_Padre._ “My conscience’ sake alive, man! Why, you might as well set us down as beasts at once, as to argue that in resurrection we shall assume the form of animals whose habits we most affect in life! Surely your naturalistic learning has run mad with your orthodox catholic ideas, for, upon my soul, they are rank with transmigration, and if confessed, you would be denied absolution by every ecclesiastic in the Christian world. Look you! the very fact, if admitted, would controvert all that we hold sacred. Why, man, it would render absurd our reliquary faith in the efficacy of sainted bones and vestments for healing the sick and lame, for the marrow-bones of swine and the hair of dogs would hardly serve to enlist belief in the Christian doctrine of divine transubstantiation?” _Dr. B._ “As we claim that reason has been bestowed as an endowment to distinguish us in reality from the brute creation, its possession presupposes preordination of intention in decree for its use. Now, if you will devote your share of this human endowment to the demonstration I am about to give of cause and effect, you will not fail to perceive the distinctions upon which our faith is founded. Humanity possesses omnivorously, in its varieties of genera and species, all the habits of the lower orders of the animal creation in their separate representation! But superadded to this resemblance in the community of instinct, man has a discretionary power inherent with his endowment of reason, which enables him to profit by experience in shaping his course for the avoidance of consequent evils which follow from the transgression of natural laws. This power presupposes accountability that directs itself to Creative Cause. Upon this innate feeling of responsibility, impressed by repentance from transgressions, and joys imparted from adherence to the monitor indications of our superiority, man has founded his religious distinctions of vice and virtue. In furtherance of this natural division man has volunteered to represent vice, and woman, unprejudiced by his influence, would have naturally assumed the role of virtue in truthful vindication of her vocation as the mother of our race. Now, as you well know, it is impossible to harmonize vice and virtue, even with the instinctive coalescence of the sexes? Hence, as you must acknowledge, there will be a constant struggle for ascendency. Man as the stronger of the two, in representative selfish determination, and the moral force of muscular strength, is as full of devices for the beguilement of woman from her sacred trust as the variations of his ability admit.” _Padre._ “Yes, all that may be true; but you don’t talk at all like yourself, and I can’t see what you have said has to do with revealed religion.”