We are thankful for all the precious boons which inventive genius has brought to us--for telegraphs, and telephones, and photographic arts, for steam engines and electric motors, for power presses and sewing machines, for pain-killing chloroform, and the splendid achievements of skillful surgery.

But the mind has its necessities as well as the body; and we hope and pray that the human intellect may never be so busy in materialistic inventions that it cannot give us an "Ode to Duty," and a "Happy Warrior," a "Snow Bound," and a "Thanatopsis," an "Evangeline" and a "Chambered Nautilus," a "Pippa Passes" or a "Biglow Papers," an "In Memoriam" or a "Locksley Hall." One characteristic of the present time is the radical and revolutionary spirit which condemns everything that is "old," especially in the realm of religion.

It arrogantly claims that the "advanced thought" of this highly cultured age has broken with the traditional beliefs of our benighted ancestors, and that modern congregations are too highly enlighted to accept those antiquated theologies.

No pretentions could be more preposterous.

Methinks that those stalwart farmers of New England, who on a wintry Sabbath, sat and eagerly devoured for an hour the strong meat of such theological giants as Jonathan Edwards, and Emmons and Bellamy and Dwight, would laugh to scorn the ridiculous assumption of the present day congregations, many of whom have fed on little else during the week but novels and newspapers.