its golden
glow two mystic figures gleam; the star of the morning pales before
their splendor. The one is godlike in her majesty, sublime through
conquered suffering, the awful smile of the Crucified seems shining
through the features transfigured since He wore them, and the cross
glitters in all the glory of Self-sacrifice on her broad breast. She
wears a girdle blue as if woven from the depths of heaven, and as we
gaze we see great opals with veiled hearts of fire form into quaint old
runic letters upon it, and the God-word LOVE flashes down the secret of
her inner life upon us. She is still young as when she woke in Paradise,
and, seeing the End, is not yet weary with her long journey of Exile.
Brighter gates than those of Eden stand unbarred before her! In her
right hand she holds unrolled, that all may read, the great Magna Charta
of universal Human Rights, and even at this distance we may see
EMANCIPATION upon its broad margin. We know the once sad spirit no