'It will my heart consume That we can nothing know.'"
"In my humble opinion," said Frank, "every investigator moves in a limited circle. The most profound thinker does not go beyond these set limits; and if he would boldly over-step them, he would be thrown back by evident contradiction into that circle which Omnipotence has drawn around the human intellect."
"Very reasonable, Richard; very reasonable. But the desire of knowledge must sometimes be satiated," continued the doctor after a short pause. "If the human mind were free from the narrow limits of the deceptive world of sense, and could see and know with pure spiritual eyes, the barriers of which you speak would fall. Even the Bible assures us of this. St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says, 'We see now through a glass in an obscure manner, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know as I am known.' I would admire St. Paul on account of this passage alone if he never had written another. How awful is the moral quality of the human soul taken in connection with its future capacity for knowledge. And how natural, how evident, is the connection. The human mind will receive knowledge from the source of all knowledge--God, in proportion as it has been just and good. For this reason our Redeemer calls the world of the damned 'outer darkness,' and the world of the blessed, the 'kingdom of light.'"
"We sometimes see in that way even now," said Frank after a pause. "The wicked have ideas very different from those of the good. A frivolous spirit mocks at and derides that which fills the good with happiness and contentment. We might, then, say that even in this life man knows as he is known."
The doctor cast an admiring glance at the young man. "We entirely agree, my young friend; wickedness is to the sciences what a poisonous miasma and the burning rays of the sun are to the young plants. Yes, vice begets atheism, materialism, and every other abortion of thought."
"We will meet again at three," said he with a friendly nod.
Richard took from his room _Vogt's Physiological Letters_, went into the garden, and buried himself in its contents.
We promised in our last number to pay our respects to an infamous calumny about Rome, the capital of the Christian Church, and seat of the Sovereign Pontiffs, Vicars of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth.