and slavery disappeared from among us but yesterday. And how did it go? As a behest of the humanity of the nation? As a victory of philanthropy, education, Christianity, and the higher forces of progress? No! it was not removed by the national volition, but it went out in a convulsion of domestic carnage.
Obviously there is a great deal to be done yet before man will be prepared to take the work of human progress out of the hands of Nature, and carry it on in his own wiser way. He can do much; but the first thing he has to learn is that he can not do everything, and to find out what is practicable of accomplishment. He can not realize his dreams, and can only embody a small part of his aspirations. By his pre-scientific and unscientific education, he is not imbued with the method of Nature, and is too unconscious of the difficulties and impediments in the way of attaining his sanguine hopes. Dwelling, in virtue of his predominant culture, in an ideal world that he constructs to suit himself; taught by novelists, dramatists, and poets, whose function it is to create imaginary worlds; familiar with religious doctrines which teach the facile convertibility of human nature; studying history which is ever occupied with human doings, and ever exaggerates the offices of great men; and surrounded by a world filled with suffering and injustice—men come to think that all this evil might be quickly done away with if there were only the disposition and the will. As Mr. Bagehot somewhere says, only a short time ago it was the common belief that, if everybody would set to work in good earnest, human society might be renovated and perfected and brought to a millennial condition in about ten years. Science, as it confers a deeper knowledge of the order of the world, sobers our judgment and dissipates these pleasing illusions. Let it not be said that science thus becomes obstructive, and paralyzes exertion; on the contrary, it is promotive of real progress by checking futile effort, and disclosing the conditions and the way by which exertion may be made most effectual and substantial conquests achieved. And, in these times that are so prolific of social Utopias, no teaching is more valuable or more wholesome.
MONDAY-LECTURESHIP PHILOSOPHY.
In the absence of Rev. Joseph Cook, the work of the Boston Monday lectureship has gone on by the aid of other clerical talent. The course was opened December 6th by Bishop Clark, of Rhode Island, who gave an address on "The Seen and the Unseen," of which an authentic version was published in the "Boston Traveler."
The Bishop succeeded well in adapting himself to the new circumstances. He entered easily into the general line of speculation for which this lectureship has become renowned, and filled the shoes of its Rev. Founder to a nicety. Whether it was the effect of association, or blue-Monday, or what, the speaker glided into the peculiar habits of the place, and indulged in logical licenses which could have been no novelties to his auditors. The Bishop discussed the problems of matter and spirit, the connection between the body and the soul, and the problem of personal immortality; and he here opened the question of the relation of religion and science in so explicit a way that readers on our side can not fail to be interested.
After an elaborate preliminary argument, he says: "The bearing of all this upon the question of our own personal immortality gives to the subject a most profound and solemn interest. It is hardly conceivable that man should have been endowed with immortality, and yet so constituted as to be unable to arrive at any satisfactory proof of the fact. To those who receive the records of the
