“I wish I could assure myself of the personality of the Creator,” said Lothair.  “I cling to that, but they say it is unphilosophical.”

“In what sense?” asked the Syrian.  “Is it more unphilosophical to believe in a personal God, omnipotent and omniscient, than in natural forces unconscious and irresistible?  Is it unphilosophical to combine power with intelligence?  Goethe, a Spinozist who did not believe in Spinoza, said that he could bring his mind to the conception that in the centre of space we might meet with a monad of pure intelligence.  What may be the centre of space I leave to the daedal imagination of the author of ‘Faust’; but a monad of pure intelligence—­is that more philosophical than the truth first revealed to man amid these everlasting hills,” said the Syrian, “that God made man in his own image?”

“I have often found in that assurance a source of sublime consolation,” said Lothair.

“It is the charter of the nobility of man,” said the Syrian, “one of the divine dogmas revealed in this land; not the invention of councils, not one of which was held on this sacred soil, confused assemblies first got together by the Greeks, and then by barbarous nations in barbarous times.”

“Yet the divine land no longer tells us divine things,” said Lothair.

“It may or may not have fulfilled its destiny,” said the Syrian. “’In my Father’s house are many mansions,’ and by the various families of nations the designs of the Creator are accomplished.  God works by races, and one was appointed in due season and after many developments to reveal and expound in this land the spiritual nature of man.  The Aryan and the Semite are of the same blood and origin, but when they quitted their central land they were ordained to follow opposite courses.  Each division of the great race has developed one portion of the double nature of humanity, till, after all their wanderings, they met again, and, represented by their two choicest families, the Hellenes and the Hebrews, brought together the treasures of their accumulated wisdom, and secured the civilization of man.”

“Those among whom I have lived of late,” said Lothair, “have taught me to trust much in councils, and to believe that without them there could be no foundation for the Church.  I observe you do not speak in that vein, though, like myself, you find solace in those dogmas which recognize the relations between the created and the Creator.”

“There can be no religion without that recognition,” said the Syrian, “and no creed can possibly be devised without such a recognition that would satisfy man.  Why we are here, whence we come, whither we go—­these are questions which man is organically framed and forced to ask himself, and that would not be the case if they could not be answered.  As for churches depending on councils, the first council was held more than three centuries after the Sermon on the Mount.  We Syrians had churches in the