Not long prior to this writing a good earnest man buttonholed me and held me tight for over an hour, while he outlined his own slight divergencies from the teachings of the Methodist Church, to which he belongs, and his interpretation of the symbolism of Scripture, none of which had the slightest interest to me.  In our conversation, he expressed himself as quite willing—­please note the condescension—­to allow me the privilege of supposing the Catholic was honest and sincere in his faith and belief, but he really could not for one moment allow the same to the Christian Scientist, who, from his standpoint, denied the atonement and the Divinity of Christ.  I suppose if he ever picks up this booklet and reads what I am now going to write, he will regard me as a reprobate and lost beyond the possibility of salvation.  Nevertheless, I wish to put on record that I regard his attitude as one of intolerance, bigotry, fanaticism, and impudence—­sheer, unadulterated impertinence.  Who made him the judge of the thoughts and acts of other men’s inner lives?  Who gave to him the wisdom and power of discernment to know that he was right and these others wrong?  Poor, arrogant fool.  His worries were not the result of genuine affection and deep human sympathy, the irrepressible and uncontrollable desires and longings of his heart to bring others into the full light of God’s love, but of his overweening self-confidence in his own wisdom and judgment.  And I say this in no personal condemnation of him, for I have now even forgotten who it was, but in condemnation of the spirit in which he and all his ilk ever act.

Hence, my dear reader, if you are of his class, I say to you earnestly:  Don’t worry about other people’s salvation.  It may be they are nearer saved than you are.  No man can’ be “worried” into accepting anything, even though you may deem it the only Truth.  I have known men whom others regarded as agnostics who had given more study to the question of personal religion than any ten of their critics.  I can recall three—­all of whom were men of wonderful mentality and great earnestness of purpose.  John Burroughs’s first essays were written for his own soul’s welfare—­the results of his long-continued mental struggles for light upon the subject.  Major J.W.  Powell, the organizer and director for many years of the United States Geological Survey and Bureau of American Ethnology, was brought up by a father and mother whose intense longing was that their son should be a Methodist preacher.  The growing youth wished to please his parents, but was also compelled to satisfy his own conscience.  The more he studied the creeds and doctrines of Methodism, the less he felt he could accept them, and much to the regret of his parents, he refused to enter the ministry.  Yet, in relating the story to me, he asserted that his whole life had been one long agony of earnest study to find the highest truth.  Taking me into his library, where there were several extended