nd spiritual
pride began to show itself; so utterly impossible is it that the purest
self-devotion should be, if we may use the word, chemically pure. It is
very doubtful if he ever fully realised what he was doing, just as it is
doubtful whether in the time of liveliest conviction there has been a
perfect realisation of the world to come. Had he really appreciated the
words "torment" and "infinite;" had he really put into "torment" the
pangs of a cancer or a death through thirst; had he really put twenty
years into "infinity," he would perhaps have recoiled. Nevertheless, the
fact remains that this man by some means or other had educated himself
into complete self-obliteration for the sake of his child. The present
time is disposed to over-rate the intellectual virtues. No matter how
unselfish a woman may be, if she cannot discuss the new music or the new
metaphysical poetry, she is nothing and nobody cares for her. Centuries
ago our standard was different, and it will have to be different again.
We shall, it is to be hoped, spend ourselves not in criticism of the
record of the saints who sat by the sepulchre, but we shall love as they
loved.

Michael comforted himself by a piece of sophistry. He had made up his
mind to attempt a stratagem, a wicked lie, if we choose to call it so,
for his son's sake, and he was prepared to suffer the penalty for it. If
he had thought that in thus sinning he was sinning as an ordinary sinner,
he perhaps could not have dared to commit the crime; he could not have
faced the Almighty's displeasure. But he thought that, although bound by
the Divine justice to mete out to him all the punishment which the sin
merited, God would, nevertheless, consider him as a sinner for His glory.

One evening--the summer had not yet departed--father and son walked out
to the house on the cliff.

"Robert," said Michael suddenly, and with the strength of a man who
gathers himself up to do what for a long time he has been afraid to do,
and is even bolder apparently than if he had known no fear, "I have
spoken my mind to you as God in heaven bade me about Miss Shipton, and
this is the last word I shall say. He knows that I have prayed for you
from your childhood up--that I have prayed that, above everything, he
would grant that you should have one of His own for your wife, who should
bring up your children in the fear of the Lord. He alone knows how I
have wrestled for you day and night, ay, in th