would assure the immortality of his devotees on condition that they would keep his commandments, and on the day of judgment be found just in their actions and pure in their hearts.

There is not one among all the religions which is built upon ignorance, but all of them are based upon the aspirations of the human heart which develop naturally and inevitably in any human society. Different religions express their religious faith and their hopes differently, some more clearly than others, some only vaguely, but the kernel of every one of them incorporates positive experiences and a certain amount of conviction; the essential part of them is always some positive faith; it is never negative, never ignorance, never an absence of knowledge.

It is true that the vast realms of the unknown stretch before us and they are much larger than the area of facts which have been illumined by the light of cognition, but we must bear in mind that knowledge possesses the quality of being universal. Thus the rays of comprehension extend into the unknown regions of the most inaccessible domains of the world. The fabric of the universe is not

chaotic, but reveals a definite plan and so by having a little portion of the world well understood we are in the possession of a key which will unlock doors containing mysterious revelations of the most distant spheres.

The awe which man feels when facing this omnipresent order, and not our ignorance as to the constitution of the cosmos, has produced the conception of God, and though, at first, man merely divined the order of the universe and expressed his conception of it only in symbols before he could thoroughly grasp and understand it, it is not the unknown nor the not yet known of the deity that pervades the world in all its phases, but it is the obviously known and undoubtedly true which makes man bow in worship together with others who feel the same spell of religious devotion. Man's ignorance will never produce religious sentiments that will build up and edify the soul. From the realms of ignorance bigotry has risen, fanaticism and all the host of aberrations, but not the ideals of true religion.

Our limitations are indispensable because all corporeal beings are limited in space and time, but in spite of all limitations, the soul is capable of reaching out into the vast regions of the unknown universe, and it is characteristic of all mentality that the mind comprehends in every particular case the general and universal law. This characteristic feature of mind, of reason, of spirit, makes man Godlike and renders possible his sentiments of moral and religious

aspirations. This feature of rationality, too, is the factor that produces science.

It is not true that science, criticism, and knowledge "puffeth up" that it "enlargeth but isolates the soul." Science "puffeth up" only if it be pseudo-science, or if it be void of other human or humane sentiments such as kindness and proper regard for others. It is true enough that science alone without sentiment or sympathy for others is like a tinkling cymbal, and a mere intellectual comprehension of the universe will forever remain insufficient. But a lack of science will not make up for these deficiencies. We can expect no help from ignorance. Lovingkindness is needed to fill the gap in our hearts. Love inspires respect for everything good, holy and noble, but not ignorance. There is no virtue in ignorance, nor is there any redeeming feature in ignorance. Ignorance is not the mother of devotion but of superstition.

THE DOG'S BOILERS AND THEIR FUEL.

BY WOODS HUTCHINSON, A.M., M.D.

HE secret of life lies in the gift of drinking in sunshine, either

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raw as plants do, or worked up into what we call foods, as animals must, and using its warmth for selfish purposes. The greenstuff of plants catches the sunlight, which sets to work building the stem-leaf house, and then storing it with starch and sugar. Then comes the animal and, most greedily, eats up the plant, crystallized sunshine and all, and uses it first to build his own body-house, then to move it about and warm it.

The first and most important need of the dog-engine is plenty of fuel. It was to move about in search of this, that his racingmachine grew up. So that his body is like a locomotive, not only in having a running-gear and "wheels," but a "fire-box" as well, in which his food-fuel can be burnt and turned into heat and horsepower, or more correctly, "dog-power." As you would expect in any fire-box, there are two openings, one for taking in fuel, the other for getting rid of stuff that will not burn properly, called ashes

or waste.

These are the opposite ends of the body, so that the dog's firebox is in the form of a longish tube, known in Latin as the alimentary canal, or in plain English, food-tube. This is the form of the body-furnace in all backboned animals, and most backboneless, though some of the simplest and earliest of these have a mere pouch, with but one opening.

But the food-tube of the dog is very far from being a simple canal, of uniform calibre from mouth to anus. As you look at it, you see that about a foot down from the mouth it balloons out into a pear-shaped pouch, the stomach, then becomes small again and thrown into a large number of coils, the last of which is somewhat larger than the others. Altogether in fact, instead of being just the length of the body, it is between five and six times as long.

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Is there anything in the food of the dog to explain this state of affairs? Why does he need a stomach-pouch, and coils of intestine? A pouch is used to store or carry things in, and if you recall

the kind of food that the dog lives upon, you see at once how much he needs a place, where he can stow away a quantity at one time to be digested at leisure. When he catches a deer, or a wood-chuck,

all that he is sure of is what he can eat on the spot. He is compelled to be greedy, for if he leaves any of it till next day, or even next meal, it is almost sure to be stolen before he comes back. So he gorges himself with all that his stomach will hold. Indeed if you can come upon a wolf while he is feasting on the body of a heifer, or yearling colt which he has pulled down, you can sometimes ride or run him down, inside of a mile, so enormously has he loaded down his stomach, not merely for present but also for future use.

This then is the primary use of a stomach, a storage-, or delayplace for food, until it can be gradually absorbed. But would not this delay be an excellent time for beginning to melt it for absorption? In an early and simple stomach, like the fish's, where the food is chiefly other fishes, shrimps, worms, water-weeds and such-like soft, watery things, which need only to be kept warm and moist, to melt of themselves, you will find little else in its lining but a pavement of thickish, smooth cells. But if you will look at the lining of the dog's stomach, you will see that it looks thick and velvety, and with a magnifying-glass you can make out swarms of tiny, little openings, like pinpricks, dotted all over it. These are the mouths of tiny pouches of the inner cell-sheet, known as glands, which manufacture and pour out a sour juice, called the stomachor in Latin, gastric juice.

This has a curious power of melting meat, and can dissolve a moderate stomach-full in two, or three hours, though the huge gorges that the wild dog takes may require two or three days, during which he sleeps most of the time, in his burrow, or on a sunny hillside, and doesn't like to be disturbed. Indeed it is a rule, with wolfhunters, that unless you can get your hounds to the place of his last kill within twelve or fifteen hours after he has left the carcass, so that the pack has a chance of "cold-trailing" him to his lair, it is better to wait two or three days, until hunger drives him abroad again, for as long as he lies still, he, of course, makes no trails, and to beat the woods on the mere chance of stumbling upon him, would be like hunting a needle in a hay-stack, unless you happen to know just what thicket he "lies up" in.

This explains the meaning of that simple, pear-shaped pouch in his food tube, which we call the stomach. But what of the long coils, not unlike a live garden-hose, into which the rest of the tube is thrown? Evidently these are not adapted for storing the food or for letting it rest in one place until it can be melted; but if you will open the tube and look at a portion of its lining under the microscope, you will get a suggestion as to the meaning of this loop