Some of these elders in John's church, especially a man called Dean (the father of my Alfaretta), believe in their horrible doctrines with all their hearts, and their absolute conviction make them blind to any possibility of good in any creed which does not agree with theirs.

Apparently, they think they have reached the ultimate truth, and never even look for new light.

That is the strangest thing to me.

Now, for my part, I would not sign a creed to-day which I had written myself, because one lives progressively in religion as in everything else.

But, after all, as I said to Gifford the other day, the _form_ of belief is of so little consequence.