marvelous, and some of them equalled if they did not surpass any
wonders we have witnessed. The Great War was the most cataclysmic
eruption that has ever convulsed the world, but it was not more
revolutionary and sensational in the twentieth century than the French
Revolution was in the eighteenth and the Reformation was in the
sixteenth century. The discovery of America in the fifteenth century
created immense excitement and was relatively a more colossal and
startling occurrence than anything that has happened since.

The telescope and the Copernican theory were as great achievements in
their day as the spectroscope and the nebular hypothesis are in our day.
The most useful inventions and the most marvelous products of the human
brain are not the railway and telegraph after all. The art of printing,
which infinitely multiplies thought and sows it in the very air and
every morning photographs the world anew, is a more useful invention and
in its day was a great wonder. Still farther back, hidden in the mists
of antiquity, lies the invention of the alphabet that is even more
useful and marvelous. It is when we get back to the oldest tools, the
hammer and plough and loom, that we come to inventions of the greatest
fundamental utility, and we could better afford to give up all our
modern magic machines than to part with these.

The oldest literature is ever the ripest, richest and best, and Homer
and Shakespeare overtop all our modern writers as the Alps overshadow
the hills lying around their feet. What modern preacher can compare in
eloquence and power with Paul and Isaiah? Nature is ever full of new
wonders, and yet the grass was as green and the mountains as grand and
the golden nets and silver fringes of the clouds were as resplendent in
the days of Abraham as they are to-day. We are the heirs of the ages,
but wonder and wisdom were not born with us, and with us they will not
die.

Where must we go to find the greatest wonder? Not to the scientist's
discoveries and the inventor