lost brothers-that we pause for a moment, and drop in silence a tear to their memories.

Such a tribute is their due and instead of marring enjoyment, adds to it, by giving to us a keener relish for all that is good, wholesome, and elevating in our exercises and festivities.

This anniversary of our association is in the year of our Lord 1895, and soon the light of another century will dawn upon the world. Probably the most of us will see the light of the twentieth century, but some of us, particularly some of those the setting sun of whose lives has already almost reached the horizon, are not likely ever to behold it. Great and wonderful are the changes which have been wrought in the nineteenth century. Civilization has travelled apace, scattering enlightenment, comforts, and luxuries even, everywhere and to everybody. The common people of to-day fare more sumptuously than did the wealthy few of a hundred years ago. Missionaries have spread Christianity and knowledge into the remotest corners of the earth. The darkest recesses of darkest Africa have been penetrated, and the hidden sources of the Nile, always heretofore eluding the persistent search of the explorer, have been discovered. Vast territories of land, magnificent fresh water lakes, rivalling our own inland seas, have been found within the interior of the African continent and for the first time brought to the knowledge of civilized man.

The icy barriers that girdle the poles of the earth have been assailed again and again by hardy and daring adventurers, but the mysterious secrets that lie beyond those barriers are as yet undiscovered. The laws that govern some of the most powerful forces of nature have been studied and those forces have been utilized in the service of man. Time and space have not been annihilated, but they are very far from being the obstacles in the way of human progress that they once were. The immense power of steam has been subjugated, harnessed, and put under the yoke, and by it

huge and ponderous freights and innumerable passengers are transported by sea and by land over and around the world. The subtle but terrible power of electricity is yet only imperfectly subdued. Enough, however, has been demonstrated to make it certain that the attainment on the part of man of a deeper and more accurate knowledge of the occult laws that govern this extraordinary agent may enable him to utilize it as he has utilized steam. The inquiry as to the uses to which electricity may be put opens up a vast field for speculation; but it is idle to predict what may or may not be, when man bestrides the forked lightning and rides it as the obedient horse is ridden. The boldest dreamer would hardly trust his imagination to fashion what may be the result of such a conquest.

We know that knowledge is power. What may not a man do if he knows how? If men fully knew all the laws of nature and of the universe would they not be Gods? But, alas! the greatest truth that the wisest of men have discovered after having spent their lives and exhausted their powers in search of knowledge, is, that it was but little they knew, while the great ocean of truth lay beyond their grasp unexplored. When humanity has reached the goal that marks its end, what will be that end? When the earth shall cease to be inhabited by man whither will he have gone? Will he have ascended to a higher sphere to dwell nearer the deity, or will he have fallen back and have been lost in the original chaos out of which creation emerged? There are grounds for the hope that the ultimate destiny of man is a position higher and better than the one he now enjoys. It is certain that he is a progressive being. He learns. He is always a learning. When he acquires knowledge it is wonderful what the fruits of that knowledge are. When he learns something that heretofore has been known to omniscience alone, he makes progress corresponding to such learning towards the Godlike.

Man has learned a little from the great storehouse of nature's truths. He is still learning and we cannot discern the limit where he will cease to learn. Birds transport themselves through the air, and it follows that man might transport freight and passengers through the ethereal element around us, if he knew enough to construct machinery which would operate in accordance with the laws that enable the birds to fly. Let progress be made for the next century in the same ratio that it has been made for the last century, and could we now behold the everyday transactions of one hundred years hence, how inconceivably strange and wonderful to us they must appear. Perhaps the traveller may then take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, or he may take the modes of conveyance that shall then be in use on the land and the sea and be carried with the speed of lightning across oceans and continents.

The history of the world shows, however, that the march of human progress has not been always forward on a straight line. It has halted, been stationary, retrograded, and zigzagged before resuming a forward course.

If the present progressive movement of civilization should be arrested and it should come to a standstill in the next century or should it zigzag or retrograde even before resuming an onward course; that would be in accordance with what has happened in the past. In our anticipations as to the future we have no guide except the past, and we cannot feel assured that the 20th century will close upon a world more enlightened than is the world of to-day. Indeed when we contrast the darkness of the middle ages. with the brilliant light of civilization that illuminated the world during the preceding period of Grecian and Roman supremacy, we must painfully realize that there may be a similar contrast between the next century and the present time, and that one hundred years hence barbarism may brood over lands, where now with earnest zeal the arts and

sciences are generally and successfully cultivated. At this very time there are clouds just above the far-off eastern horizon, no bigger than a man's hand, that may be the beginning of what shall grow into a mighty cyclone, which shall sweep over the earth and arrest the world's progress in all that elevates and improves mankind. Japan, yesterday, was inhabited by barbarians only, who, secluded within their island home, were unknown to the outside world. All at once they have developed a wonderful ability and energy; insomuch that the people of all nations are gazing at them with astonishment. Very suddenly, and almost by intuition, they seem to have mastered not only the art of war but the industrial arts of peace, as practised by those nations furthest advanced in modern warfare and industry. Japan with disciplined battalions is now waging successful war against its neighbor, China, the oldest and most populous of nations.

China has an authentic history of a national existence, dating back more than four thousand years. At an early period she attained a sort of semi-civilization, and has since stubbornly maintained it at that stage without any apparent falling back or further progress. Her people, until

recently, have been shut off from all intercourse with the rest of mankind and as a consequence their habits and traits of character unaffected by foreign influence have been hardened and strengthened by transmission from generation to generation for thousands of years. They have carried the science of multiplying human beings and maintaining them in large numbers in vigorous health on limited space at small expense far in advance of any other people. A dozen Chinamen will breathe comfortably and supply themselves amply with food where one European would suffocate for want of wholesome air and starve from inability to supply himself with food. Chinese labor is far the cheapest labor in the world, and China can spare millions of her laborers every year and never make any percep

tible diminution of her population. The wages on which a Chinese laborer will work and thrive will starve any other laborer. Our experience in the United States has taught us that if we allow fair competition here the Chinese laborer will compel all other laborers to leave the country or go into pauperism and starvation. Our government has recognized the fact and to protect its people, has excluded, contrary to its hitherto settled policy in reference to foreign nations, the Chinese emigrant from our shores. The present war between China and Japan is likely to terminate either in conquest or a treaty that will unite the two countries in some permanent alliance under the leadership of Japan. The last vestiges of the wall that shut off the Celestial Empire from the outside world will then disappear and then a people that can march further in a given space of time and endure privation longer than any other people in the world will be trained in the art of war. Armies will be organized, equipped, and disciplined, navies will be built and material of war prepared in accordance with the latest improvements of modern invention. Cheap labor under skilful direction will flood the markets of the world from Chinese and Japanese factories with all known manufactured products. The unoccupied places of the earth will be sought out and crowded with Japanese and Chinese colonists.

When diverse populations meet and crowd upon each other it is the fittest that will survive, and if there be equal courage and intelligence it is the most enduring that will survive. When opposing armies equally equipped and disciplined under competent leaders meet, the most numerous host is likely to prevail. When nations or individuals compete in manufacturing industries the one that manufactures a good article at the least cost will get, if the contest be fought out to the bitter end, a monopoly of the business.

It is immaterial so far as it may affect the civilization of