“You need no wine-cellars here,” said I. “This water would intoxicate the strongest spirit, and give such happiness and delight that those on earth, once having and then missing it, would pine and die for lack of it.” “I think not,” Virginius dissented. “It is the great medicine, the simple, harmless cure, whose effect is so sure that it lasts through life, even though it be but in the memory.” * * * * * _Passage omitted_ * * * * * “One does not need to taste it once a week or once a month, as the case may be, its effects on the earth will last a lifetime. And here in heaven it becomes a pleasant, invigorating, everyday drink, surrounded by no false evaporation of mystery.” “I have often wondered what Christ’s object was in instituting the Last Supper.” “Christ or Jesus?” “You recognise them as separate?” “Yes,” he answered. “But the stronger power enveloped the lesser, so that the frailty of the simple man was hidden by the working of an untamable spirit, though they mingled.” Then he took up the thread of our previous conversation. “You asked as to His object in instituting His Last Supper. I think it was because He did not want to be forgotten. He simply wished to be remembered at His disciples’ meal times, not as a damper at the feast but as a loving friend, who had often sat with them before and shared the simple meal. He was hospitable and sociable, and even in His last meal showed His extreme simplicity. He said ‘Remember Me at meal times,’ and for my own part I think many tired folk get more of His spirit out of a cup of tea or milk or other refreshment that will invigorate them than ever they get from a formal cup of wine passed automatically from hand to hand.” Virginius spoke softly, with a kind of sympathetic love, as if he understood the man of whom he spoke. “But,” he continued, “on the other hand, was Christ, the Master Spirit of that age and others, showing the Spiritual Sacrifice by the bodily death this poor unerring carpenter underwent?” Virginius stretched his arms over the wooden rail and leant against the bridge. “Jesus, the Man, was the illustration in the object lesson of Christ the Teacher, and His Life was the picture that explained.” “But very little of His life is known.” Virginius laughed. “The teacher became so worked up on His pet subject that He forgot His illustrations and pictures till too late. But He was a marvellous teacher for all that, and when He was gone the pupils turned to look at the pictures and the illustrations He had left, and they made a few slight mistakes in following them out, and some few pages He had carried along with Him into Silence.” “Then you give two distinct spirits to the one man.” “I will explain it later. What do you think of Heaven?”