his knowledge to his own heart and life, by faith, so that lie might continue his struggle to be a better boy more successfully. And I inquired, furthermore, with somewhat sarcastic emphasis, if he (Mr. Warren) had any new truths to impart to him, likely to afford him more efficient assistance in the good work, than those old ones, which had so imperceptibly made their way into his understanding ? " Pshaw ! " said Mr. Warren, impatiently. " Take him, in Heaven's name, and do what you like with him ! Since he cannot come to the study of these subjects with an un- prejudiced mind, as I had hoped, why, let him leai'n what he can of one side before he takes up the other. It will not make much difference in the long run. I read the Testament, too, when I was a boy but it did not pre- vent me from turning out what you, I suppose, would call an infidel." " Or an unbeliever," said I, composedly. " What rea- son have I to call you anything else ? In all our acquaint- ance, you have never shown me anything but unbelief. Of your creed, if you have one, I know nothing." He reflected a moment, then he burst out with, " I do not believe in the inspiration of the Bible." I could not repress a smile. " There it is ! " said I, " you see you know not how to say anything but ' I do not believe.' Now, creed comes from credo, I believe. The Mohammedan has one, so have the Chinese and the Afri- can. It is only philosophers and sceptics, lost and bewil- dered amid the mazes of their own imaginations, or dwarfed to the stature of their own dust-clogged reason, that have to content themselves with negations." He looked a little piqued. " Wait a moment ; I have, at least, one article of belief, if that constitutes a creed. I believe in a God or a Somebody, or Something, which SHILOH. 327 may as well be called by that name as- any who made the universe, and governs it." " Dp you also tremble ? " asked I, audaciously. Not in truth, that I risked anything. I knew well that, the sharper the repartee in which I indulged with Mr. "Warren, the better he liked it. " No, I don't," said he, with a grim smile. " And, therefore, it is fair to conclude that I am not what you so politely insinuate." " I gladly accept the conclusion. As for your creed, it is good, so far as it goes. Which is about as far, I take it, as the most uncultivated savage would go, before he tried to embody this Deity in, or to represent Him by, an image of wood or stone, the work of his own or some other hands. Go on ; let me see how you do that. Do you accept the pantheism of Spinoza, or the materialism of Hume ? " " Which would you recommend ? " asked he, coolly, be- tween two puffs of his pipe. " Hume, by all means." I replied, rising. " For it is most fit that a man who begins by getting rid of the Gos- pel, a Saviour, and all that the renewed heart holds most dear, should end by getting rid of himself and everybody else as does that most subtle and abstruse philosopher ! For, having proved to his own satisfaction ! that he has no identity apart from the perceptions conveyed to him, he goes on to say that if any one has a different notion of him- self, he cannot longer argue with him ! See to what absurd- ities men are reduced, who reject the revelation of God, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit ! " And I turned to go. " Sit a moment longer," urged Mr. Warren, " I want to ask you a question, or two." " To what purpose ? " said I, still standing. " It will be the old story endless discussion and no result. Besides, I do not care to treat serious matters any longer in this light way." 328 SIIILOH. " I won't discuss," returned he, " I will only question- And you may be as serious as you like." I sat down reluctantly. " Seriously, now and honestly Miss Frost, do you believe the Bible, every word of it ? " " Yes, I do." MR. W. And yet, you are, I take it, a pretty well edu- cated woman ; as much so as if you had been through college ? I. I cannot say as to that, I only know that, in most respects, my father gave me the same education that he would have given a son. ME. "VV. And you have traveled in Europe ? I. Yes, and elsewhere. But to what end this cate- chism ? ME. W. I am coming to it. I can understand how these ignoramuses around us can believe in the Bible's absurdities and impossibilities ; but it passes my comprehension how a thoroughly trained and informed mind can do it. I. Lord Bacon was a profounder thinker than Voltaire. And Bishop Butler was a more learned man than Tom Paine. ME. W. Have you read the " Age of Reason " ? I. Yes, my father would have me read it, under his supervision. ME. W. And what do you think of it ? I. I think it as shallow a work as was ever palmed off oh a credulous public for a product of profound thought. ME. W. (raising his eyebrows). A sweeping assertion. I. Not at all. The book is nowhere profound. You can read it all through, from title-page to finis, at one sit- ting, and not once need to pause and reflect ; nor have a worse headache at the end than a shilling novel would give you. ME. W. So you classify books, as some do wines, by the amount of headache in them ! SHILOH, 329 I. No, not quite. But I think it might not be amiss to rate them according to the amount of heartache they cure. I doubt if the " Age of Reason " ever cured any ! Whereas, the Bible has cured more heartache, and cured it more thoroughly, than any other book known. Notwithstanding its difficulties and obscurities what you are pleased to call its absurdities and impossibilities, the fact remains that, for hundreds of years, every kind of human, misery has gone to it, as to a well of consolation, and found what it sought. Is there nothing in this fact, oh, contemptuous scoffer at its claim to Divine inspiration ! to make you pause and reconsider your dictum ? There are older books than the gospels, why have they not equal power ? There are works of stronger fascination as mere specimens of hu- man genius, why have they not the same effect ? Mn. W. (thoughtfully). Probably, because none of them profess to answer so categorically those three great ques- tions that continually haunt and perplex the human