‘The greatest imaginable absurdity,’ says one of the eminent philosophers and noble minds of our epoch, M. Jouffroy, ‘would be the assertion that this present life is everything, and that there is nothing after it. I know of no greater in any branch of science.’ Might there not, however, be another absurdity worthy of being placed by its side? The same philosopher says that, so far as regards our state after this life, ‘science and philosophy have not, after two thousand years, arrived at a single accepted result.’[4] Consequently, by the side of the absurdity which M. Jouffroy has pointed out, we confidently place another, as the second of ‘the greatest imaginable absurdities,’ namely, that which consists in believing, after two thousand years of barren labors, that there is another way besides Christianity to know and possess the life invisible and eternal. The essential fact of the history of religion and the history of the world: _God manifest in the flesh_, is the ray from heaven which reveals that life to us, and procures it for us. We know what a wind of incredulity has scattered over barren sands many noble souls who aspire to something better, and for whom Christ has opened the gates of eternity; but let us hope that their fall will be only temporary, and that many, enlightened from on high, turning their eyes away from the desert which surrounds them, and lifting them towards heaven, will exclaim: _I will arise and go to my Father_. We must, as Jouffroy says, ‘recommence our investigations;’ but ‘first of all,’ he adds, ‘we must confess the secret vice which has hitherto rendered all our exertions powerless.’ That secret vice consists in considering the question in an intellectual and theoretical point of view only, while it is absolutely necessary to grapple with it in a practical way, and to make it an individual fact. The matter under discussion belongs to the domain of humanity, not of philosophy. It does not regard the understanding alone, but the conscience, the will, the heart, and the life. The real vice consists in our not recognizing, within us, the evil that separates us from God, and, without us, the Saviour who leads us to Him. The royal road to learn and possess life invisible and eternal is the knowledge and possession of that Son of Man, of that Son of God, who said with authority: I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE: NO MAN COMETH UNTO THE FATHER BUT BY ME. MERLE D’AUBIGNÉ. LA GRAVELINE, EAUX VIVES, GENEVA: _May, 1866_. Footnote 1: _History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Queen Elizabeth_, by J. A. Froude. Footnote 2: M. Gaberel has quoted some passages of this manuscript which concern Geneva, in the first volume of his History of the Genevese Church. Footnote 3: