Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/52

 provided the company of a neighbour and acquaintance of his own, who was also Calvinistic, but in a decidedly more advanced degree than Brown. Poor Brown was soon effectually smashed, and White's future peace secured. We nicknamed this terrible fellow the Unmitigated Calvinist, while Brown was only the Mitigated, or mere Reason-Reconciliation Calvinist.

In accordance with my own particular hobby, I would, on every possible occasion in our society, turn the discussion upon the forecasting of the future. Our present progress was in geometric ratio, to use a common phrase. Every ten or twenty years' advance exceeded that of any previous like interval, and where shall we be after fifty or a hundred more such intervals and such advances? I presented my own ideas on this subject to the Society, and I persuaded some of our other leading members to present theirs also, for successive discussion. Thus we had, in particular, a scientific forecast from Black, as to what might be the world's attainments and condition, through the advances of science over another thousand years. This was followed by Yellowly, on the social and political changes impending upon the inevitable progress of our country and of the world in general. And lastly came Reed's forecast of the religious future, in which the Church of reasonableness and good common sense would have made a more effective development. Let me, then, in this looking-forward direction, begin with—