own blood. You are not your own."

"Not my own? bought and paid for!" thought Brixton, recalling the scene
in which words of somewhat similar import had been addressed to him.
"Bought and paid for--twice bought! Body and soul!" Then, aloud, "And
what are you going to do now, Fred?"

"Going to discuss the situation with you."

"And after you have discussed it, and acted according to our united
wisdom, you will say that you have been guided."

"Just so! That is exactly what I will say and believe, for `He is
faithful who has promised.'"

"And if you make mistakes and go wrong, you will still hold, I suppose,
that you have been guided?"

"Undoubtedly I will--not guided, indeed, into the mistakes, but guided
to what will be best in the long-run, in spite of them."

"But Fred, how can you call guidance in the wrong direction _right_
guidance?"

"Why, Tom, can you not conceive of a man being guided wrongly as regards
some particular end he has in view, and yet that same guidance being
right, because leading him to something far better which, perhaps, he
has _not_ in view?"

"So that" said Tom, with a sceptical laugh, "whether you go right or go
wrong, you are sure to come right in the end!"

"Just so! `_All_ things work together for good to them that love God.'"

"Does not that savour of Jesuitism, Fred, which teaches the detestable
doctrine that you may do evil if good is to come of it?"

"Not so, Tom; because I did not understand you to use the word _wrong_
in the sense of _sinful_, but in the sense of erroneous--mistaken. If I
go in a wrong road, knowing it to be wrong, I sin; but if I go in a
wrong road mistakenly, I still count on guidance, though not perhaps to
the particular end at which I aimed--nevertheless, guidance to a _good_
end. Surely you will admit that no man is perfect?"

"Admitted."

"Well, then, imperfection implies mistaken views and ill-directed
action, more or less, in every one, so that if we cannot claim to be
guided by God except when free from error in thought and act, then there
is no such thing as Divine guidance at all. Surely you don't hold
that!"

"Some have held it."

"Yes; `the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,'--some have
even gone the length of letting it out of the heart and past the lips.
With such we cannot argue; their case admits only of pity and prayer."

"I agree with you there, Fred; but if your views are not Jesuitical,
they seem to me to b