and angels, there is not the smallest
glimmer of meaning from one end to the other. Another even complains in
private of the want of philosophical genius in the court of celestial
criticism, and declares that in Germany they could have constructed ten
theories of the universe and given twenty solutions of the 'infinite'
and the 'absolute' in the time he has been vainly endeavoring to
explain his meaning to personages so deplorably deficient in
metaphysical acumen."

He was going on with some other details of the hapless philosophers.

"I would much rather hear from you," said I, "for it is a subject in
which I take a far deeper interest, how those have sped who have objected
to the Revelation with which God has favored man, on the ground that
it cannot be true, else it would have been more unexceptionably framed
or more wisely promulgated. I take it for granted that these have not
been destitute of opportunities of trying their experiment."

"Surely not," replied my new acquaintance. "'The Paradise of Fools'
is well stocked with creatures of this description. Many of the
experiments which required time to test them were commenced hundreds
of years ago, and are completed. Others are still unfinished while
there have been many which required only to be commenced and they were
completed instantly, to the confusion of their authors."

"I should much like," said I, "to hear an account of some of these
experiments."

"Willingly," answered he; "only you must bear in mind that they were all
to be performed under certain limitations, without which no revelation
which God can give to man would be of the slightest value."

He then informed me, that the evidence afforded must not be such as to
annihilate the conditions on which man is to be made virtuous and happy,
if he is to be made so at all. It must not be inconsistent with the
exercise of either his reason or his faith, nor prevent the play of
his moral dispositions, nor triumph by mere violence over his
prejudices; it must not operate purely upon the passions or the senses,
nor overhear all possibility of offering resistance,--as would be
the case, for example, if a man were placed on the edge of a precipice,
and told that he would immediately be thrown over it if he transgressed
the rules of temperance or chastity. The happiness, he said, which
God originally designed for his intelligent and moral creatures was a
voluntary happiness, springing out of the well-balanced