f our discussion tonight,
you were in the position of having no minister."

"Not at all. We had already appointed a successor."

"A successor?"

"Certainly. It will be in tomorrow morning's papers. The fact is that
we decided to ask Dr. McTeague to resume his charge."

"Dr. McTeague!" repeated Mr. Newberry in amazement. "But surely his
mind is understood to be--"

"Oh not at all," interrupted Dr. Boomer. "His mind appears if anything,
to be clearer and stronger than ever. Dr. Slyder tells us that
paralysis of the brain very frequently has this effect; it soothes the
brain--clears it, as it were, so that very often intellectual problems
which occasioned the greatest perplexity before present no difficulty
whatever afterwards. Dr. McTeague, I believe, finds no trouble now in
reconciling St. Paul's dialectic with Hegel as he used to. He says that
so far as he can see they both mean the same thing."

"Well, well," said Mr. Newberry, "and will Dr. McTeague also resume his
philosophical lectures at the university?"

"We think it wiser not," said the president. "While we feel that Dr.
McTeague's mind is in admirable condition for clerical work we fear
that professorial duties might strain it. In order to get the full
value of his remarkable intelligence, we propose to elect him to the
governing body of the university. There his brain will be safe from any
shock. As a professor there would always be the fear that one of his
students might raise a question in his class. This of course is not a
difficulty that arises in the pulpit or among the governors of the
university."

"Of course not," said Mr. Newberry.

* * * * *

Thus was constituted the famous union or merger of the churches of St.
Asaph and St. Osoph, viewed by many of those who made it as the
beginning of a new era in the history of the modern church.

There is no doubt that it has been in every way an eminent success.

Rivalry, competition, and controversies over points of dogma have
become unknown on Plutoria Avenue. The parishioners of the two churches
may now attend either of them just as they like. As the trustees are
fond of explaining it doesn't make the slightest difference. The entire
receipts of the churches, being now pooled, are divided without
reference to individual attendance. At each half year there is issued a
printed statement which is addressed to the shareholders of the United
Churches Limited and is hardly to be d