, before God. If this grace
were granted to you, oh! how joyfully should I bury all the past,
and again have sweet and tender fellowship with my beloved Son,
as of old.'

The reader who has done me the favour to follow this record of
the clash of two temperaments will not fail to perceive the
crowning importance of the letter from which I have just made a
long quotation. It sums up, with the closest logic, the whole
history of the situation, and I may leave it to form the epigraph
of this little book.

All that I need further say is to point out that when such
defiance is offered to the intelligence of a thoughtful and
honest young man with the normal impulses of his twenty-one
years, there are but two alternatives. Either he must cease to
think for himself; or his individualism must be instantly
confirmed, and the necessity of religious independence must be
emphasized.

No compromise, it is seen, was offered; no proposal of a truce
would have been acceptable. It was a case of 'Everything or
Nothing'; and thus desperately challenged, the young man's
conscience threw off once for all the yoke of his 'dedication',
and, as respectfully as he could, without parade or remonstrance,
he took a human being's privilege to fashion his inner life for
himself.

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