n, my Father of his own accord reverted to the
subject. I held my breath, prepared to endure fresh torment. What
he said, however, surprised and relieved me. 'Brother So and So,'
he remarked, 'was not, in my judgement, justified in saying what
he did. The uncovenanted mercies of God are not revealed to us.
Before so rashly speaking of Shakespeare as "a lost soul in
hell", he should have remembered how little we know of the poet's
history. The light of salvation was widely disseminated in the
land during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and we cannot know that
Shakespeare did not accept the atonement of Christ in simple
faith before he came to die.' The concession will today seem
meagre to gay and worldly spirits, but words cannot express how
comfortable it was to me. I gazed at my Father with loving eyes
across the cheese and celery, and if the waiter had not been
present I believe I might have hugged him in my arms.

This anecdote may serve to illustrate the attitude of my
conscience, at this time, with regard to theology. I was not
consciously in any revolt against the strict faith in which I had
been brought up, but I could not fail to be aware of the fact
that literature tempted me to stray up innumerable paths which
meandered in directions at right angles to that direct strait way
which leadeth to salvation. I fancied, if I may pursue the image,
that I was still safe up these pleasant lanes if I did not stray
far enough to lose sight of the main road. If, for instance, it
had been quite certain that Shakespeare had been irrecoverably
damnable and damned, it would scarcely have been possible for me
to have justified myself in going on reading _Cymbeline_. One who
broke bread with the Saints every Sunday morning, who 'took a
class' at Sunday school, who made, as my Father loved to remind
me, a public weekly confession of his willingness to bear the
Cross of Christ, such an one could hardly, however bewildering
and torturing the thought, continue to admire a lost soul. But
that happy possibility of an ultimate repentance, how it eased
me! I could always console myself with the belief that when
Shakespeare wrote any passage of intoxicating beauty, it was just
then that he was beginning to breathe the rapture that faith in
Christ brings to the anointed soul. And it was with a like
casuistry that I condoned my other intellectual and personal
pleasures.

My Father continued to be under the impression that my boarding-
s