power 'to fulfill the
law,' as you call it, completely. Therefore it is no crime in him if
he fails. We reckon as faults those only which arise from idleness,
willfulness, selfishness, and deliberate preference of evil to good.
Each is judged according to what he has received."

I was amused to observe how pleased the archbishop looked while the
examiner was speaking. He had himself been engaged in controversy with
this gentleman on the share of "good works" in justifying a man; and
if the examiner had not taken his side in the discussion, he had at
least demolished his adversary. The archbishop had been the more
disinterested in the line which he had taken, as his own "works,"
though in several large folios, weighed extremely little; and indeed,
had it not been for passages in his early life,--he had starved
himself at college that he might not be a burden upon his widowed
mother,--I do not know but that he might have been sent back into the
world to serve as a parish clerk.

For myself, there were questions which I was longing to ask, and I was
trying to collect my courage to speak. I wanted chiefly to know what
the examiner meant by "natural disposition." Was it that a man might
be born with a natural capacity for becoming a saint, as another man
with a capacity to become a great artist or musician, and that each of
us could only grow to the limits of his natural powers? And again,
were idleness, willfulness, selfishness, etc., etc., natural
dispositions? for in that case--

But at the moment the bell rang again, and my own name was called.
There was no occasion to ask who I was. In every instance the identity
of the person, his history, small or large, and all that he had said
or done, was placed before the court so clearly that there was no need
for extorting a confession. There stood the catalogue inexorably
impartial, the bad actions in a schedule painfully large, the few good
actions veined with personal motives which spoilt the best of them. In
the way of work there was nothing to be shown but certain books and
other writings, and these were spread out to be tested. A fluid was
poured on the pages, the effect of which was to obliterate entirely
every untrue proposition, and to make every partially true proposition
grow faint in proportion to the false element which entered into it.
Alas! chapter after chapter vanished away, leaving the paper clean, as
if no compositor had ever labored in setting type for it.