fore his mental gaze. He saw a cottage,
rose-bowered, glowing in the haze of the summer sun. He saw before its
door a woman, fresh and fair--his wife--and children--his--shouting
their joyous greetings as they trooped out to welcome him returning
from his day's labors. How he clung to this picture when it faded and
left him, an oath-bound celibate, facing his lonely and cheerless
destiny! God! what has the Church to offer for such sacrifice as this!
An education? Yea, an induction into relative truths and mortal
opinions, and the sad record of the devious wanderings of the human
mind! An opportunity for service? God knows, the free, unhampered
mind, open to truth and progress, loosed from mediaeval dogma and
ignorant convention, seeing its brothers' needs and meeting in them
its own, has opportunities for rich service to-day outside the Church
the like of which have never before been offered!

To and fro his heaving thought ebbed and flowed. Back and forth the
arguments, pro and con, surged through the still hours of the
night. After all, had he definite proof that the tenets of Holy
Church were false? No, he could not honestly say that he had. The
question still stood in abeyance. Even his conviction of their
falsity at times had sorely wavered. And if his heart cried out
against their acceptance, it nevertheless had nothing tangibly
definite to offer in substitution. But--the end had come so
suddenly! With his life free and untrammeled he might yet find the
truth. Oath-bound and limited to the strictures of the Church, what
hope was there but the acceptance of prescribed canons of human
belief? Still, the falsities which he believed he had found within the
Church were not greater than those against which she herself fought in
the world. And if she accepted him, did it not indicate on her part
a tacit recognition of the need of just what he had to offer, a
searching spirit of inquiry and consecration to the unfoldment of
truth? Alas! the incident of the Greek translation threw its
shadow of doubt upon that hope.

But if the Church accepted him, she _must_ accept his stand! He
_would_ raise his voice in protest, and would continually point to the
truth as he discerned it! If he received the order of priesthood from
her it was with the understanding that his acceptance of her tenets
was tentative! But--forlorn expedient! He knew something of
ecclesiastical history. He thought he knew--young as he was--that the
Church