torn in tatters
by the passion, is the supreme artist. I am no authority on modern
literature; but I must confess that I was astonished at the change that
a few years have brought about. I was in a proper position for noticing
it, having been practically without books for two years."

"Is it a change for the better, do you think, Mr. Courtland?"

"I feel certain that it is for the better. I refer, of course, only
to the books of those real investigators--real artists. I refer to the
fountain-heads, not to the hydrants laid down by the water companies at
the end of about ten miles of foul piping. I don't like the product of
the hydrants. I like the springs, and, however natural they may be, I
don't find anything impure in them. Why I love the Bible is because it
is so very modern."

"You don't think, then, that it is yet obsolete, Mr. Courtland?"

"No book that deals so truly with men and women can ever be obsolete,
the fact being that men and women are the same to-day as they were ten
thousand years ago, perhaps ten million years ago, though I'm not quite
so sure of that. The Bible, and Shakspere, and Rofudingding, a New
Guinea poet, who ate men for his dinner when he had a chance, and,
when he had finished, sang lyrics that stir the hearts of all his
fellow-islanders to this day,--he lived a hundred years ago,--dealt with
men and women; that is why all are as impressive to-day as they were
when originally composed. Men and women like reading about men and
women, and it is becoming understood, nowadays, that the truth about men
and women can never be contemptible."

"Ah, but how do we know that it is the truth?"

"Therein the metaphysician must minister to himself. I cannot suggest to
you any test of the truth, if you have none with you. Everyone capable
of pronouncing a judgment on any matter must feel how truthfully the
personages in the Bible have been drawn."

"Yes; the Bible is the Word of God."

"I believe that it is, most certainly. That profound wisdom; that
toleration of the weaknesses of men; that sympathy with men, who cannot
fathom the mysteries of life, and the struggle for life of all things
that love life; that spirit I call God, and I don't think that a better
name has been found for it."

"It--for _it_? You think of God as merely a force of nature?"

"Just the contrary. God is the spirit that lives in warfare with nature.
Great Heavens! isn't that the truth of which the whole Bible is the
al