to the novel to teach theology; but I do believe
that religious sentiments and opinions are a legitimate subject of its
art, and that perhaps its highest function is to promote understanding
by bringing into contact minds that habitually misinterpret one
another._

THE ZEIT-GEIST.

CHAPTER I.

PROLOGUE.

To-day I am at home in the little town of the fens, where the Ahwewee
River falls some thirty feet from one level of land to another. Both
broad levels were covered with forest of ash and maple, spruce and
tamarack; but long ago, some time in the thirties, impious hands built
dams on the impetuous Ahwewee, and wide marshes and drowned wood-lands
are the result. Yet just immediately at Fentown there is neither marsh
nor dead tree; the river dashes over its ledge of rock in a foaming
flood, runs shallow and rapid between green woods, and all about the
town there are breezy pastures where the stumps are still standing, and
arable lands well cleared. The little town itself has a thriving look.
Its public buildings and its villas have risen, as by the sweep of an
enchanter's wand, in these backwoods to the south of the Ottawa valley.

There was a day when I came a stranger to Fentown. The occasion of my
coming was a meeting concerning the opening of new schools for the
town--schools on a large and ambitious plan for so small a place. When
the meeting was over, I came out into the street on a mild September
afternoon. The other members of the School Council were with me. There
were two clergymen of the party. One of them, a young man with thin,
eager face, happened to be at my side.

"This Mr. Toyner, whose opinion has been so much consulted, was not
here to-day?" I said this interrogatively.

"No, ah--but you'll see him now. He has invited you all to a garden
party, or something of that sort. He's in delicate health. Ah--of
course, you know, it is natural for me to wish his influence with the
Council were much less than it is."

"Indeed! He was spoken of as a philanthropist."

"It's a very poor love to one's fellow-man that gives him all that his
vanity desires in the way of knowledge without leading him into the
Church, where he would be taught to set the value of everything in its
right proportion."

I was rather struck with this view of the function of the Church.
"Certainly," I replied, "to see all things in right proportion is
wisdom; but I heard this Toyner mentioned as a religious man."

"