The man of faith is of opinion that this much of proof exists for everyone who chooses to seek it.  “The burning question is how we are to shape our lives.  For himself he is impelled to follow the Christian precept, and renounce the world.”  The sceptic denies that God demands such a sacrifice, and sees only man’s ingratitude in the impression that He does so.  The man of faith admits that it would be hard to have made the sacrifice, and be rewarded only by death; while the many unbelievers who have virtually made it for one or other of the hobbies which he describes, have at least its success to repay them.  But even so, he continues, he would have chosen the better part; for he would have chosen Hope,—­the hope which aspires to a loftier end.  “His opponent, it is true, hopes also; but his hopes are blind.  They are not those of St. Paul, but those which, according to AEschylus, the Titan gave to men, to spice therewith the meal of life, and prevent their devouring it in too bitter haste; and if hope—­or faith—­is meant to be something more than a relish...!”

The opponent protests against this attack upon the “trusting ease” of his existence, and declares that his interlocutor is not doing as he would be done by.  Whereupon the first speaker relates something which befell him on the Easter-Eve of three years ago, and which startled him out of precisely such a condition.

He was crossing the common, lately spoken of by their friend, and musing on life and the last judgment:  when the following question occured to him:  what would be his case if he died and were judged at that very moment?  “From childhood,” he continues, “I have always insisted on knowing the worst; and I now plunged straight into the recesses of my conscience, prepared for what spectre might be hidden there.  But all I encountered was common sense, which did its best to assure me that I had nothing to fear:  that, considering all the difficulties of life, I had kept my course through it as straight, and advanced as rapidly as could be expected.” (More reflections, half serious half playful ensue.) “Suddenly I threw back my head, and saw the midnight sky on fire.  It was a sea of fire, now writhing and surging; now sucked back into the darkness, now overflowing it till its rays poured downwards on to the earth.  I felt that the Judgment Day had come.  I felt also, in that supreme moment of consciousness, that I had chosen the world, and must take my stand upon the choice.  I defended it with the courage of despair.  ’God had framed me to appreciate the beauties of life; I could not put the cup untasted aside; He had not plainly commanded me to do so; He knew how I had struggled to resign myself to leaving it half full; Hell could be no just punishment for such a mood as that.’”

“Another burst of fire.  A brief ecstasy which confounded earth and heaven.  Then ashes everywhere.  And amid the wreck—­like the smoke pillared over Sodom—­mantled in darkness as in a magnific pall which turned to grey the blackness of the night—­pity mingled with judgment in the intense meditation in which his gaze was fixed—­HE stood before me.  I fell helpless at His feet.  He spoke: