in the net-work of my Father's will, and
incapable of the smallest independent action. I resigned all
thought of attending any other services than those at our 'Room',
but I did no longer regard this exclusion as a final one. I
bowed, but it was in the house of Rimmon, from which I now knew
that I must inevitably escape. All the liberation, however, which
I desired or dreamed of was only just so much as would bring me
into communion with the outer world of Christianity without
divesting me of the pure and simple principles of faith.

Of so much emancipation, indeed, I now became ardently desirous,
and in the contemplation of it I rose to a more considerable
degree of religious fervour than I had ever reached before or was
ever to experience later. Our thoughts were at this time
abundantly exercised with the expectation of the immediate coming
of the Lord, who, as my Father and those who thought with him
believed, would suddenly appear, without the least warning, and
would catch up to be with Him in everlasting glory all whom
acceptance of the Atonement had sealed for immortality. These
were, on the whole, not numerous, and our belief was that the
world, after a few days' amazement at the total disappearance of
these persons, would revert to its customary habits of life,
merely sinking more rapidly into a moral corruption due to the
removal of these souls of salt. This event an examination of
prophecy had led my Father to regard as absolutely imminent, and
sometimes, when we parted for the night, he would say with a
sparkling rapture in his eyes, 'Who knows? We may meet next in
the air, with all the cohorts of God's saints!'

This conviction I shared, without a doubt; and, indeed,--in
perfect innocency, I hope, but perhaps with a touch of slyness
too,--I proposed at the end of the summer holidays that I should
stay at home. 'What is the use of my going to school? Let me be
with you when we rise to meet the Lord in the air!' To this my
Father sharply and firmly replied that it was our duty to carry
on our usual avocations to the last, for we knew not the moment
of His coming, and we should be together in an instant on that
day, how far soever we might be parted upon earth. I was ashamed,
but his argument was logical, and, as it proved, judicious. My
Father lived for nearly a quarter of a century more, never losing
the hope of 'not tasting death', and as the last moments of
mortality approached, he was bitterly disapp