id this, which he evidently considered
unanswerable.

"You are quite right," said my husband, gravely. "It is impossible that
nothing should produce God, and therefore I say God is eternal. It is
not impossible that something should produce the world, and therefore I
believe the world is not eternal. That point is the one on which the
whole argument hangs in my mind."

"It does not become me to dispute a clergyman," said Mr. Remington,
smiling affectedly, as if only courtesy prevented his coming in with an
entirely demolishing argument.

To my great surprise Lulu instantly answered, and with an intelligence
that showed she had followed the argument entirely,--

"I am certain, George, that Mr. Prince has altogether the best of it.
Yours is merely a technical difficulty,--merely words. You can conceive
a thousand things which you can never fully comprehend. And this, too,
is a proof of the Infinite Father in our very reasoning,--that, if we
could comprehend Him, we should be ourselves infinite. As it is, we can
believe and adore,--and, more than that, rejoice that we cannot in this
finite life of ours do more."

"If we believed we could comprehend Him," said I, "we should soon begin
to meddle with God's administration of affairs."

"Yes,--and in fatalism I have always thought there was a profound
reverence," said Lulu.

"Oh, are you going into theological mysteries, too?" said Remington,
with a laugh in which none of us joined; "what care you, Lulu, for the
quiddities of Absolute Illimitation and Infinite Illimitation? After
all, what matters it whether one believes in a God, who you allow to be
the personation of all excellence, if only one endeavors to act up to
the highest conceivable standard of perfection,--I mean of human
perfection,--leaving, of course, a liberal margin for human frailties
and defects? One wouldn't like to leave out mercy, you know."

Whatever might be the real sentiments of the man, there was an air of
levity in his mode of treating the most important subjects of thought
which displeased me, especially when he said, "You adore the
Incomprehensible; I am contented to adore, with silent reverence, the
lovely works of His hand." He pointed his remark without hesitation at
LuLu, who sat looking into the fire, and did not notice him or it.

"You are quite right, Mr. Prince, and my cousin, is quite wrong," said
she, looking up with a docile, childlike expression, at the minister.
"One feels t