inspired in a wonderful manner, without ascribing to
themselves a still more wonderful inspiration? Therefore they extend
the gift of inspiration to the fathers of the church; they attribute to
them those very things which the majority have incorporated in the
canons of the councils; and there again, when the question arises how
we know that of fifty bishops twenty-six were inspired and twenty-four
were not, they finally take the last desperate step, and say that
infallibility and inspiration are inherent in the heads of the church
down to the present day, through the laying on of hands, so that
infallibility, majority and inspiration make all our convictions, all
resignation, all devout intuitions, superfluous. And yet,
notwithstanding all these connecting links, the first question returns
in all its simplicity: How can B know that A is inspired, if B is not
equally, or even more, inspired than A? For it is of more consequence
to know that A was inspired than for one's self to be inspired."

"I have never comprehended this so clearly myself," said she. "But I
have often felt how difficult it must be to know whether one loves who
shows not a sign of love that could not be imitated. And, again, I
have thought that no one could know it unless he knew love himself, and
that he could only believe in the love of another so far as he believed
in his own love. As with the gift of love so is it with the gift of
the Holy Spirit. They upon whom it descended heard a rushing from
heaven as of a mighty wind, and there appeared to them cloven tongues
like as of fire. But the rest were either amazed and perplexed, or
they made sport of them and said: 'They are full of sweet wine.'

"Still, as I said to you, it is the 'German Theology' to which I am
indebted for learning to believe in my belief, and what will seem a
weakness to many, strengthened me the most; namely, that the old master
never stops to demonstrate his propositions rigidly, but scatters them
like a sower, in the hope that some grains will fall upon good soil and
bear fruit a thousand fold. So our Divine Master never attempted to
prove his doctrines, for the perfect conviction of truth disdains the
form of a demonstration."

"Yes," I interrupted her, for I could not help thinking of the
wonderful chain of proof in Spinoza's 'Ethics,' the straining after
demonstration by Spinoza gives me the impression that this acute
thinker could not have believed in his own