"I understand your comparison, Herr Leonhardt, and am greatly honoured by it, but,--forgive me for saying so,--it does not seem to me quite correct. I know of no village where statues either of Christ or the Madonna are not erected, and the rudest peasant pays them reverence,--because he appreciates the idea that they embody. Could we only breathe a sympathy with other than religious ideas into the minds of this neglected class, the representatives of such ideas would also receive the same reverence." Frau Leonhardt was a little troubled by the turn the conversation had taken; for, as a faithful servant will listen to no slighting remarks concerning those whom he serves, she, as a true servant of her Lord and Saviour, disapproved of Fräulein von Hartwich's mode of speaking of Him, and thought it scarcely becoming in a good Christian to listen to such talk. But her husband, with modest tact, put an end to her anxiety. "I have myself," said he, "thought of what you say, but it seems to me to be an entirely different matter. The people honour in these statues not ideas, but persons,--and the holiest and highest persons that they can conceive of,--the persons of their God and his saints. As we take delight in the pictures of distant relatives, whom we may never have seen, perhaps, but whom we honour and cherish for the sake of what we know of them, so, a thousand times more so, do the people honour what speaks to them of the eternally invisible Father of all! This sentiment, Fräulein von Hartwich, seems to me widely different from the admiration that a comprehension of the great ideas of to-day might awaken in the minds of the people. We are not yet far enough advanced to say how it may be,--and who knows whether we ever shall advance so far as to be able to elevate those classes who labour for us that we may think for them, and who desire nothing at present for their happiness but their plough and their God? What they really need now, in my opinion, is that their God should not be represented to them as an angry, avenging Jehovah, but as the loving, redeeming God of Christianity! To return to my simile,--with regard to yourself, Fräulein von Hartwich, let me repeat that you can only be in your true place where your efforts and ideas are understood and you can grace a pedestal that becomes you. Then you will be truly happy, and far more easily brought into communion with your Creator than while you are embittered by the religious error and intolerance prevailing around you here. The people are hostile to you, because they believe you hostile to what they hold most sacred,--their religion. Whoever, in their eyes, stands aloof from Christian fellowship, stands aloof from mankind,--ceases to be a creature of flesh and blood. And if they do not see condign punishment quickly overtake such a one, whom they regard as the chief of sinners, they believe that she must be under the protection not of God, but of the other power in their theology,--the