the loving hand of his wife, and saying to her, with a firm, clear voice, and a grateful smile, "Good Amy! always good!" So the weak man's soul passed away. And as Amy told me about it, with sorrowful sobs, I was not ready to say or think she had done wrong, although both her conduct and my opinion were entirely uncanonical.
Before Mrs. Lewis returned, Amy was one day at my room and asked me when I expected her back.
"Is Mr. Lewis with her, Ma'am?" said she, hesitatingly.
"Of course; at least, I suppose so. Why, what makes you ask?" said I, with surprise at her downcast eyes and flushed face.
"I heard he had gone away. And that—that Mr. Remington was there with her. But you know about it, most likely."
"No, I know nothing about it, Amy."
"It was their old cook told me, Mrs. Butler. And she said,—oh! all sorts of things, that I am sure couldn't be true, for Mrs. Lewis is such a kind, beautiful woman! I couldn't believe a word she said!"
In my quality of minister's wife, and with a general distrust of cooks' opinions, I told Amy that there was always scandal enough, and it was a waste of time to listen to it. But after she left me, I confess to a whole hour wasted in speculations and anxious reflections on Amy's communication, and also to having taken the Dominie away from his sermon for a like space of time to consider the matter fully.
I was relieved when the whole party came back, and when the blooming, happy face of Lulu showed that she, at least, had neither thought nor done anything very bad.
The summer was becoming warm and oppressive in Boston, and we prepared to take the children and go to Weston for a few weeks. While we should be among the mountains, the Lewises proposed a voyage to Scotland, and we hoped that sometime in the early autumn we should all be together once more. The evening before our departure Mr. Remington and Lulu spent with us, Mr. Lewis coming in at a later hour. I remember vividly the conversation during the whole of that last evening we ever passed together.
While Mrs. Lewis and I were chatting in one corner on interests specially feminine, the Dominie had got Mr. Remington into a metaphysical discussion of some length. From time to time we heard, "Pascal's idea seems to be," and then, "The notion of Descartes and all that school of thinkers"; and feeling that they were plunging quite beyond our depth, we continued babbling of dry goods, and what was becoming, till Mr. Remington leaned back laughing to us, and said,—
"What do you think, ladies? or are you of the opinion of somebody who said of metaphysics, 'Whoever troubles himself to skin a flint should have the skin for his pains'?"
"But that is a most unfair comparison!" said the minister, eagerly, "and what I will by no means allow. By so much more as the mind is better than the body, nay, because the mind is all that is worth anything about a man, metaphysics is the noblest science, and most worthy"—
"I give in! I am down!" said Remington.
"But what are you disputing about?" said I.
"Oh, only Infinity!" said Remington. "But then you know metaphysics does not hesitate at anything. I say, it is impossible for the mind to go back to a first cause, and if the mind of a man cannot conceive an idea, why of course that idea can never be true to him. I can think of no cause that may not be an effect."
"Nor of infinite space, nor of infinite time?" said the minister.
"No,—of nothing that cannot be divided, and nothing that cannot be extended."
"Very good. Perhaps you can't. I suppose we cannot comprehend infinity, because we are essentially finite ourselves. But it by no means follows that we cannot apprehend and believe in attributes which we are unable to comprehend. We can certainly do that."
"No. After you reach your limit of comprehension, you may say, all beyond that is infinite,—but you only push the object of your thought out of view. After you have reiterated the years till you are tired, you say, beyond that is infinite. You only mean that you are tired of computing and adding."
"Then you cannot believe in an Infinite Creator?" said the minister.
"I can believe in nothing that is not founded on reason. I should be very glad to believe in an Infinite Creator, only it is entirely impossible, you see, for the mind to conceive of a being who is not himself created."
"Yet you can believe in a world that is not created?" said the minister. "You can believe that a world full of adaptations, full of signs of intelligence and design, could be uncreated. How do you make that out?"
"There remains no greater difficulty to me," said Remington, "in believing in an uncreated world than you have in believing in an uncreated God. Why is it stranger that Chaos should produce harmony than that Nothing should produce God?"
He looked at us, smiling as he said this, which he evidently considered unanswerable.
"You are quite right," said my husband, gravely. "It is impossible that nothing should produce God, and therefore I say God is eternal. It is not impossible that something should produce the world, and therefore I believe the world is not eternal. That point is the one on which the whole argument hangs in my mind."
"It does not become me to dispute a clergyman," said Mr. Remington, smiling affectedly, as if only courtesy prevented his coming in with an entirely demolishing argument.
To my great surprise Lulu instantly answered, and with an intelligence that showed she had followed the argument entirely,—
"I am certain, George, that Mr. Prince has altogether the best of it. Yours is merely a technical difficulty,—merely words. You can conceive a thousand things which you can never fully comprehend. And this, too, is a proof of the Infinite Father in our very reasoning,—that, if we could comprehend Him, we should be ourselves infinite. As it is, we can believe and adore,—and, more than that, rejoice that we cannot in this finite life of ours do more."
"If we believed we could comprehend Him," said I, "we should soon begin to meddle with God's administration of affairs."
"Yes,—and in fatalism I have always thought there was a profound reverence," said Lulu.
"Oh, are you going into theological mysteries, too?" said Remington, with a laugh in which none of us joined; "what care you, Lulu, for the quiddities of Absolute Illimitation and Infinite Illimitation? After all, what matters it whether one believes in a God, who you allow to be the personation of all excellence, if only one endeavors to act up to the highest conceivable standard of perfection,—I mean of human perfection,—leaving, of course, a liberal margin for human frailties and defects? One wouldn't like to leave out mercy, you know."
Whatever might be the real sentiments of the man, there was an air of levity in his mode of treating the most important subjects of thought which displeased me, especially when he said, "You adore the Incomprehensible; I am contented to adore, with silent reverence, the lovely works of His hand." He pointed his remark without hesitation at LuLu, who sat looking into the fire, and did not notice him or it.
"You are quite right, Mr. Prince, and my cousin, is quite wrong," said she, looking up with a docile, childlike expression, at the minister. "One feels that all through, though one may not be able to reason or argue about it."
"And the best evidence of all truth, my dear," answered the delighted Dominie, "is that intuition which is before all reasoning, and by which we must try reasoning itself. The moral is before the intellectual; and that is why we preachers continually insist on faith as an illuminator of the reason."
"You
