try to find out what is true,
and I will not believe till I am sure."

"You have no right to make terms with God," he answered, "as to what you
will believe and what you will not believe. You are full of intellectual
pride."

I sighed hopelessly. Little feeling of pride was there in me just then,
and I felt that in this rigid unyielding dogmatism there was no
comprehension of my difficulties, no help for me in my strugglings. I
rose and, thanking him for his courtesy, said that I would not waste his
time further, that I must go home and just face the difficulties out,
openly leaving the Church and taking the consequences. Then for the first
time his serenity was ruffled.

"I forbid you to speak of your disbelief," he cried. "I forbid you to
lead into your own lost state the souls for whom Christ died."

Slowly and sadly I took my way back to the station, knowing that my last
chance of escape had failed me. I recognised in this famous divine the
spirit of the priest, which could be tender and pitiful to the sinner,
repentant, humble, submissive, craving only for pardon and for guidance,
but which was iron to the doubter, to the heretic, and would crush out
all questionings of "revealed truth", silencing by force, not by
argument, all challenge of the traditions of the Church. Out of such men
were made the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages, perfectly conscientious,
perfectly rigid, perfectly merciless to the heretic. To them heretics
were and are centres of infectious disease, and charity to them "the
worst cruelty to the souls of men". Certain that they hold "by no merit
of our own, but by the mercy of our God the one truth which he hath
revealed", they can permit no questionings, they can accept nought but
the most complete submission. But while man aspires after truth, while
his brain yearns after knowledge, while his intellect soars upward into
the heaven of speculation and "beats the air with tireless wing", so long
shall those who demand faith be met by challenge for proof, and those who
would blind him shall be defeated by his determination to gaze
unblenching on the face of Truth, even though her eyes should turn him
into stone.

During this same visit to London I saw Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Scott for the
first time. I had gone down to Dulwich to see Mr. and Mrs. Voysey, and
after dinner we went over to Upper Norwood, and I was introduced to one
of the most remarkable men I have ever met. At that time Mr. Scott was