affairs, either in public or in private life, either in the church, or in the nation, or in the city, or in the family, this unhappy man could only be a drag on all kinds of progress, and in obstacle to every good work.  Use and wont, a very good rule on occasion, was a rigid and a universal rule with Obstinate.  And to be told that the wont in this case and in that had ceased to be the useful, only made him rail at you as only an ignorant and an obstinate man can rail.  He could only rail; he had not knowledge enough, or good temper enough, or good manners enough to reason out a matter; he was too hot-tempered for an argument, and he hated those who had an acquaintance with the subject in hand, and a self-command in connection with it that he had not.  ’The obstinate man’s understanding is like Pharaoh’s heart, and it is proof against all sorts of arguments whatsoever.’  Like the demented king of Egypt, the obstinate man has glimpses sometimes both of his bounden duty and of his true interest, but the sinew of iron that is in his neck will not let him perform the one or pursue the other.  ‘Nothing,’ says a penetrating writer, ’is more like firm conviction than simple obstinacy.  Plots and parties in the state, and heresies and divisions in the church alike proceed from it.’  Let any honest man take that sentence and carry it like a candle down into his own heart and back into his own life, and then with the insight and honesty there learned carry the same candle back through some of the plots and parties, the heresies and schisms of the past as well as of the present day, and he will have learned a lesson that will surely help to cure himself, at any rate, of his own remaining obstinacy.  All our firm convictions, as we too easily and too fondly call them, must continually be examined and searched out in the light of more reading of the best authors, in the light of more experience of ourselves and of the world we live in, and in that best of all light, that increasing purity, simplicity, and sincerity of heart alone can kindle.  And in not a few instances we shall to a certainty find that what has hitherto been clothing itself with the honourable name and character of a conviction was all the time only an ignorant prejudice, a distaste or a dislike, a too great fondness for ourselves and for our own opinion and our own interest.  Many of our firmest convictions, as we now call them, when we shall have let light enough fall upon them, we shall be compelled and enabled to confess to be at bottom mere mulishness and pride of heart.  The mulish, obstinate, and proud man never says, I don’t know.  He never asks anything to be explained to him.  He never admits that he has got any new light.  He never admits having spoken or acted wrongly.  He never takes back what he has said.  He was never heard to say, You are right in that line of action, and I have all along been wrong.  Had he ever said that, the day he said it would have been a white-stone day both for his mind and his heart.  Only, the spoiled son of Spare-the-Rod never said that, or anything like that.