cts and not by our beliefs. This
is proved--he alleges--by such a man as Gigadibs, who has no warrant in
his belief for living a moral life, and does so because his instincts
compel it. Just so the Bishop's instincts compel a believing life. They
demand for him a living, self-proving God (here the doctrine of
expediency re-asserts itself), and they tell him that the good things
which his position confers are the gift of that God, and intended by Him
for his enjoyment. "You," he adds, "who live for something which never
is, but always is _to be_, are like a traveller, who casts off, in every
country he passes through, the covering that will be too warm for him in
the next; and is comfortable nowhen and nowhere."

One of his latest arguments is the best. Gigadibs has said: "If you must
hold a dogmatic faith, at all events reform it. Prune its excrescences
away."

"And where," he retorts, "am I to stop, when once that process has
begun? I put my knife to the _liquefaction_,[58] and end, like Fichte,
by slashing at God Himself. And meanwhile, we have to control a mass of
ignorant persons whose obedience is linked to the farthest end of the
chain (to the first superstition which I am called upon to lop off). We
have here again a question of making the best of our cabin-fittings, the
best of the opportunities which life places to our hand." In conclusion,
he draws a contemptuous picture of the obscure and inconsequent
existence which Gigadibs accepts, as the apostle without genius and
without enthusiasm, of what is, if it be one at all, a _non-working_
truth.

Gigadibs is silenced, and, as it proves, impressed; but the Bishop is
too clever to be very proud of his victory; for he knows it has been a
personal, much more than a real one. His strength has lain chiefly in
the assumption (which only the entire monologue can justify or even
convey) that his opponent would change places with him if he could; and
he knows that in arguing from this point of view he has been only half
sincere. His reasonings have been good enough for the occasion. That is
the best he can say for them.

MR. SLUDGE, THE MEDIUM.

"Sludge, the Medium," is intended to show that even so ignoble a person
as a sham medium may have something to say in his own defence; and so
far as argument goes, Sludge defends himself successfully on two
separate lines. But in the one case he excuses his imposture: in the
other, he in great measure disproves it. And thi