purer, than it ever was before. I believe the Church is stronger and
is making grander strides toward the conversion of the world and the
final establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, than it ever made
before.

I believe that the biggest fools in this world are the advocates and
disseminators of infidelity, the would-be destroyers of the Paradise
of God.

A BLOTTED PICTURE.

I sat in a great theatre at the National Capital. It was thronged with
youth, and beauty, old age, and wisdom. I saw a man, the image of his
God, stand upon the stage, and I heard him speak. His gestures were the
perfection of grace; his voice was music, and his language was more
beautiful than I had ever heard from mortal lips. He painted picture
after picture of the pleasures, and joys, and sympathies, of home. He
enthroned love and preached the gospel of humanity like an angel. Then
I saw him dip his brush in ink, and blot out the beautiful picture he
had painted. I saw him stab love dead at his feet. I saw him blot out
the stars and the sun, and leave humanity and the universe in eternal
darkness, and eternal death. I saw him like the Serpent of old, worm
himself into the paradise of human hearts, and by his seductive
eloquence and the subtle devices of his sophistry, inject his fatal
venom, under whose blight its flowers faded, its music was hushed, its
sunshine was darkened, and the soul was left a desert waste, with only
the new made graves of faith and hope. I saw him, like a lawless,
erratic meteor without an orbit, sweep across the intellectual sky,
brilliant only in his self-consuming fire, generated by friction with
the indestructible and eternal truths of God.

[Illustration: INFIDELITY.]

That man was the archangel of modern infidelity; and I said: How true
is holy writ which declares, "the fool hath said in his heart, there is
no God."

Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell!

"A solemn murmur in the soul tells of a world to be,
As travelers hear the billows roll before they reach the sea."

Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no risen Christ!

When every earthly hope hath fled,
When angry seas their billows fling,
How sweet to lean on what He said,
How firmly to His cross we cling!

What intelligence less than God could fashion the human body? What
motive power is it, if it is not God, that drives that throbbing engine,
the human heart, with ceaseless, tireless stroke