d out how we can get hold of the truth
at all."

"My trouble is that I don't think I understand in the least what you
mean," replied Esther.

"I thought you knew enough theology for that," said George. "The thing
is simple enough. Hazard and I and every one else agree that thought is
eternal. If you can get hold of one true thought, you are immortal as
far as that thought goes. The only difficulty is that every fellow
thinks his thought the true one. Hazard wants you to believe in his, and
I don't want you to believe in mine, because I've not got one which I
believe in myself."

"Still I don't understand," said Esther. "How can I make myself immortal
by taking Mr. Hazard's opinions?"

"Because then the truth is a part of you! if I understand St. Paul, this
is sound church doctrine, leaving out the personal part of the Trinity
which Hazard insists on tacking to it. Except for the rubbish, I don't
think I am so very far away from him," continued Strong, now assuming
that he had done what he could to set Esther straight, and going on with
the conversation as though it had no longer a personal interest. As he
talked, he poked holes in the snow with his stick, as though what he
said was for his own satisfaction, and he were turning this old problem
over again in his mind to see whether he could find any thing new at the
bottom of it. "I can't see that my ideas are so brutally shocking. We
may some day catch an abstract truth by the tail, and then we shall have
our religion and immortality. We have got far more than half way.
Infinity is infinitely more intelligible to you than you are to a
sponge. If the soul of a sponge can grow to be the soul of a Darwin, why
may we not all grow up to abstract truth? What more do you want?"

As he looked up again, saying these words without thinking of Esther's
interest, he was startled to see that this time she was listening with a
very different expression in her face. She broke in with a question
which staggered him.

"Does your idea mean that the next world is a sort of great reservoir of
truth, and that what is true in us just pours into it like raindrops?"

"Well!" said he, alarmed and puzzled: "the figure is not perfectly
correct, but the idea is a little of that kind."

"After all I wonder whether that may not be what Niagara has been
telling me!" said Esther, and she spoke with an outburst of energy that
made Strong's blood run cold.

_Chapter X_

Strong kept