Note 5 — A CASTLE IN THE AIR.

I was made a convert to that excellent officer, Corporal Punishment, by the 'happy effects,' as medical writers say of blisters, thereby brought about in the case of a divine of tender years, who had got at his Bible through the medium of German (not Luther's).

Taking for his text the first verse of Genesis, he paraphrased it: 'In the beginning, all things projected themselves from within outward, and evolved a Final Cause out of the depths of their individual consciousness.' As soon as he had got through his discourse and gratefully asked a blessing on all that we had 'learned and taught,' the sexton, who apparently entertained unusually high and comprehensive view of the duties of his calling, attended the preacher to the vestry. Thence presently issued cries indicative not only of remorse, but of some kind of physical distress. The two are often connected as intimately as mysteriously in the discipline of the visible world, although we are often assured by those who must know, that they have nothing whatever to do with each other In the invisible. On the reappearance of the offender, as he meekly wiped his eyes and passed down the aisle, he was heard, in a broken voice, inquiring of the deacons where a Hebrew dictionary could be bought; and I have since been credibly informed that before he arrived at maturity he had learned a good deal.

Now anybody can read German; in fact, a great many persons seem wholly unable to stop. But if we do not keep a theological boy to read our Greek and Hebrew for us, then what do we keep one for? Or, to make the question intelligible to those among us who speak the Sweden-borgian tongue, what 'uses does he perform?'