roof to you, but yours is no proof to me; and it seems reasonable
to suppose that, if God had anything to tell to me, he could communicate
personally to me as well as to you."

In ancient times the prophets who were thus accosted worked miracles
in attestation of their mission; but our modern prophets have no such
power, and therefore they can scarcely claim our belief. If they ask us
why we reject what they tell us on the authority of the ancient prophets
who possessed greater powers, we reply that what is a miracle to those
who see it is only a story to those who hear it, and that we prefer to
see the miracle ourselves. Telling us that a man rose from the dead is
no reason why we should believe that three times one are one; it is only
proving one wonder by another, and making a fresh draft on our credulity
at every step in the demonstration.

There are men who tell us that we should live by faith. But that is
impossible for all of us. The clergy live by faith, yet how could they
do so if there were not others to support them? Knaves cannot exist
without dupes, nor the Church without subscribers.

Living _by_ faith is an easy profession. Living _on_ faith, however, is
more arduous and precarious. Elijah is said to have subsisted on food
which was brought him by inspired ravens, but there are few of God's
ministers willing to follow his example. They ask God to give them their
daily bread, yet they would all shrink with horror from depending on
what he sends them.

VICTOR HUGO. *

* May 31,1885.

Two years and a half ago France was mourning the death of Gambetta.
Every hostile voice was hushed, and the whole nation bent tearfully over
the bier, where a once mighty heart and fervent brain lay cold and still
in death. Never, perhaps, since Mirabeau burned out the last of his
great life had Paris been so profoundly moved. Gambetta was carried to
his grave by a million of men, and in all that tremendous procession no
priest figured, nor in all the funeral ceremony was there a word of God.
For the first time in history a nation buried her hero without a shred
of religious rites or a whisper of any other immortality than the
immortality of fame.

France now mourns the death of Victor Hugo, the great poet of the
Republic, as Gambetta was its great orator and statesman. These two,
in their several ways, did the most to demolish the empire. Gambetta
organised and led the Republican opposition, and when the _de