no response if presented from the simple stand-point of right and duty. Jesus recognized this principle when he imparted his great lessons in the form of parables, to which the common people listened gladly.
The human soul is merely a repetition of itself in different combinations, under different circumstances. The child of to-day must pass through the same mental, moral and physical discipline to learn the use of his muscles, subdue his passions and train his intellect,—is guided by the same instinct to distinguish right from wrong, as in the days when Cain slew his brother, and sought to conceal his guilt by attempting to deceive his Maker.
In one sense there is no such thing as fiction. Every invention of the imagination has its prototype. Every recorded thought and act has come within the range of some one's experience. There is but one original Architect.
Could we read the inner life of the humblest individual, and compute the results by supplying the many little ifs which are not all the mere play of the imagination, we should have the material for a more wonderful romance than was ever published. Not alone in the dazzling theater of the world, nor in those individual convulsions that rouse every passion and set in motion every latent power of the soul, but in solitude and seclusion can we trace from phases of our own experience, how a word lightly spoken may stir the depths of a nature usually placid as the gentle summer breeze, so deeply as to reveal those stormy passions that agitate and upheave the founda-
