order is inconsistent. But God is consistent-hence miracles are atheistic.' Your agnostic says, This fixed order is infrangible, by the nature of law, hence miracles are absurd.' Your atheist says, 'This fixed order is the only sovereign, and there is no one to break it.' And the logic stands unimpeachable in every case."

Elsmere had followed the snatches diligently. They were only his own conclusions put tersely and somewhat boldly.

"But as you hold the miracles, I fancy, you have faced the logic and found the keyhole" he said, now anxious to hear the best that Oxenbode could do. It was a strange feeling to him, to find himself supporting the other side.

"No, I can't face that logic, neither can you. It remains, and the mistake of the clergy will be seen sooner or later in attempting to shatter it. You can't give up the whole rationale of your case in the first premise and expect to save any essential remnants in your conclusion. I don't, for one. The skeptic must not take it for granted with me, that fatalism is a competent philosophy. You probably wish to discriminate between the reign of law and the doctrine of necessity. As to the point at issue you can't do it profitably."

“Oh, if you mean to attack the fact implied in that phrase -reign of law—well, you have a tolerably large contract. A hundred years of observation have settled that."

"Not quite, Mr. Elsmere. The larger half is left out."

"Show me how," said Elsmere. He was ready to drop the argument, because he saw, that he was at the end of common ground. A man who was about to deny the plain order of nature naturally could have no case.

"The larger half," said Mr. Oxenbode, "is the absolute freedom of God—and science has been stone-blind not to see it." "But that is not a thing to be seen, is it?" said Elsmere. "We may declare it, as a pure anthropomorphism, but is there any ordered proof of it?"

"Of that and nothing else. And this world is the testimony. Speaking of anthropomorphism—where do you suppose we got our conception of law?"

"From nature, of course," promptly answered the rector. He was scarcely interested, but willing to hear the matter through.

"Would you say that law in the first instance is from a lawgiver, and so implies one? Yes! Well, then either that is because a lawgiver is necessary to the very idea of law, or because we practiced anthropomorphism-we carried our own sense of authority over into the sources of nature's regularities."

"Very possible. Theism might well be enforced that way," assented Elsmere.

"It is more than enforced, I should suppose. It is necessitated. Why is it not quite as legitimate, pray, to carry over our sense of freedom-and especially if we see its marks in the universe?"

Elsmere did not believe there were any such marks, but he struck out keenly at the conception-a crazy one, though he thought it to be.

"And our caprice-you will tell us next that that there is no stability."

"No one would believe me if I did-simply because there is after all and in spite of fine philosophies a kind of universal reliance upon what we term our anthropomorphic inferences. We always have trusted them, probably always shall. It is not true that man is mostly capricious. The history of the world would on that supposition be untraceable. Your so-called critical method shows steady purpose, individually, ethnically.—It is this mathematical sense in us that reduces the universe to an intelligible system, and infers consistency in the Creator. But, if we know anything, we know that we are consistent only on lines of free choice-and within an infinite range of variation. What do you do with residues? What is the explanation of variation?"

"Oh, I suppose no one professes that we know everything. Classification has only begun."

"Has gone far enough to show absolutely that there must be a law for every fact, because there is an unclassified residue in every instance. What does this prove? This :-That there is no actual reign of law-but only two modes of action, one regular and the other original-one after a type and one ever modifying the type. This is the principle of progress, the complement of growth. In man it is the mark of freedom. What is it, pray, in God?"

Oxenbode stopped, his cheeks blazing. He was inspirited with his argument, and supposed that he had a sympathetic listener. But Elsmere had been all his life too completely saturated with inductive methods to be moved from his base by an assault so novel. To him the world was a perfect scheme of mathematics, which, if we only knew enough, might be laid out in order, and defined in terms. His former admission into it of historic miracles, he now regarded as an irrational concession to religious feeling, which in his new enlightenment he saw or believed had not been necessary. Mr. Oxenbode, taking his silence for an invitation, rushed on with his argument.

