quent and strenuous exertion of the same instrumentalities that had crushed out Arianism; and had also repressed the Waldensian and other similar heresies. John Huss and Jerome of Prague who sank in the fires of Constance, were victims to the intolerant spirit of an unphilosophic age; and these two noble proto-martyrs must ever stand upon the records of time, as having greatly contributed in giving impetus to the movement of free inquiry, then preparing the reformation epoch. Again see illustrated the spirit of intolerance in the flames of Smithfield, the inquisitorial fires of Spain and Italy, and in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The same was it, which excited the civil wars of France, with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and its consequent national calamities; which drenched the Netherlands in the blood of its noblest citizens; and which inflamed the bloody and intestine carnage of the desolating thirty years' war of Germany. The Genevan reformer himself, although ranging himself in opposition to the dogmatism of absolute authority, had not yet caught the spirit of toleration which subsequent ages accepted as the boon of philosophical liberty. This, the flames in which Servetus expired, fully attest. Sect stands arrayed against Sect, with menacing looks of wrath, and it becomes the task. of philosophy to disarm the contestants. This sovereign of the mind stepped forth in the writings of Montaigne, Spinoza, Bayle and their followers, and proclaimed a cessation of hostilities between the contending religious organizations, and henceforth toleration of opinion reared its head first in Holland, and afterwards in other parts of Europe.

Much as philosophical speculation has been derided and condemned, it has its part to perform on the arena of the world's progress; yea even those whose reputations stand blackened in the flames of the French revolution, performed worthy service in the hands of a higher destiny, in securing for universal humanity the right of free speech and the toleration of free opinion. The warring theologians might have still continued the strife against each other had not the spirit of philosophy interposed. As long as the doctrine, ex ecclesia

nulla salus, was maintained, no other result could be expected. When this was made to yield to a more enlightened and reasonable belief, the strife ceased. Sincerity of any honest opinion, as equally worthy, took its place, and liberty spread its wings over the world's wide domain.

One of the grand results of philosophical research has been the banishment of the myths and superstitions of past ages. The belief in sorcery and witchcraft was a superstition that bore for long centuries of duration tyrannic sway over the minds of all classes of mankind, and volumes of history swell with the narrations of the multitudes of innocent beings whose lives fell sacrifices upon the altars of deluded opinions. The parliamentary bodies of Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rheims, Rouen, Dijon and Rennes enacted laws for the suppression of magic and witchcraft within their dominions; and the pallid reaper of death that followed these decrees, crimsoned the streets. and lanes of many a city and hamlet, and spread desolation and horror broadcast throughout the land. It is melancholy to remember that well-intentioned and upright judges, after days spent in sifting the evidence adduced before them, could sentence the innocent but convicted magician, with the same conscientious gravity, as would Lord Mansfield the blood-stained murderer. For these imaginary crimes, the existence of which the intelligence of the nineteenth century denies, seven thousand victims are said to have been burned at Treves, six hundred by a single bishop of Bamberg, and eight hundred in a single year in the bishopric of Wurtzburg. At Toulouse, where the inquisition had its seat, four hundred were executed for sorcery at one time, and fifty in the city of Douay in a single year. The executions which took place in the city of Paris in a few months were, in the expressive language of an old chronicler, "Almost infinite." The credulity which sanctioned the executions for these crimes was not confined to one country or people; for the Inquisition of Spain ended the career of many Parisian refugees who sought in flight safety in the sister country. In this delusion-ridden land the persecution spread to the smallest towns and villages, and so inveterate was the popular

