hat they see, and keep their minds busy are always
young.

The other day I met a blacksmith who has given much attention to
geology and fossil remains. He told me how happy he was in his
excursions. He was nearly seventy years old, and yet he had the
enthusiasm of a boy. He said he had some very fine specimens,
"but," said he, "nearly every night I dream of finding perfect
ones."

That man will keep young as long as he lives. As long as a man
lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the
school. No man can get too much knowledge. In that, he can have
all the avarice he wants, but he can get too much property. If
the business men would stop when they got enough, they might have
a chance to grow old gracefully. But the most of them go on and
on, until, like the old stage horse, stiff and lame, they drop dead
in the road. The intelligent, the kind, the reasonably contented,
the courageous, the self-poised, grow old gracefully.

_Question_. Are not the restraints to free religious thought being
worn away, as the world grows older, and will not the recent attacks
of the religious press and pulpit upon the unorthodoxy of Dr.
Briggs, Rev. R. Heber Newton and the prospective Episcopal bishop
of Massachusetts, Dr. Phillips Brooks, and others, have a tendency
still further to extend this freedom?

_Answer_. Of course the world is growing somewhat wiser--getting
more sense day by day. It is amazing to me that any human being
or beings ever wrote the Presbyterian creed. Nothing can be more
absurd--more barbaric than that creed. It makes man the sport of
an infinite monster, and yet good people, men and women of ability,
who have gained eminence in almost every department of human effort,
stand by this creed as if it were filled with wisdom and goodness.
They really think that a good God damns his poor ignorant children
just for his own glory, and that he sends people to perdition, not
for any evil in them, but to the praise of his glorious justice.
Dr. Briggs has been wicked enough to doubt this phase of God's
goodness, and Dr. Bridgman was heartless enough to drop a tear in
hell. Of course they have no idea of what justice really is.

The Presbyterian General Assembly that has just adjourned stood by
Calvinism. The "Five Points" are as sharp as ever. The members
of that assembly--most of them--find all their happiness in the
"creed." They need no other amusement. If they feel blue they