friendly to the missionary spirit?" he asked
immediately.

"I consider it," Eric replied, "to be the first step in the world's
civilization, and it is a grand thing that the missionaries have
everywhere spread a knowledge of written language, through
translations of a book revered as holy, and in that way have reduced to
an organic form, as it were, the inorganic languages of all peoples."

The priest closed the book that lay open before him, folded his hands
in a kind of patronising way, that seemed natural to him as the
official form of consecration, and then placing the tips of the fingers
of one hand upon those of the other, he said that he had heard of Eric
many favourable things, and that, from his own experience, he was
prepossessed in favor of those who changed their calling out of some
internal ground of conviction. To be sure, fickleness and restlessness,
never at ease in any regular employment, often led to this, but where
this was not the case, one could predicate a deep fundamental trait of
sincerity.

Eric thanked him, and added that the dignity of any vocation lay not in
the external consideration awarded to it, but in the preservation of
the purely human inherent in every calling.

"Very just," replied the ecclesiastic, extending one hand, as if with a
benignant blessing. "The ecclesiastical vocation is therefore the
highest, because it does not strive after gain, nor enjoyment, nor
fame, but after that which you--I know not for what reason--call the
universally human, when it ought simply to be called the divine."

A certain degree of humility, and a reluctance to make any opposition,
came over Eric, as he listened to the ecclesiastic setting forth in
such mildly discordant tones the precise point of difference. It
seemed, after every word, as if the sacred peacefulness of the place
gained fresh potency; nothing of the world's noise intruded there, and
all its busting activity was far away.

The park, and the country-house in the distance over the river, could
be seen from the window; the ecclesiastic took special notice of Eric's
lively interest in the beautiful, quiet view, and remarked,--

"Yes, Herr Sonnenkamp has arranged all that for himself, but the beauty
is also our gain. I really never go out of my house, except for some
parochial work."

"And do you never feel yourself solitary here in the country?"

"Oh no! I have myself, and my Lord, and God has me. And the world? I
had in the gr