Editor’s Table: The Prompter

be. Will the curtain rise on another stage? Reason says perhaps! Hope whisper yes!" This is the very ecstacy of agnosticism, the poetry of doubt, the music of melancholy—half hope, half fear> Poetry? Yes, it is; it is sad poetry, though; agnostic poetry must be sad, but is poetry, nevertheless; and it is that which, as we believe, constitutes its chief attraction for agnostics in general and for Colonel Ingersoll in particular. Strange, is it not, that one should be in love with doubt—with death? Yet some spirits there are who love to dwell in darkness—wrapt in the solitude of their own gloom, and to whom light-stepping Joy yields not so much as a poor fraction of the pleasure that darkest Melancholy gives them. So with Colonellngersoll ; that same sad "perhaps," which stands beside him at his brother's grave, or at a friend's dying bed, seems to have a charm for him which certainty could never produce. There is something awe-inspiring in uncertainty, in mystery; it is that which attracts men to agnostic tendencies of thought. But what a sad commentary on the wisdom which brought into existence this glorious world of ours if Colonel Ingersoll's statements were true! "In the drama of life we are all actors, and no one knows his part. No prompter's voice is heard ! " What an absurd drama indeed, this life would be if this were true ! Truly, if none knows his part and there is no prompter, then indeed are we fools on a fool's errand. But enough of negative exclamation. We may know our parts if we but learn them; and if there are moments of doubt and uncertainty we may hear the Prompter's voice if only we open our ears to hear and our hearts to understand. Wh}?-, the very heathen comes to a better conclusion than the agnostic. The wild, free spirits of Scandinavia, curbing their passions somewhat and bowing at the shrine of Odin, in the main knew their parts and wherein they failed Odin prompted them. The still wilder spirits of Arabia heard their Prompter in the shrill voice of Mohammed, and in Islam learned their parts. It would be a sad mistake to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain this Mohammedan faith, which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by. Time would fail us to speak of Socrates, of Confucius, of Plato, of Moses, of Christ and the prophets, who all.