"Was my aim too lofty? It cannot be; for my Creator has given me a
spirit which would spurn a meaner one. I have studied to act in
accordance with His will; yet have I felt all along like one walking in
blindness. I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I
have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness
still rest upon my pathway. I find contradiction where I had looked for
harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place
of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness,
interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth,
for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all,
only by transient and unsatisfying glimpses, obscured and darkened by
miserable subtilties and cabalistic mysteries."

He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with a letter. The
student broke its well-known seal, and read, in a delicate chirography,
the following words:--

"DEAR ERNEST,--A stranger from the English Kingdom, of gentle birth and
education, hath visited me at the request of the good Princess Elizabeth
of the Palatine. He is a preacher of the new faith, a zealous and
earnest believer in the gifts of the Spirit, but not like John de
Labadie or the lady Schurmans.

[J. de Labadie, Anna Maria Schurmans, and others, dissenters from
the French Protestants, established themselves in Holland, 1670.]

"He speaks like one sent on a message from heaven, a message of wisdom
and salvation. Come, Ernest, and see him; for he hath but a brief hour
to tarry with us. Who knoweth but that this stranger may be