ese 'discussions', as they were rather ironically called,
invariably ended for me in disaster. I was driven out of my
_papier-mache_ fastnesses, my canvas walls rocked at the first peal
from my Father's clarion, and the foe pursued me across the
plains of Jericho until I lay down ignominiously and covered my
face. I seemed to be pushed with horns of iron, such as those
which Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah prepared for the
encouragement of Ahab.

When I acknowledged defeat and cried for quarter, my Father would
become radiant, and I still seem to hear the sound of his full
voice, so thrilling, so warm, so painful to my over-strained
nerves, bursting forth in a sort of benediction at the end of
each of these one-sided contentions, with 'I bow my knees unto
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He would grant you,
according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with
might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in
your heart by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth,
and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ
which passeth knowledge, that you might be filled with the
fullness of God.'

Thus solemn and thus ceremonious was my Father apt to become,
without a moment's warning, on plain and domestic occasions;
abruptly brimming over with emotion like a basin which an unseen
flow of water has filled and over-filled.

I earnestly desire that no trace of that absurd self-pity which
is apt to taint recollections of this nature should give falsity
to mine. My Father, let me say once more, had other interests
than those of his religion. In particular, at this time, he took
to painting in water-colours in the open air, and he resumed the
assiduous study of botany. He was no fanatical monomaniac.
Nevertheless, there was, in everything he did and said, the
central purpose present. He acknowledged it plainly; 'with me,'
he confessed, 'every question assumes a Divine standpoint and is
not adequately answered if the judgement-seat of Christ is not
kept in sight.'

This was maintained whether the subject under discussion was
poetry, or society, or the Prussian war with Austria, or the
stamen of a wild flower. Once, at least, he was himself conscious
of the fatiguing effect on my temper of this insistency, for,
raising his great brown eyes with a flash of laughter in them, he
closed the Bible suddenly after a v