I went to work in the most business-like way.  I devoted some years to hard reading and solid thought, and I found that the sect to which I belonged was lacking in certain definite notes of divine truth, while the weight of evidence pointed in the clearest possible manner to the fact that one particular section of the Church had preserved absolutely intact the primitive faith of the Saints, and was without any shadow of doubt the perfectly logical development of the principles of the Gospel.  Mine is not a nature that can admit of compromise; and at considerable sacrifice of worldly prospects I transferred my allegiance, and was instantly rewarded by a perfect serenity of conviction which has never faltered.

“I had a friend with whom I had often discussed the matter, who was much of my way of thinking.  But though I showed him the illogical nature of his position, he hung back—­whether from material motives or from mere emotional associations I will not now stop to inquire.  But I could not palter with the truth.  I expostulated with him, and pointed out to him in the sternest terms the eternal distinctions involved.  I broke off all relations with him ultimately.  And after a life spent in the most solemn and candid denunciation of the fluidity of religious belief, which is the curse of our age, though it involved me in many of the heart-rending suspensions of human intercourse with my nearest and dearest so plainly indicated in the Gospel, I passed at length, in complete tranquillity, to my final rest.  The first duty of the sincere believer is inflexible intolerance.  If a man will not recognise the truth when it is plainly presented to him, he must accept the eternal consequences of his act—­separation from God, and absorption in guilty and awestruck regret, which admits of no repentance.

“One of the privileges of our sojourn here is that we have a strange and beautiful device—­a window, I will call it—­which admits one to a sight of the spiritual world.  I was to-day contemplating, not without pain, but with absolute confidence in its justice, the sufferings of some of these lost souls, and I observed, I cannot say with satisfaction, but with complete submission, the form of my friend, whom my testimony might have saved, in eternal misery.  I have the tenderest heart of any man alive.  It has cost me a sore struggle to subdue it—­it is more unruly even than the will—­but you may imagine that it is a matter of deep and comforting assurance to reflect that on earth the door, the one door, to salvation is clearly and plainly indicated—­though few there be that find it—­and that this signal mercy has been vouchsafed to me.  I have then the peace of knowing, not only that my choice was right, but that all those to whom the truth is revealed have the power to choose it.  I am a firm believer in the uncovenanted mercies vouchsafed to those who have not had the advantages of clear presentment, but for the deliberately unfaithful, for all sinners against light, the sentence is inflexible.”