"Nay, Mac, can it be thus put off with a jest and a sneer, after all? What do you think of these words I came across last night?"--and opening his note-book, Clarian read as follows: "For of old it hath been clearly proven, action without passion is nought save idle folly. _Passio Christi hominis redemptio_. For as sin came into the world by suffering, so also the gift of knowledge, which man would have confessedly lacked, had he not purchased it _pretio mortis_,--even whereat, meseemeth, 'tis not a commodity too high-priced. And as Philo Judæus hath well observed, (as that arch heretic doth but seldom, wherefore let us ascribe to him the full credit,) '_Materia parens est (etiam ipsa mater) peccali_,' so, to attain to anything really spiritual, we have even to be born again of this our parent, by the reëntrance of whose womb, in pain and darkness, we come back to the true and the living, and have provision given us wherewith we shall conquer worlds. For, to fix the pure thought and to identify it with the true and holy, we must first divide it from the base clogs of matter; and how can we effect this disjunction, save, as it hath ever been done, by passion,--not simulate nor taken at second hand, cold,'_bis coctum quasi_,' but rather presently and in our very selves reiterate? So Naaman dipt in Jordan,--a task unto him, a sin in the eyes of his gods, and painful exceedingly to his pride-gorged humor, that would only have Abana and Pharpar,--yet only so was his skin made whole again, and soft like an infant's. So also did David the king come into tasting of the bliss of a true repentance by the terrible gateways of shameful adultery and blood-thirst." "Oh, I agree with your author perfectly," said Mac, with inimitable gravity, while I gazed at Clarian, wondering what would come next. "All the greatest gifts man possesses have had evil sponsors or unrighteous baptism. Even Prometheus _filched_ his fire from heaven, or t'other place. Doing evil for the sake of a prospective good is an immemorial custom, and well precedented. Revenue-farming, the _parc-aux-cerfs_, and Du Barry only went down before _La Terreur_, Robespierre, and _Les Journées de Septembre_." "But seriously, Mac, is it not admissible, now and then, to employ questionable means, ordinary ones failing?" "Certainly. You may even sin, provided you believe in your cause. Faith is the one save-all and cure-all. You smile? I can give you good authority,--none other than Martin Luther, who, in one of his disputations, says emphatically, '_Si in fide posset fieri adulterium, peccatum non esset_'; and he wrote still more plainly upon this point in one of his letters to Melancthon, saying, '_Ab hoc nos non avellet peccatum, etiamsi millies millies uno die fornicamur aut occidamus._' [Footnote: _Vie de Luther_, par AUDIN, Paris, 1839. An accurate book, but scathingly bitter.] So follow your bent, younker, and they cannot say you are without 'precedent right reverend.'"