ho made him the judge
of the thoughts and acts of other men's inner lives? Who gave to him
the wisdom and power of discernment to know that _he_ was right and
these others wrong? Poor, arrogant fool. His worries were not the
result of genuine affection and deep human sympathy, the irrepressible
and uncontrollable desires and longings of his heart to bring
others into the full light of God's love, but of his overweening
self-confidence in his own wisdom and judgment. And I say this in no
personal condemnation of him, for I have now even forgotten who it
was, but in condemnation of the spirit in which he and all his ilk
ever act.

Hence, my dear reader, if you are of his class, I say to you
earnestly: Don't worry about other people's salvation. It may be they
are nearer saved than you are. No man can' be "worried" into accepting
anything, even though _you_ may deem it the only Truth. I have known
men whom others regarded as agnostics who had given more study to the
question of personal religion than any ten of their critics. I can
recall three--all of whom were men of wonderful mentality and great
earnestness of purpose. John Burroughs's first essays were written
for his own soul's welfare--the results of his long-continued mental
struggles for light upon the subject. Major J.W. Powell, the organizer
and director for many years of the United States Geological Survey and
Bureau of American Ethnology, was brought up by a father and mother
whose intense longing was that their son should be a Methodist
preacher. The growing youth wished to please his parents, but was
also compelled to satisfy his own conscience. The more he studied the
creeds and doctrines of Methodism, the less he felt he could accept
them, and much to the regret of his parents, he refused to enter the
ministry. Yet, in relating the story to me, he asserted that his whole
life had been one long agony of earnest study to find the highest
truth. Taking me into his library, where there were several extended
shelves filled from end to end with the ponderous tomes of the two
great government bureaus that he controlled, he said: "Most people
regard this as my life-work, and outwardly it is. Yet I say to you in
all sincerity that the real, inner, secret force working through all
this, has been that I might satisfy my own soul on the subject of
religion." Then, picking up two small volumes, he said: "In these two
books I have recorded the results of my years of ago