in a time beyond his earliest memory. It seemed
plain, therefore, that the source whence first he began to draw those
notions, right or wrong, must be the talk and behavior of the house in
which he was born, the words and carriage of his father and mother and
their friends. Next source to that came the sermons he heard on Sundays,
and the books given him to read. The Bible was one of those books, but
from the first he read it through the notions with which his mind was
already vaguely filled, and with the comments of his superiors around
him. Then followed the books recommended at college, this author and
that, and the lectures he heard there upon the attributes of God and the
plan of salvation. The spirit of commerce in the midst of which he had
been bred, did not occur to him as one of the sources.

But he had perceived enough. He opened his mouth and bravely answered
her question as well as he could, not giving the Bible as the source
from which he had taken any one of the notions of God he had been in the
habit of presenting.

"But mind," he added, "I do not allow that therefore my ideas must be
incorrect. If they be second-hand, they may yet be true. I do admit that
where they have continued only second-hand, they can have been of little
value to me."

"What you allow, then, father," said Dorothy, "is that you have yourself
taken none of your ideas direct from the fountain-head?"

"I am afraid I must confess it, my child--with this modification, that I
have thought many of them over a good deal, and altered some of them not
a little to make them fit the molds of truth in my mind."

"I am so glad, father!" said Dorothy. "I was positively certain, from
what I knew of you--which is more than any one else in this world, I do
believe--that some of the things you said concerning God never could
have risen in your own mind."

"They might be in the Bible for all that," said the minister, very
anxious to be and speak the right thing. "A man's heart is not to be
trusted for correct notions of God."

"Nor yet for correct interpretation of the Bible, I should think," said
Dorothy.

"True, my child," answered her father with a sigh, "--except as it be
already a Godlike heart. The Lord says a bramble-bush can not bring
forth grapes."

"The notions you gathered of God from other people, must have come out
of their hearts, father?"

"Out of somebody's heart?"

"Just so," answered Dorothy.

"Go on, my child," said