"The truth is, that our word law,' as used modernly is wrested. But let that go. I do not look upon the miracles of the Bible as something that can scarcely be saved. On the contrary, they are dispensations to be expected. If they did not occur, they ought to have occurred—that is, if there is freedom behind them. Given a personal God, then there is a supernatural cause. We know it, because we know personal causation in consciousness. We break in on nature's order perpetually-if there is any 'order.' The antecedent expectation will be to witness inbreakings and deviations, not because we love marvels, but because that is experience. Our experience is not mostly of law, but of the so-called breaking of law.Science hasn't seen that? Well, all the worse for science. I tell you, Mr. Elsmere, our blind adherence to a method has shut our eyes to what the Greeks saw, and the Jews-the immanent freedom of God in his own world.-But given this, and you have shifted the onus of credibility. Miracles then will occur when they are needed, and we shall believe them when the testimony and circumstances establish them."

--

"Perhaps," said Elsmere dryly, "you could furnish a formula more entertaining-more comprehensive than Argyle's." He feared that he had spoken contemptuously, but Oxenbode did not apparently so receive the remark.

"Precisely," he said warmly, "I have done it already in my book. Instead of reign of law' I propose a new clue to science to wit the reign of a Personal God.""

"Some of us identify the two," said Elsmere.

"Yes. Logically, that sacrifices miracles and undeifies the God. As I said-it leaves out the important half. If law and freedom do not unite in personality and in Deity, then philosophy and theology are both at an end."

W. C. STILES.

This closed the interview and neither of them ever recurred to the subject. As for Elsmere, he was too far engulfed in his beloved scientific method to get much light from Oxenbode's positions, and went home with his purposes unchanged. He did not even think it worth while to face these questions seriously, so utterly convinced had he become of the strength of his earlier positions. He walked home, counting up the engagements of the next two weeks-the school treat-two club field days—a sermon in the country town-the probable opening of the new Workman's Institute, and so on. Oh! to be through them all, and away, away, amid Alpine scents and silences..."

NOTE.-The manuscript at this point breaks off, evidently under the resolution to substitute for the chapter, as thus written, the one which appears in the received text.

Attest:

A True Copy.

WHITTEKER WHIMSEY, Transcriber.

ARTICLE IV.-HOW COLOR-LAW AFFECTS OUR HOMES.

THE following suggestions cannot fail to be found important because they are substantially dictated by the Law of Color. From its decision no appeal is possible-its ruling is final.

There are two classes of color: warm and cold. Warm colors are the yellows, the reds, and the greens. Cold colors are the blues, white, and black. When mixed, these colors produce endless varieties of tone and shade, all of which, however, continue subject to the Law of Color. Yellow, in which a slight tinge of blue has been mixed, becomes lemon color, and is plainly cold, because of its bluish tint; in fact, all shades of color are cold in which any trace of blue is apparent. Yellow mixed with pure red becomes orange or the warmest known color. Red mixed with blue makes purple, of which some varieties rival the blues as the coldest tones possible. It is thus evident, that our warmest colors can be cooled, or our cold tones be warmed at pleasure, with the single exception of blue, which, when mixed with yellow, becomes green, or with red, changes to purple.

Color is made pleasing and grateful to the eye by two distinct methods: by contrast of warm and cold, or by either of these groups in harmony. The strongest possible effect is produced by the contrast of warm and cold tones.

But the accurate use of color requires definite knowledge, together with an experience that never comes unsought.. This significant fact explains why eager enjoyment of color is comparatively rare.

A temperament responsive to color influence, but, as yet, indifferent to art knowledge, naturally prefers the tame softness of harmony effect, to the vigor, power, and spirit of legitimate contrast. Inexperience thus sheltered, and protected from absurd mistakes, moves entirely at ease within this safe enclosure. Free to pick and choose at will within these narrow limits, it is content with what it supposes to be color and a