r that John trembled at them.

"David! David!" he cried. "Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the
lost."

"It is impossible for the lost to be saved," answered David, with a
somber confidence; "only the elect, predestined to salvation."

"And the rest of mankind, David? what of them?"

"God has been pleased to ordain them to wrath, that his justice may
be satisfied and glorified."

"David, who made thee such a God as this? Where did thee learn about
him? How can thee love him?"

"It is in the Confession of Faith. And, oh, John Priestly, I do love
him! Yes, I love him, though he has hid his face from me and, I fear,
cast me off forever."

"Dear heart," said John, "thee is wronging thy best Friend."

"If I could think so! Oh, if I could think so!"

"Well, then, as we are inquiring after God, and nothing less, is it
not fair to take him at his own word?"

David looked inquiringly at John, but made no answer.

"I mean, will it not be more just to believe what God says of himself
than to believe what men,--priests,--long ago dead, have said about
him?"

"I think that."

Then, one after another, the golden verses, full of God's love,
dropped from John's lips in a gracious shower. And David was
amazed, and withal a little troubled. John was breaking up all his
foundations for time and for eternity. He was using the Scriptures
to grind to powder the whole visible church as David understood it.
It was a kind of spiritual shipwreck. His slow nature took fire
gradually, and then burned fiercely. Weak as he was, he could
not sit still. John Priestly was either a voice in the wilderness
crying "Peace!" and "Blessing!" to him, or he was the voice of a
false prophet crying "Peace!" where there was no peace. He looked
into the face of this new preacher, frank and glowing as it was,
with inquiry not unmixed with suspicion.

"Well, then," he cried, "if these things be so, let God speak to me.
Bring me a Bible with large letters. I want to see these words with
my eyes, and touch them with my fingers."

The conversation thus begun was constantly continued, and David
searched the Scriptures from morning to night. Often, as the spring
grew fairer and warmer, the two young men sat in the garden with
the Bible between them; and while the sunshine fell brightly on
its pages they reasoned together of fate and free will, and of
that divine mercy which is from everlasting to everlasting. For
where young men have leisure spir