've only to follow your nose.' So I set off,
supposing it was all right. I found the wood easily enough, but when I
got to it I was quite at a nonplush. There was three roads into the
wood, each one as distinct as the other. It was all very well to say,
`Follow your nose;' but if I looked down one road that would be
following my nose, and so it would be when I looked down either of the
other roads. I had to chance it; and a pretty mess I made of it, for I
completely lost my way, and didn't get to my journey's end till after
dark.--Now, some of these scientific gents as has got too wise to
believe in the old-fashioned Bible and its plain meaning, what sort of
directions would they give us through this world, so that we might do
our duty in it, and get happily through it, and reach the better land?
It would be much with poor sinners as it was with me. If we're to have
a religion without doctrines and without a revelation, or if we're only
to pick out just as much from the Bible as suits our fancies and our
prejudices, we shall be just following our nose. And where will that
lead us? Why, into all sorts of difficulties here, and the end will be
nothing but darkness."

"Just so, Thomas," said the vicar; "I feel sure that you speak the
truth. We want the plain, distinct teaching of the doctrines of God's
Word, if we are to be holy here and happy hereafter. We want to know
unmistakably what to believe, and how to act out our belief. What a
blessing it is that, when we take up our Bibles in a humble and
teachable spirit, we can say, `Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a
light unto my path.' But we are come upon strange times indeed, when
professed teachers of the Christian religion can propound to us `a
gospel without an atonement, a Bible without inspiration, and an
ignorant Christ.'--Well, Thomas, shall we come into my study? Dr
Prosser will excuse me for a few minutes."

An evening or two after this conversation, as the whole vicarage party
lingered round the table after supper, Dr Prosser turned to his host
and said, "Judging from all I see and hear, Maltby, a parish like yours
must be a famous place for testing the working value of many modern
theories of morality and religion."

"Yes," was the reply; "what you say, my dear friend, is true indeed.
Learned and amiable men sit in their libraries and college rooms, and
weave out of their own intellects or consciousness wonderful theories of
the goodness of