superstition that a sorcerer was burned so late as the year 1780. Torquemada lent his energies as zealously to the extirpation of witchcraft as to that of heresy, and even wrote a book upon the enormity of the crime. The examples thus far enumerated indicate the attitude of the Church of Rome as regards these supposed crimes, but upon this ground the Reformers had no quarrel with their opponents. The credulity of Luther on this point was amazing even for his age. Speaking of witchcraft the Wittemberg Reformer uses the following emphatic and unhesitating language: "I would have no compassion on these witches," exclaimed he. "I would burn them all." In England the Reformation was the signal for the immediate outburst of the superstition; and there as elsewhere its decline was represented by a fanatical clergy as the consequence of increasing skepticism. In Scotland, where the reformed clergy exercised unbounded influence, the witch trials were very numerous, and the persecution remarkably atrocious. The ablest defender of the belief in witches probably was Glanvil, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church; and one of the most influential was the Puritan, Baxter. Puritanism imported the belief into the new world; and the executions in Massachusetts form one of the darkest pages of our occidental history. Even the distinguished founder of Methodism stands enrolled as one of the latest believers in the exploded superstition. All these superstitions, with other kindred notions, the intellect of the age, enlightened by the developments of science, and the metaphysical illuminations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has cast aside; and he would be a bold man to-day indeed who in the face of the beaming intelligence of the present epoch would dare to express a belief in them. Equally as great a mad-man would he be regarded in intelligent estimation as he who should be found to call in question the truth of the Copernican system of the universe, or the Newtonian theory of gravitation.

But the grandest result of modern progress is the entire harmony that is come to be generally perceived by the Church between the deductions of philosophy and the truths of the Chris

tian system. Owing to this agreement religion is found to be in no wise an exception to the general law of progress, but rather the highest form of its manifestation, and its earlier aspects but the necessary steps of an imperfect development. In this view the moral element of Christianity is as the sun in heaven, and dogmatic systems as the clouds that intercept and temper the exceeding brightness of its rays. Truth ever remains truth, but one period may more fully establish it than another. This is now seen in the general acceptance of truths once attested by but a few solitary teachers of the early Church. Christianity has no longer cause to dread the developments of science, and philosophy. She, on the contrary, accepts them with triumphant alacrity, having no stereotyped standard to defend, and she regards the human mind as pursuing on the highest subjects a path of continual progress towards the fullest and most transcendent knowledge of the Deity. This conception of a continued and uninterrupted development has subsidized almost all the thinking of the age. It is stirring all science to its very depths, and is revolutionizing all historical literature. Pitiful is that school of theology indeed which is not influenced in one form or other by it. Even the Roman Catholic Church, whose fundamental basis is authority, is more or less made to yield to this dominant sentiment of the age. The rationalistic momentum of the world, itself widely divergent from the old Voltairean spirit, has but aided in bringing thought to this sublime conception, and all in the interest of liberalized Christian views. The great ideal of the Church is still coming into more distinct and clear recognition. Around it cluster the leading Christian conceptions of the period; equality, fraternity, the suppression of war, the elevation of the poor, the love of truth, and the general diffusion of liberty. The enemies of the truth thus, whilst laboring to destroy it, have simply aided in making it more luminous and brilliant, and again have verified the divine saying that "the Lord maketh the wrath of man to praise Him." The progress of the Christian Church is still onward, and it is "going forth conquering and to conquer." It has opened wide its motherly

arms, overthrown its enemies by their own logic, and embraces in its charitable folds its once most malignant persecutors. Their weapons, wrested from them, are now being burnished for use under the great Captain of their salvation, who is marching forth for the spiritual subjugation of the world. Persecution, for opinion's sake, is amongst the obsolete ideas of the past. The red sea of blood has been crossed; the Christian conscience, as the pillar of fire, is leading forward the race in charity, toleration and free opinion, and uniting mankind in a universal brotherhood where free thought and free speech are crowning the highest aspirations of man.

ART. V.-WOMAN'S CULTURE. *

BY REV. J. H. DUBBS, A. M., PHILADELPHIA, PA.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

We are told by travelers that, at the city of Coblentz, where the rivers Rhine and Moselle unite, the two streams seem loth to mingle, and may for miles be distinguished by the color of their waters, flowing side by side. In a somewhat similar way, there are occasions when a double stream of emotion comes in upon the soul, and when our feelings become indescribable, and are sometimes entirely beyond our control.

I am glad to be with you to-night; I rejoice to be permitted to speak words of cheer to the officers and members of an institution in which I take the deepest interest, and at a place which is to me the shrine of the fondest memories.

Yet, by the side of my rejoicing flows a little stream of sorrow, and the two currents absolutely refuse to mingle. I cannot help remembering how, twenty-three years ago, there was a somewhat similar assembly at this very spot, and how the

* An Address delivered before the Young Ladies of the Allentown Female College, Allentown, Penna., on Thursday Evening, June 27, 1872. Published by request.