visitor, he looked at me compassionately, saying that he hoped I might
some day attain to the privilege. "This," he said, "is the abode of
final and lasting peace. No one is admitted here unless his convictions
are of the firmest and most ardent character; it is a reward for
faithful service. But as our time is short, I must tell you," he said,
"of a very curious experience I have had this very morning--a spiritual
experience of the most reassuring character. You must know that I held a
high official position in the religious world--I will mention no
details--and I found at an early age, I am glad to say, the imperative
necessity of forming absolutely impregnable convictions. I went to work
in the most business-like way. I devoted some years to hard reading and
solid thought, and I found that the sect to which I belonged was lacking
in certain definite notes of divine truth, while the weight of evidence
pointed in the clearest possible manner to the fact that one particular
section of the Church had preserved absolutely intact the primitive
faith of the Saints, and was without any shadow of doubt the perfectly
logical development of the principles of the Gospel. Mine is not a
nature that can admit of compromise; and at considerable sacrifice of
worldly prospects I transferred my allegiance, and was instantly
rewarded by a perfect serenity of conviction which has never faltered.

"I had a friend with whom I had often discussed the matter, who was much
of my way of thinking. But though I showed him the illogical nature of
his position, he hung back--whether from material motives or from mere
emotional associations I will not now stop to inquire. But I could not
palter with the truth. I expostulated with him, and pointed out to him
in the sternest terms the eternal distinctions involved. I broke off all
relations with him ultimately. And after a life spent in the most
solemn and candid denunciation of the fluidity of religious belief,
which is the curse of our age, though it involved me in many of the
heart-rending suspensions of human intercourse with my nearest and
dearest so plainly indicated in the Gospel, I passed at length, in
complete tranquillity, to my final rest. The first duty of the sincere
believer is inflexible intolerance. If a man will not recognise the
truth when it is plainly presented to him, he must accept the eternal
consequences of his act--separation from God, and absorption in guilty
and awestruck r