of Jehovah!  Ah! it is indeed peculiarly the duty of Christians ’to watch, with reverence and joy, the unveiling of the august brow of Nature by the hand of Science; and to be ready to call mankind to a worship ever new’!  Human thought subserves many useful, nay, noble, ends; the Creator gave it, as a powerful instrument, to improve man’s temporal condition; but oh, sir, I speak of what I know, when I say:  alas, for that soul who forsakes the divine ark, and embarks on the gilded toys of man’s invention, hoping to breast the billows of life and be anchored safely in the harbor of eternal rest!  The heathens, ’having no law, are a law unto themselves’; but for such as deliberately reject the given light, only bitter darkness remains.  I know it; for I, too, once groped, wailing for help.”

“Your religion is full of mystery,” said her husband gravely.

“Yes; of divine mystery.  Truly, ’a God comprehended is no God at all!’ Christianity is clear, as to rules of life and duty.  There is no mystery left about the directions to man; yet there is a divine mystery infolding it, which tells of its divine origin, and promises a fuller revelation when man is fitted to receive it.  If it were not so we would call it man’s invention.  You turn from Revelation because it contains some things you cannot comprehend; yet you plunge into a deeper, darker mystery when you embrace the theory of an eternal, self-existing universe, having no intelligent creator, yet constantly creating intelligent beings.  Sir, can you understand how matter creates mind?”

She had laid her Bible on his knee; her folded hands rested upon it, and her gray eyes, clear and earnest, looked up reverently into her husband’s noble face.  His soft hand wandered over her head, and he seemed pondering her words.

May God aid the wife in her holy work of love!