sterious subject referred
to. We merely state the fact that Phil Maylands met it at this period
of his career, and, instead of shelving it--as perhaps too many do--as a
too difficult subject, which might lie over to a more convenient season,
tackled it with all the energy of his nature. He went first to his
closet and his knees, and then to his Bible.

"To the law and to the testimony" used to be Mrs Maylands' watchword in
all her battles with Doubt. "To whom shall we go," she was wont to say,
"if we go not to the Word of God?"

Phil therefore searched the Scripture. Not being a Greek scholar, he
sought help of those who were learned--both personally and through
books. Thus he got at correct renderings, and by means of dictionaries
ascertained the exact meanings of words. By study he got at what some
have styled the general spirit of Scripture, and by reading _both_ sides
of controverted points he ascertained the thoughts of various minds. In
this way he at length became "fully persuaded in his own mind" that
God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are facts taught in
Scripture, and affirmed by human experience, and that they form a great
unsolvable mystery--unsolvable at least by man in his present condition
of existence.

This not only relieved his mind greatly, by convincing him that, the
subject being bottomless, it was useless to try to get to the bottom of
it, and wise to accept it "as a little child," but it led him also to
consider that in the Bible there are two kinds of mysteries, or deep
things--the one kind being solvable, the other unsolvable. He set
himself, therefore, diligently to discover and separate the one kind
from the other, with keen interest.

But this is by the way. Phil's greatest anxiety and care at that time
was the salvation of his old friend and former idol, George Aspel.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

PLANS AND COUNTER PLANS.

One evening Phil sat in the sorting-room of the General Post-Office with
his hand to his head--for the eight o'clock mail was starting; his head,
eyes, and hands had been unusually active during the past two hours, and
when the last bundle of letters dropped from his fingers into the
mail-bags, head, eyes, and hands were aching.

A row of scarlet vans was standing under a platform, into which
mail-bags, apparently innumerable, were being shot. As each of these
vans received its quota it rattled off to its particular railway
station, at the rate whi