And here I may state that, paradoxical though it may appear, the theory of the Hereafter is apparently held as firmly by the hierarchy as by the people at large. Of course the opinions of these enlightened persons differ fundamentally from those of the ignorant mass of the Meleagrians, whose easy-going theory of transmigration of soul, or rather of vital personality, is naturally repugnant and absurd to their educated minds. Their aspirations are necessarily more lofty, though what their actual fixed belief is I cannot tell, and I much doubt whether any member of the hierarchy could explain it satisfactorily himself. For these councillors have full cognizance of all the faiths and creeds, to say nothing of the numerous forms of un-faith and philosophic doubt, that flourish on our Earth, to guide or hinder them in their choice of a definite religion; yet I am assured, and I believe the assurance, they all cling to the belief of the Hereafter in spite of the knowledge of their own Great Imposture and their close acquaintance with terrestrial ethics. Probably the simple but precise religious education of their childhood produces a mental soil wherein agnosticism and infidelity positively refuse to take root and flourish; and though they must have received a most painful rebuff in the total destruction of their early religious teaching, yet their minds are so attuned thereby that they merely cast about with more or less success to find some suitable theory or form of belief that will fill the aching void created by the recent revelation of The Secret and all that it implies. That any one of them has actually been converted to any Herthian creed, I very gravely doubt. From generation to generation for some two thousand years these councillors have watched so many prophets and messiahs arise in all corners of our Earth, and again they have noted the beginning, the rise, the zenith, the decline and the extinction of so many cults;--how can they possibly assert which is or was the genuine form of belief? Their conclusions, if conclusions they can be called, remain as a sealed book to me; and though I have taken part in many arguments on this weighty subject with the Arch-priest and also with other members of the hierarchy, I shall never really catch a firm grip of this elusive religious _fata morgana_ of the Meleagrian intellectuals. In one important respect however I have learned that the councillors are pretty unanimous--namely, in extolling the expressed opinion of St Paul that the blessing of the Hereafter is not necessarily an inalienable gift to man. "The wages of sin is death," and "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?" are, I know, maxims that are admitted and approved by these all-knowing members of the hierarchy. Sin, they hold, is any disobedience or treachery in connection with their sacred trust of ruling the people of Meleager for their own good; and the failure or