er--"

"What do you mean? You are not among your students," angrily
interrupted Johanna.

"You are right," continued Richard, with a quiet smile; "my students
are polite enough to permit me to finish a sentence without
interrupting me. I will also state, first of all, that this ingenious
parable makes no mention of the sister. I do not know what a sister
would have said in that affair."

Johanna jumped from her seat in anger; her features seemed distorted
with passion. She opened her mouth to answer him, but could not utter a
word.

"Shall I go on, mother?" asked Richard.

"Of course; speak on."

"In the first place, the pure spirit which here reveals itself is as
fully acknowledged by us as by the pious believers.

"To me the all-important point is, that it illustrates a view of the
relation between parents and children, which is completely the reverse
of that fostered by the ancient civilization, in which the children
suffer for the sins of their parents. Just think of the curse of the
Atrides. In our days, it is quite different, and the fate of the
parents--their happiness as well as their sorrow--depends upon the
conduct of their children.

"The individual to whom such affliction comes is subject to the great
and universal law of the newer life."

"Is there anything else you would like to say?" inquired Johanna, in an
angry voice. She had some time before that snatched the Bible out of
Richard's hands, and had been reading in it ever since, as if she
thought that the best way to counteract the influence of the heresies
he had been uttering. With all that, she seemed to hear every word that
was said.

"I certainly have, if you will permit me. To me this story seems a
repetition, in a new shape, of a subject already treated in the same
book. The story of Joseph in Egypt is a family history that borders on
the region of fable, narrated without any regard to the moral that
underlies it, and yet representing to us the reward of innocence. This
story which tells of a son who had been a real sinner, and for that
reason was not permitted to return as a viceroy amid joy and splendor,
but in the garb of a beggar, has another lesson for us. Viewed from the
stand-point of the Old or New Testament, or even by our own feelings,
it tells the story of redemption. Yes, every human being who falls into
sinful ways, shall be obliged to eat the husks;.... but he is not lost.
When through self-knowledge his soul has been h