springs with us from God Himself, and, however down-beaten, however sick
and nigh unto death, will evermore lift its head and rise again.

She could say nothing to her father. She loved him--oh, how dearly! and
trusted him; where she could trust him at all!--oh, how perfectly! but
she had no confidence in his understanding of herself. The main cause
whence arose his insufficiency and her lack of trust was, that all his
faith in God was as yet scarcely more independent of thought-forms,
word-shapes, dogma and creed, than that of the Catholic or Calvinist.
How few are there whose faith is simple and mighty in the Father of
Jesus Christ, waiting to believe all that He will reveal to them! How
many of those who talk of faith as the one needful thing, will accept as
sufficient to the razing of the walls of partition between you and them,
your heartiest declaration that you believe _in Him_ with the whole
might of your nature, lay your soul bare to the revelation of His
spirit, and stir up your will to obey Him?--And then comes _your_
temptation--to exclude, namely, from your love and sympathy the weak and
boisterous brethren who, after the fashion possible to them, believe in
your Lord, because they exclude you, and put as little confidence in
your truth as in your insight. If you do know more of Christ than they,
upon you lies the heavier obligation to be true to them, as was St. Paul
to the Judaizing Christians, whom these so much resemble, who were his
chief hindrance in the work his Master had given him to do. In Christ we
must forget Paul and Apollos and Cephas, pope and bishop and pastor and
presbyter, creed and interpretation and theory. Care-less of their
opinions, we must be careful of themselves--careful that we have salt in
ourselves, and that the salt lose not its savor, that the old man, dead
through Christ, shall not, vampire-like, creep from his grave and suck
the blood of the saints, by whatever name they be called, or however
little they may yet have entered into the freedom of the gospel that God