that watches over him, that hears him, that sees
him, that will carry him across the grave, that
will enable him to live on for ever;—this double
mystery of a Divinity and of a Soul the infant
learns with the most facile readiness, at the
first glimpse of his reasoning faculty. Before
you can teach him a rule in addition, before you
can venture to drill him into his hornbook, he
leaps, with one intuitive spring of all his ideas,
to the comprehension of the truths which are
only incomprehensible to blundering sages! And
you, as you stand before me, dare not say, 'Let
the child pray for me no more!' But will the
Creator accept the child's prayer for the man
who refuses prayer for himself? Take my advice
—Pray! And in this counsel I do not overstep
my province. I speak not as a preacher, but as
a physician. For health is a word that
comprehends our whole organisation, and a just
equilibrium of all faculties and functions is the
condition of health. As in your Lilian the equilibrium
is deranged by the over-indulgence of a spiritual
mysticism which withdraws from the nutriment
of duty the essential pabulum of sober sense,
so in you, the resolute negation of disciplined
spiritual communion between Thought and
Divinity robs imagination of its noblest and safest
vent. Thus, from opposite extremes, you and
your Lilian meet in the same region of mist and
cloud, losing sight of each other and of the true
ends of life, as her eyes only gaze on the stars
and yours only bend to the earth. Were I
advising her, I should say: 'Your Creator has
placed the scene of your trial below, and not in
the stars.' Advising you, I say: 'But in the
trial below, man should recognise education for
heaven.' In a word, I would draw somewhat
more downward her fancy, raise somewhat more
upward your reason. Take my advice then—
Pray. Your mental system needs the support of
prayer in order to preserve its balance. In the
embarrassment and confusion of your senses,
clearness of perception will come with habitual
and tranquil confidence in Him who alike rules
the universe and reads the heart. I only say
here what has been said much better before by a
reasoner in whom all students of Nature recognise
a guide. I see on your table the very volume
of Bacon which contains the passage I commend
to your reflection. Here it is. Listen: 'Take
an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity
and courage he will put on when he finds himself
maintained by a man who, to him, is instead of a
God, or melior natura, which courage is
manifestly such as that creature, without that
confidence of a better nature than his own, could
never attain. So man, when he resteth and
assureth himself upon divine protection and favour,
gathereth a force and faith which human nature
could not obtain.'* You are silent, but your
gesture tells me your doubt—a doubt which your
heart, so femininely tender, will not speak aloud
lest you should rob the old man of a hope with
which your strength of manhood dispenses—you
doubt the efficacy of prayer! Pause and reflect,
bold but candid inquirer into the laws of that
guide you call Nature. If there were no efficacy
in prayer—if prayer were as mere an illusion of
superstitious phantasy as aught against which
your reason now struggles—do you think that
Nature herself would have made it amongst
the most common and facile of all her
dictates? Do you believe that if there really
did not exist that tie between Man and his
Maker—that link between life here and a life
hereafter which is found in what we call Soul,
alone—that wherever you look through the
universe, you would behold a child at prayer?
Nature inculcates nothing that is superfluous.
Nature does not impel the leviathan, or the lion,
the eagle or the moth, to pray; she impels only
man. Why? Because man only has soul, and
Soul seeks to commune with the Everlasting, as a
fountain struggles up to its source. Burn your
book. It would found you a reputation for learning
and intellect and courage, I allow; but learning
and intellect and courage wasted against a
Truth—like spray against a rock! A Truth
valuable to the world, the world will never part with.
You will not injure the truth, but you will mislead
and may destroy many, whose best security
is in the Truth which you so eruditely insinuate
to be a fable. Soul and Hereafter are the heritage
of all men; the humblest journeyman in those
streets, the pettiest trader behind those counters,
have in those beliefs their prerogatives of royalty.
You would dethrone and embrute the lords of the
earth by your theories. For my part, having given
the greater part of my life to the study and
analysis of facts, I would rather be the author
of the tritest homily, of the baldest poem, that
inculcated that imperishable essence of the soul
to which I have neither scalpel nor probe—than
be the founder of the subtlest school, or the
framer of the loftiest verse, that robbed my
fellow-men of their faith in a spirit that eludes
the dissecting-knife, in a being that escapes the
gravedigger. Burn your book—Accept This
BOOK instead; Read and Pray."
* Bacon's Essay on Atheism. This quotation is
made with admirable felicity and force by Dr. Whewell,
page 378 of Bridgewater Treatise, on Astronomy
and General Physics considered with Reference to
Natural Theology.

He placed his Bible in my hand, embraced me,
and, an hour afterwards, the old man and the
child left my hearth solitary once more.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THAT night as I sat in my study, very thoughtful
and very mournful, I revolved all that Julius
Faber had said, and the impression his words had
produced became gradually weaker and weaker,
as my reason, naturally combative, rose up with
all the replies which my philosophy suggested.
No! if my imagination had really seduced and
betrayed me into monstrous credulities, it was
clear that the best remedy to such morbid
tendencies towards the Superstitious was in the
severe exercise of the faculties most opposed to