mind, " Whence came we ? Why are we here ? " and " Whither do we go ? " Most people prefer to take up with any ap- parently authoritative answer than to have none at all. I. Unwittingly, you have said more for the Bible than you can say against it ! To admit that it is, after all, the one answer to those questions which best satisfies the uni- versal mind, the loftiest and the lowest alike, though human wit and wisdom and genius have exhausted them- selves in vainly trying to find out a better, is tantamount to admitting that it is inspired. If of human origin, why does no other work displace it ? Other books die, and are forgotten. Early scepticism is well-nigh lost Celsus and Julian are best known by the refutations of Origen and Cyril. Early moralists are shelved in learned libraries. Early historians are superseded by works embodying their substance. But the Bible remains intact. Though a moun- tainous mass of commentary, criticism, and discussion, has been written upon and against it, nothing has ever sup- 330 8HILOH. planted, nothing permanently injured it. Does this fact also go for nothing, oh, bold contemner of its truths ! that, during all the long march of the ages, with the help of their accumulated light, knowledge, experience, and skill, human labor and human genius have failed to prbducc any work which so embodies its gist, incorporates its wisdom, exhausts its meaning, or weakens its influence, as to super- sede it ? The existence and the power of the Bible in the world are stubborn facts for sceptics. It has been truly said that it is a standing miracle. MR. W. Are not some of your remarks equally applica- ble to Homer and Virgil ? I. Who reads them, beyond a certain educated class ? Who cares for them, in translations ? Will the time ever come, think you, when a translation of them will be found in every house, and the mass of mankind go to it for com- fort and guidance in every sort of trial, bereavement, doubt, difficulty ? MR. W. Well, perhaps not. But our talk has drifted away from the point where it started, and which interested me most the influence of education on Christianity. There have been more leacned freethinkers than Tom Paine. Is it not true, after all, that men of the acutest minds and the profoundest learning have been opposed to Chris- tianity ? I. Certainly. But the argument, if it proves anything, proves more for Christianity than against it. For, in the first place, men of mightiest intellect and vastest erudition have given it their loving adhesion and service ; and, in the second, see how little the adverse learning, power, and genius have availed to injure it ! I think God has allowed some of the finest talent to waste itself in attacking it, just to show the futility of the work. Do you remember Vol- taire's boast that, though it took twelve men to establish Christianity, he would show that it needed but one to over- throw it? Yet Christianity is stronger to-day than when SHILOH. * 331 he assailed it. Whereas, Voltaire is but little read, even by his own countrymen. No writer enjoys so wide a repu- tation upon hearsay. The great proportion of those who adopt his views and use his arguments, never read a line of his works. They take them at second-hand. Lucky for them that they do ! To be obliged to wade through some five or six thousantl closely printed pages, wherein attacks on Christianity are mixed up with all sorts of subjects, to say nothing of gross indecency, ill-timed buffoonery, vehe- ment denunciation, unscrupulous ridicule, one-sided, dis- torted, inaccurate statements, and unwarrantable conclu- sions, would go far to dampen the ardor of the devoutest disciple, if it did not make him sick of the very name of Voltaire ! The more, that he would find so little positive belief, to balance unbelief. He would find Voltaire's creed slipping through his fingers, as it seems continually to have been doing through his own. For his later works show a marked deviation from his earlier opinions; arguments which he characterizes as sophisms at one point of his life prevail with him, at another ; objections which he states and answers here, overcome him there ; his mind oscillates perplexingly between two opinions ; and the whole makes nothing quite so clear as that very little was quite clear to himself. In all his works, there is a most striking contrast between the arrogancy of his processes of reasoning, and the humility, not to say meanness, of the results. One is con- tinually amazed that he should have trusted so implicitly to human reason, if it could only lead him to such timid, qualified, and sombre conclusions. MK. W. (moodily). I cannot disprove your statements. You have read more widely than I, even (bowing with mock respect) of infidel writings. But it does not matter. I pin my faith upon no man, nor school ; I judge for my- self. I bring all things to the test of my own reason. I. Does it tell you why and how an inanimate seed in the earth springs up to life, and grows and bears fruit ? 332 ' SHILOH. If not if you cannot discover the vital principle, nor how it works why believe that the seed has life and brings forth .fruit ? . Would it not be more reasonable to deny both propositions, and plant no more seeds and eat no more fruit ? Mr. W. I don't see what you are driving at. I. Your boasted reason cannot discdrn the vital princi- ple of inspiration in the Bible, nor of supernatural power in Christianity, though it lives and germinates and bears fruit in countless human hearts. Deny that it exists, there- fore, and refuse to yourself, certainly to others, if you can its health-giving, life-giving sustenance. MK. W. So does Mohammedism live and bear fruit. I. True, for Mohammedism is a religion and a worship, not a chill system of philosophy. It believes in God, and does not wholly reject Christ. The Koran borrows much that is good from the Bible. Its errors have their legiti- mate fruit in the condition of Mohammedom to-day. Con- trast it with Christian countries, if you would test the two religions by their fruits. MR. W. Ah ! I would like to read the Koran once ! I. Read something better, read the Bible ! Read