grim and grasping taskmaster, that even in fair weather, or a dead calm, he would set all hands to scouring the anchor and picking oakum by turns, that they might not be idle even a moment. So, as soon as they discovered the Harbor of Self-Conceit, they got their chests ashore and deserted, and had now learned a freer way. It had been a hard job, whether in the watch or out, nothing but self-abasement and mortification of body, soul, and spirit, all work and no play, and they could not endure it.

Then Peter answered the man, looking sadly at him, and stirred at once with pity for his ignorance, and indignation at his having so misrepresented the King's service, and said, Do you not know, my friend, from the King himself, that this present free country as you call it, is to be burned up, and all that is in it, for this whole world is only a pilgrimage to a better country, even a heavenly, and rightly used and not abused, the life that now is, with all its blessings and trials, is but a merciful discipline for that which is to come. And if you listen, the very currents of the wind that you rely upon to lift your balloons will forewarn you of the tempest, saying, Arise ye, and depart hence, for this is not your rest, and because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction. Moreover, what you have said about your desertion of the service is very bad for you;

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for the King has said that it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. May our good Lord have morcy upon you!

Then John added, Our experience has been very different from yours, and we would not exchange a single season of the freedom of King Jesus' service, not even if it were a voyage of discovery in the Arctic seas, for the possession through life of your imagined earthly paradise. Christ, our loving Lord and Saviour, was never a hard master, nor ever could be, but merciful and gracious and full of compassion and love, having given himself to die for us, and to make us holy and happy in his love for ever; ordering everything here for our good, if we will only trust in him, and sail with him.

A free country forsooth! with your balloons, and your great swelling words of vanity, and clouds that are carried with a tempest! Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But if I take your meaning aright, what you call liberty is only another word for license and mutiny, and slavery to self-will and sin and ruin. But the King's law of liberty is a perfect

law of love, and pure celestial joy and glory. The wages of his workmen are life everlasting, but the wages of sin are death.

There is nothing so bad for a man, added John, as to be left to have his own way. The freedom of sinners in their lusts is the Eternal despotism of Satan over them; and they have their reward accordingly. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him. But if the Son of God shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Then said Peter, You bring to mind some of the terrible things recorded in the Scriptures as to the character, career, and end of those who, after setting out well, and knowing so many of the blessed truths of Christ's gospel, despise his plain words and because they will not endure sound doctrine, take to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and so are turned away from the truth unto fables. It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

All this made very little impression on the persons that had gathered with much curiosity to hear the discussions. And the owner of the balloon, instead

of being offended with the plainness and severity of Peter and John very coolly and good-naturedly answered that these things which they were asserting with so much confidence out of the Scriptures as being the words of God had received an entirely new and satisfactory rational interpretation by the accurate, scholarly, progressive criticism of modern thought, which he begged they would consider carefully, for it would be a source of great peace and comfort, besides being the means of illuminating other minds, and clearing away a great many difficulties and absurdities that theologians had fastened on the Bible through the ignorance and false teachings of priests, and especially false translations of the Word of God.

They had learned, he said, among other things that Adam never fell, nor any of his posterity; but that, having been born a savage, he rose gradually from worse to better, till he became a man; and that the whole race after him ever since had been on the whole growing in grace, casting away their old savage and selfish principles and habits, and becoming gentlemen of good morals and neighborly kindness, so that the whole world was now coming into a regenerated state, and all men and their posterity from having been the progeny of monkeys, were now rising to an equality with angels, so that there was no need of any man being born again, because all men had

LOG-BOOK OF A VOYAGE

been raised together from the death of trespasses and sins, and were now growing into the example of the life of Christ, through a new interpretation and translation of the text of Paul, That the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died along with him, not in sin, but unto sin; and of course all men, being thus made Christians by Christ's death, would be saved by his life, and were, generation after generation, being raised in his likeness.

He told them, moreover, that the great scholars of that region had proved from geology and the vertebræ of the earth and its inhabitants that the first man said to have been created was not really created at all, but evolved out of an animal, by some process that he called Natural Selection, and had been evolving ever since from a savage to a social and civilized being; so that they might depend upon it the account of the fall of man and his depravity was nothing but an interesting oriental allegory, signifying that he never fell at all, but from the beginning had been going up, as in an Elevator of Modern Science, and so was a great sight better now than when he was first born in Paradise; being then no way different from an infant monkey, but always rising ever since, and would continue to rise, by foreordained benevolent natural advancement, till all mankind would be