Paying for Others.—The pupil said: "I must confess that I do not understand the Atonement." "You mean, understand it with everyday intelligence. No one can. The highest questions cannot be solved by us, just as little as problems of the fourth dimension. But the solution is given to us, if we ask for it in a proper way.
"As regards the redemptive work of Christ, you can comprehend it by an analogy. You remember, when you owed so many debts, that there were knocks at your door all day long, that you had to go out early in the morning in order to borrow, or to escape your creditors. Finally you feared your room so, that you dared not go home to sleep. You sat on a seat in the park, and said to yourself, 'It is hell!' Then there came a man who knew you; he paid your debts; you called him your saviour. Do you not see that one can pay for another, and deliver him?"
"Yes, but one cannot make an evil deed undone."
"No, but the Almighty can obliterate it from our memory, and from the memory of others. But mark this well: every time that you rummage in the past of another, although it has been atoned for, the memory of your own evil deeds starts up. Just like a badly washed stain which goes through the stuff and appears on the other side. All miracles are conditional, just as vows are."
The Lice-King.—As the teacher roamed one day in Qualheim he came into a wood under whose shadow many decaying funguses grew. On a footpath he saw what he thought at first was a snake writhing about. It was no snake, however, but a mass of grubs clotted together. The teacher asked his guide: "What is the meaning of that?"
"Ask first what it is; then I will tell you the meaning of it."
"Well?"
"These are the larvæ of the snake-worm, which are obliged, like clay and wadded straw, to hold together in order not to perish. They love poisonous funguses, and cannot bear the light. They maintain their existence by a mutual interchange of slime, without which they become dead and dry. But they call darkness light, because the sun would kill them. They feed on the poisonous funguses. They hate each other, but must keep together. Do you understand now, or not?"
"What is the name of the creature?"
"It is called the snake-worm or lice-king, appears once in every generation, and is a herald of evil times."