ly. For, first,
there is nothing in Scripture which justifies us in believing that the
spirits of the deceased are aware of what is passing on earth at all;
and secondly, were it otherwise, such creatures could not, unless they
possessed the faculty of ubiquity, pay the smallest attention to
petitions which are addressed to them at the same time from perhaps an
hundred or a thousand different places. If St. John, for example, be at
this moment listening to a devotee in the island of Sincapore, how can
he hear me who am calling to him out of Bohemia? Our minister, on the
other hand, acts but as our mouth-piece, and it is expressly ordered in
the New Testament that the church shall pray for her sick members." Now
here is a dilemma out of which I cannot understand how the
saint-worshipper is to escape. For St. John is either a creature, or he
is not. If he be a creature, it is impossible that he can be present in
two spots at one and the same moment. He cannot, therefore, attend at
once to me, who address him in Bohemia, and to the saint-worshipper who
solicits his aid from the banks of the Mississippi. If he can be
present with us both, and with tens of thousands besides, then he must
possess the attribute of ubiquity, and is, of course, not a creature.
In the latter case, what is he? This, then, I humbly conceive to be the
weapon with which errors in the Roman Catholic's faith may most
appropriately be assailed, for though it inflict a temporary wound upon
men's self-love by questioning the powers of discrimination, leaves, at
least, their moral and religious intentions unquestioned, and
themselves, as a necessary consequence, unfettered by the strongest of
all shackles, that of outraged principle.

By the time we had reached the chaussee, or main road, the morning was
considerably advanced, and each new hour brought with it a wonderful
accession of heat. Not a cloud was in the sky, and for a while, we were
entirely destitute of shade. For though here, as elsewhere in Germany,
the waysides be planted with rows of trees, the trees were as yet too
young to prove essentially useful to the wanderer, and, to add to our
misery, we had a long and toilsome ascent before us, with a broad,
smooth, macadamised causeway, by which to accomplish it. It is true,
that as often as we paused to look round, the glories of that
magnificent scene gave us back our courage. Nevertheless, nature in
this situation, as she is wont to do in most o