husband's back was turned, and there was no one to see or interfere, she placed the pig. It stood for a while: there was no doubt, therefore, it _could_ stand; but, unwilling to stand any longer, it sprawled--slipped--fell--dropped into the water, in short--and ultimately, as it could not make its way up the bank, was drowned. And thus ended the pig. It would seem, however, as if the evil spirit had got into her husband instead--so extreme was his indignation at the transaction. He would accept of neither apology nor explanation; and, unable of course to live any longer under the same roof with a man so unreasonable, she took the opportunity, when he was quitting that part of the country for employment at a distance, to remain behind in her old cottage--the same in which she at that time resided. Such was the maniac's account of her quarrel with her husband; and, when listening to men chopping little familiar logic on one of the profoundest mysteries of Revelation--a mystery which, once received as an article of faith, serves to unlock many a difficulty, but which is itself wholly irreducible by the human intellect--I have been sometimes involuntarily led to think of her ingenious but not very sound argumentation on the fall of the pig. It is dangerous to attempt explaining, in the theological province, what in reality cannot be explained. Some weak abortion of the human reason is always substituted, in the attempt, for some profound mystery in the moral government of God; and men ill-grounded in the faith are led to confound the palpable abortion with the inscrutable mystery, and are injured in consequence.