“The world is full of inequalities and injustices. One man suffers privation, another is gorged. One riots in luxury at the expense of the weak. Is there to be no righting of wrongs? no justice to be ever done? If there be a God over all, He must, if just—and who can conceive of God, save as perfectly just?—He must, I say, deal righteous judgment and smooth out all these creases; and how can he do so, unless there be a condition of existence after death in which the wrongs may be redressed, the evil‐ doers be punished, and tears be wiped away?” “There is philosophy in this.” “Have you not in your conscience a sense of right as distinct from wrong—obscured often, but ever returning—like the reflection of the stars in the water? How comes it there unless there be the verities above? Unless your Maker so made you as to reflect them in your spirit?” Æmilius said nothing. “Have you not in you a sense of the sacredness of Truth, and a loathing for falsehood? How comes that, unless implanted in you by your Creator, who is Truth itself?” “But we know not—in what is of supreme interest to us—in matters connected with the gods, what our duties, what our destiny—what is the Truth.” “Young man,” said the bishop, “thou art a seeker after the kingdom of Heaven. One word further, and I must leave thee. Granted there are these scintillations within—” “Yes, I grant this.” “And that they be reflections of verities above.” “Possibly.” “Whence else come they?” Æmilius did not, could not answer. “Then,” said Castor, “is it not antecedently probable that the God who made man, and put into his nature this desire after truth, virtue, holiness, justice, aye, and this hunger after immortality, should reveal to man that without which man is unable to direct his life aright, attain to the perfection of his being, and look beyond death with confidence?” “If there were but such a revelation!” “I say—is it conceivable that the Creator should not make it?” “Thou givest me much food for thought,” said the lawyer. “Digest it—looking at the reflection of the stars in the water—aye! and recall what is told by Aristotle of Xenophanes, how that casting his eyes upward at the immensity of heaven, he declared _The One_ is God. That conviction, at which the philosopher arrived at the summit of his research, is the starting point of the Christian child. Farewell. We shall meet again. I commend thee to Him who set the stars in heaven above, and the lights in thine own dim soul.” Then the bishop sought a boat, and was rowed in the direction of the town. Æmilius remained by the lagoon. Words such as these he had heard were novel. The thoughts given him to meditate on were so deep and strange that he could not receive them at once. The night was now quite dark, and the stars shone with a brilliancy to which we are unaccustomed in the North, save on frosty winter nights.