Tuesday he was physically weary and when he opened the book he was considering, Hugh Miller's "Red Stone," he could not read it. The words passed before his eyes, but his mind refused to notice them, and he threw down the volume and resigned himself to religious reverie. His eyes were on his closed Bible, and he was recalling in a regretful mood the power and splendor of its promises and assurances. He was "feeling after God, if haply he might find Him," trying to call up arguments for his existence, his personality, His loving and constant interflow into the affairs of men. But he had lost the habit of Faith, and was continually finding himself face to face with the incomprehensible problems which Science may propound but can never answer: Whence come we? Whither do we go? Why was man created? Why does he continue to exist? What has become of the vast multitudes of the dead? What will become of the vaster multitudes that may yet tread the earth? But ever when he reached the outermost rim of this useless thought, these awful and sacred questions still called to his soul for an answer. Indeed, he felt acutely that he had not gained from Science any intelligible religious system; nor yet any belief which he could profess, or which he could defend from an assailant. He could find in it nothing that a man could have recourse to in the hour of trouble, or the day of death; and, when Mrs. Caird came into his study about the noon hour, he felt compelled to speak to her. With a quick, nervous motion he laid his hand upon some books at his side and complained wearily: "All they say about God is so terribly inadequate, Jessy." "Of course it is inadequate," she answered. "When men know nothing, how can they teach, especially about Him, ... 'Who, though vast and strange When with _intellect_ we gaze, Yet close to the heart steals in In a thousand tender ways.'" "O my dear sister, I am so miserable!" "My dear Ian, when we withdraw ourselves from that circle within which the Bible is a definite authority, we must be miserable." "Why?" "We have then only a negative religion, and pray what is there between us and the next lower down negation? And I assure you it would become easy to repeat this descending movement again and again. Indeed, there could be no reason for making a stand at any point, until----" "Until?" "The end!" "Then?" "There might come the dread of sliding away toward the brink--and over the brink--of the precipice." "Then what help is there for a man who has taken this road ignorantly and innocently?" And Jessy, with the light and joy of perfect assurance on her face, answered, "There is the breadth, the depth, the boundless length, the inaccessible height of Christ's love, which is the love of God." Ian did not answer immediately and, Mrs. Caird, walking to the window, saw the Cramer carriage at the gate. "Lady Cramer is coming," she said. "I will go and meet her."