Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley

The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.--EMERSON.

Mr. Gresley was troubled, more troubled than he had ever been since a never-to-be-forgotten period before his ordination, when he had come in contact with worldly minds, and had had doubts as to the justice of eternal punishment. He was apt to speak in after years of the furnace through which he had passed, and from which nothing short of a conversation with a bishop had had power to save him, as a great experience which he could not regret, because it had brought him into sympathy with so many minds. As he often said in his favorite language of metaphor, he "had threshed out the whole subject of agnosticism, and could consequently meet other minds still struggling in its turbid waves."