To the average mind the far-off, unascertained and dim, is what is most attractive.  Sending missionaries to the so-called “heathen,” or speculating upon the social conditions of people supposed to be living on other planets, is of vital interest to their soaring minds.  Any amount of money and good red blood of humanity, if need be, are not too large a price to pay for the gratification of these projects of unsatisfied mentality.  The vast body politic, the struggling, seething masses of humanity grope and dig along their appointed ways, and the progress of the entire race of man toward an enlightened homogeneity is at a seeming stand-still.  The homogeneity of the whole race in its absolute entirety, is the key-note of the life which is to be here, on this mortal earth, and thus every experience of individuals or of nations becomes of vast importance.

Every event, small or great, that serves to illustrate the possibility of fellowship, and brotherhood among the children of men, is a milestone on the way to this recognition of the homogeneity of the human race.  In obedience to this law, this demand of the evolutionary forces our brave sons, and lovely daughters, are, all unconsciously to themselves, following the beckoning hand of noblest progress toward peace, and mutuality, and are allying themselves with the representatives of races and peoples hitherto considered foreign and unrelated to us, in all ways save the commercial.  What bonds shall ever be forged between the nations of the earth that can supersede such ties of love and fealty to family and home?

The external aspects of these alliances, though yielding honors, and coveted opportunities, are of the smaller importance compared with the amazing factors of peace and amity between the nations that are silently and certainly working themselves out toward the beautiful exemplification of the universal Fatherhood of God, the inextinguishable sentiment of the final unity of his earthly children.

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One of the strangest phases of human life here is the almost universal resistance to improvement.  But this conservative attitude is also a balance, prevents running off on tangents.

OF GOD.

It has been popularly reported that science has driven God out of the world.  Science has refuted ignorant beliefs, driven superstition out of the minds of people, and opened many minds to the great facts of life as against the silly beliefs of primitive peoples.  It is thought by many that the history of all God’s doings is writ in the Holy (?) Book—­the Bible.  From the study of his character, one might fancy that “Great Jove of Mount High Olympus” was come again with only his name changed from Jove to Jehovah, for He brought with him all the “high days,” and ceremonies, and every vice and delinquency, and outrage that had marked pagan rule.  He gave