[Footnote 1: The heroine of Ibsen's _Doll's House_.]
=The Secret of the Cross.=--The teacher said: "The conflict between paganism and Christianity is now being fought out in the world. But just as surely as Christianity preceded paganism in time, so surely does the future belong to Christianity, although for the moment the apelings have the upper hand. Their edict of toleration allows them in the name of freedom to forbid the preaching of Christianity. They close the churches, declare Judas innocent, give mad women the vote, write heathenish schoolbooks for children, place forgers and pettifoggers in power, for their kingdom is of this world. But it is with Christianity as with the walnut-tree, whose fruit is knocked down with poles, and which is roughly treated in order that it may bear fruit and thrive. The night grows darker towards the dawn. Spinach-seed is trodden down that it may grow better; the ground must be harrowed, broken, and rolled in order to be able to yield a crop; gold must be refined in fire, and flax be steeped in water. The cross points upwards, downwards, sideways, to the four quarters of heaven at once; it is a completion of the compass. Suffering bums up the rubbish of the soul. I have seen a man who had suffered all the griefs endured by humanity; yet the more he suffered the more beautiful he became. That is the secret of the cross and of suffering. 'Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you. In the world ye have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.'"
=Examination and Summer Holidays.=--The teacher said: "When, on reaching maturity, one awakes to new consciousness and discovers that everything one has is borrowed, one begins to cut oneself down to the root, in order to let strike a new stem which is one's own. When we enter old age this stem withers down to the root (the process Swedenborg calls 'desolation'); the branches formerly cut down bloom again and put forth new foliage which is like, and yet not like the former. But when old and new flourish together, the whole result is confusing; but the root remains the same and reveals the nature of the plant. The dissonances of life increase with the years, and the material of life becomes so immense that it is impossible to survey it properly. Therefore one lives more in remembrance than in the present, and along the whole line of one's experience. Sometimes I live in my childhood, sometimes in my mature age.