pose justified an interest in him beyond what
gratitude obligated, and was in part the cause why she neither shrank
from his society, nor grew alarmed at the rapid growth of her intimacy.
But they only who love the truth simply and altogether, can really know
what they are about.

I do not care to follow the intellectual duel between them. Argument,
save that of a man with himself, when council is held between heart,
will, imagination, conscience, vision, and intellect, is of little avail
or worth. Nothing, however, could have suited Faber's desires better.
Under the shadow of such difficulties as the wise man ponders and the
fool flaunts, difficulties which have been difficulties from the dawn
of human thought, and will in new shapes keep returning so long as the
human understanding yearns to infold its origin, Faber brought up an
array of arguments utterly destructive of the wretched theories of forms
of religion which were all she had to bring into the field: so wretched
and false were they--feeblest she found them just where she had regarded
them as invincible--that in destroying them Faber did even a poor part
of the work of a soldier of God: Mephistopheles describes himself as

Ein Theil von jener Kraft,
Die stets das Boese will, und stets das Gute schafft,
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . der Geist der stets verneint.

For the nature of Juliet's argument I must be content to refer any
curious reader to the false defenses made, and lies spoken for God, in
many a pulpit and many a volume, by the worshipers of letter and system,
who for their sakes "accept His person," and plead unrighteously for
Him. Before the common sense of Faber, they went down like toys, and
Juliet, without consciously yielding at first, soon came to perceive
that they were worse than worthless--weapons whose handles were sharper
than their blades. She had no others, nor metal of which to make any;
and what with the persuasive influence of the man, and the pleasure in
the mere exercise of her understanding, became more and more interested
as she saw the drift of his argument, and apprehended the weight of what
truth lay upon his side. For even the falsest argument is sustained in
virtue of some show of truth, or perhaps some crumb of reality belonging
to it. The absolute lie, if such be frameable by lips of men, can look
only the blackness of darkness it is. The lie that can hu