searches his heart and follows this guide as he understands it, there
can be no danger."

"Mr. Strathmore," Maurice said, "perhaps it seems like forcing myself
upon you, and then taking the liberty of fighting your views; but this
is too vital to me to allow of my stopping for conventionalities. You
seem to me to be inconsistent. You refer to the church as the supreme
authority, but you give into the hand of every man a power over that
authority."

The other smiled with that warm, sympathetic glance which was so
winning.

"Does it seem possible to you," asked he, "that two human beings ever
mean quite the same thing by the same words? Isn't there always some
little variation, at least, in the impression that a given phrase
conveys to you and to me?"

"Theoretically I suppose that this is true," assented Maurice; "but
practically it doesn't amount to much, does it?"

"It at least amounts to this," was the reply, "that what one man means
by a set form of words cannot be exactly the same that another would
mean by it. The creed is one thing to the simple-minded, ignorant man,
and something infinitely higher and richer to a Father in the church.
You would allow that, of course."

"Yes," Maurice hesitatingly assented, "but I shouldn't have thought of
it as an excuse for laxity of doctrine."