"It is yourself, Ian. You are different. Your countenance used to be steadfast and hopeful, your voice strong and sincere, your simple presence encouraging. Your face is now troubled, your voice indifferent, your presence has lost much of that sympathy which binds one heart to another." "My congregation, Jessy, is too material to be moved by anything but spoken words or positive actions." "Unconsciously your face--so dark and pathetic--moves them. The immortal Dweller, in molding its home, uses only the material you give it. So the sense of desolation, which has been stirred in you by the writings of Darwin, Schopenhauer, Comte and others, is visible on your countenance; and your people look on you and catch your spirit, even as we look over an infected country and catch its malaria." Dr. Macrae shook his head in desponding denial, and Mrs. Caird continued: "What has Kant's 'Thing in Itself,' or Hegel's 'Absolute,' or Pascal's 'Abysom,' or Renan's 'Scepticism,' or Spencer's 'Agnosticism' given you? O Ian, what are they but words empty of help or meaning to souls who have lost their faith in God. Listen to this," she cried, as, moving swiftly to a small hanging bookcase, she took from it a slim volume, "a man like yourself, Ian, fighting his doubts and fears and sad forecastings, wrote them;" and her eager face and intense sympathy made him bend his head in acquiescence. They were standing together in the center of the parlor floor, and Dr. Macrae was anxious to be alone and consider the news he had just received about Lady Cramer and his son, but he found something promising in his sister-in-law's words, and he stood expectantly watching her strong, sweet face as she spoke, or God in her spoke, these lines: "Away, haunt thou not me, Thou vain Philosophy. Little hast thou bestead, Save to perplex the head, And leave the Spirit dead. Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go? While from the secret treasure depths below, Wisdom and Peace and Power Are welling forth incessantly. Why labor at the dull mechanic oar When the fresh breeze is blowing, And the strong current flowing, Right onward to the Eternal Shore?" "Whosoever wrote those lines, Jessy, had lain with me in the dungeons of Doubting Castle." "Arthur Hugh Clough, an English clergyman, wrote them. His feet well-nigh slipped, but he constantly struggled to hold fast the skirts of Faith, and bid himself remember that in the Christ creed "The souls of near two thousand years Have laid up here their toils and fears; And all the earnings of their pain. Ah, yet consider it again!" "Let me have the book, Jessy," and he stood a few minutes looking at it. What Mrs. Caird was saying he heard not, his eyes had fallen upon a few lines describing the Christ creed: