to proof.  Possibly, in fallen man, that freedom is limited to the power of rejecting or yielding to the influences of grace.  Yet within that narrow range it may be still a perfect freedom.  God said, ’let us make man in our image and after our likeness,’ and this likeness between the ‘cause of causes’ and his creature, may well consist in man’s being endowed with a spark from the Creator’s nature, gifted with an originating will, and made a source of causes in himself.  To say that this may not be, were to limit the power of God.”

“Most assuredly,” said Lady Mabel, who was on this point easily convinced.  “I shall now be ready armed for Moodie, when next he broaches his dogma of predestination.  But will he listen, much less understand?”

“If his dogma be a truth,” continued L’Isle, encouraged by her approbation, “to know it, or any other revealed truth, can avail us nothing; for our knowledge, itself a predestined fact, cannot influence our preordained condition here or hereafter.  On the other hand, if the doctrine be misunderstood or false, it is most dangerous; there being but a short step between believing it and applying it, presumptuously, in our own favor, and adversely to our neighbor.  We are ever more successful in deceiving ourselves than others; and to indulge in the belief that we are the chosen of God, may be only less dangerous than a conviction of our utter reprobation.”

“For my part,” said Lady Mabel, “I can appeal yet more confidently to my feelings than my reason, for a refutation of the doctrine Moodie has so often urged upon me.  I feel within me a capacity to be as wicked as I please, if fear and reverence did not withhold me.”

“And I, as your duenna,” said Mrs. Shortridge, “prohibit any such frank admission of propensity to evil in a young lady under my charge.”

“Why, will you not let me make a Christian confession of the sinfulness of my nature?  It were indeed heresy to claim an equal capacity for good.  There I acknowledge the need of aid from above.”

“And that aid is not compulsion,” said L’Isle, “as every page of Scripture testifies.  There is something strangely illogical in the reasoning of those who, starting from the point, that what has been decreed by God is as good as done, and the future as fixed as the past, thence exhort us to plead, because the decree has gone forth; to run in the race, because the victor has been chosen, and the prize adjudged; to strive, because the battle has been fought; and to repent and be saved, because our final destiny was decided before time was.  Surely, if this life have any bearing on another, we are running a race, the issue of which is undecided until death; and ours is a real struggle, not merely the acting out of a foregone conclusion, not the dramatic representation of a past event.  What would you think of a modern Greek praying zealously that Mohamed II. should not have taken Constantinople?  Or of a Roman of to-day besieging heaven with prayers that Rome should not have been taken by the Goths, or sacked by the army of the Constable Bourbon?  Yet what is commonly called Calvinist is nothing less than this; praying against past events, or the decrees of fate.  Is the papist so absurd in offering his masses for the dead?”