+ " The Freethinker," say 3Mr Stout (vide Lyceum Address, " Star" report), "is never at rest." "What never ? Well, hardly ever, except, of course, when he is m bed. Even there — even when taking recumbent refreshment m what an unclassical friend of mine calls the " arms of Murphy," the Freethinker can hardly be described as at rest. He still does battle with gorgons and chimeras dire (especially if he has supped heavily), performs the " march round" m a visionary procession of Lyceumites, and executes "wing movements" m his sleep. The life of a Freethinker, m short, is a hard one. Other men — good, easy souls — rest m the belief that two and two make four, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, that the earth is bulbous and not flat, that the Bible, on the whole, is a useful and necessary book, and that to fear God and keep His commandments is the whole duty of man. The believer m these old-world myths has, most likely, never actually verified his beliefs. He accepts them a good deal on trust. But he rests m them all the same, and finds the repose, on the whole, agree able, and not particularly detrimental to his moral health. It saves up his energies, you see, for expenditure m" more pressing concerns. • But the un fortunate Freethinker is never at rest. When once a man has been bitten by the tarantula of Freethought, farewell rest ! Thenceforth he has on his hands all the world's beliefs to verify, all its religions to refute, all its dead and buried persecutions to resurrect, m order that he may slay and bury them over again. All the wrongs of all the martyrs he must make his own. He is imprisoned with Galileo, burned with Servetus, hanged with Thomas Aiken head (vide Address, as before), black balled with the Evolutionist clergyman who could'nt get into the V.M.C.A. It is a hard life, and only the hardiest moral constitution can stand it. When one looks at the picture of Free thought as sketched by Mr Stout, who knows it well, one thinks of the Scripture saying about " the troubled '] sea which cannot rest, whoso waters i cast up "; but the rc3t of the ■ passage, of course don't apply. 