own
habitual lines of thought--at least, so far as I can judge from what
you have said. Indeed, suppose you had called upon me to help you
prepare insoluble problems. I was bound, I suppose, to comply to the
best of my ability; and, if I had done so, those statements of yours
are thus far the very preface I supplied--I beg your pardon--should
have supplied--you with. I fancy I could almost state the questions.
Well?"--

All this was most kind and complimentary; but somehow it did not
encourage the doctor in the least. He even fancied that he detected a
sneer, as if his interlocutor had been saying, "Flutter away, old
bird! That was _my bait_ that you have been feeding on: you're safe
enough; it is my net that holds you."

"_First Question_," said Dr. Hicok, with steadiness: "Reconcile the
foreknowledge and the fore-ordination of God with the free will of
man?"

"I thought so, of course," remarked the other. Then he looked straight
into the doctor's keen little grey eyes with his deep melancholy black
ones, and raised his slender fore-finger. "Most readily. The
reconciliation is _your own conscience_, doctor! Do what you know to
be right, and you will find that there is nothing to reconcile--that
you and your Maker have no debates to settle!"

The words were spoken with a weighty solemnity and conviction that
were even awful. The doctor had a conscience, though he had found
himself practically forced, for the sake of success, to use a good
deal of constraint with it--in fact, to lock it up, as it were, in a
private mad-house, on an unfounded charge of lunacy. But the obstinate
thing would not die, and would not lose its wits; and now all of a
sudden, and from the very last quarter where it was to be expected,
came a summons before whose intensity of just requirement no bolts
could stand. The doctor's conscience walked out of her prison, and
came straight up to the field of battle, and said--

"Give up the first question."

And he obeyed.

"I confess it," he said. "But how could I have expected a great basic
truth both religiously and psychologically so, from--from _you_?"

"Ah! my dear sir," was the reply, "you have erred in _that_ line of
thought, exactly as many others have. The truth is one and the same,
to God, man, and devil."

"_Second Question_," said Dr. Hicok. "Reconcile the development
theory, connection of natural selection and sexual relation, with the
responsible immortality of the soul."

"U