arm to the servant-man and servant-girl to
lose the dollar; but I ask if it's no harm to their souls to be hoping
for prizes in the lottery? And suppose a schedule of the lottery were
laid in the corner-stone of the new building. Future generations would
have harder work to decipher these figures, than we with the remains of
the lake-dwellers. What sort of a race was this, they would say, which
built a church with the profits of a lottery? Tetzel's hawking of
indulgences was far less objectionable, for then they paid money for
the pardon of their sins; the motive was a moral one, however much they
may have been in error. But here----"

"I had thought," Sonnenkamp interrupted, "that you considered beauty,
the completion of the beautiful structure, as a sufficiently moral
motive, just as any pagan would."

"I thank you for this suggestion, for it brings me to the point, to
state it briefly, that it is a contradiction to make use of unholy
means for a holy end, and nothing incongruous is truly beautiful."

Sonnenkamp was exceedingly charmed with this exposition, but Pranken,
who saw that his prophecy in regard to the way in which Eric would
proceed was altogether falsified, held his moustache thoughtfully
between his fingers, and contracted his brows. He was stirred up, and
doubly so, when he saw that Manna looked very attentive and serious. He
would have been beside himself if he could have imagined what were her
thoughts.

This heretic, Eric, would not have been able to reach a single dogma of
her belief, with all his philosophy, for this was no lever with which
to move the solid rock; but in this assault upon an apparently
incidental matter, her confidence was shaken in the perfect moral
beauty of the measures of those who were the representatives of the
Spirit in the world. Everything which concerned religion was in her
view fixed and unalterable, and just this thing troubled Manna, this
insignificant trifle, that their object was money. She despised money,
she regarded it as a dangerous enemy, and "money--money!" echoed and
re-echoed within her. "Is gold the temptation?"

Pranken hastily summoned up his energies to say:--

"It strikes me as inconsiderate or immodest--excuse me if I do not use
just the right word--I mean, he who is an unbeliever should not attack
another's belief."

"Should we not?" replied Eric. "And still we are attacked. Humility is
a virtue. Very true; and it is the virtue of a state of sie