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176, coming nearer to his scholar with a rare earnestness in his manner "Each one must go through the crisis in which you are now. I too was enthusiastic at your age about the higher or spiritual needs of mankind, and thought they ought never to be dissevered from their strivings towards the good of the community. I was in that sense a zealous Catholic, but only in that sense. It was the time when

I saw the Advocate mount the scaffold, because he defended himself from the old Jewish creed by which, through election, they would make Christians into a body-guard of God; there, leaning on his staff, the septuagenarian Oldenbarnaveldt stood on the scaffold.

"'O God!' he cried; 'what will become of mankind?' And all around stood the brainless crowd, heads beyond heads, and gloated over it, and shouted as that noblest head of all was severed from the body. There and then I learned to despise the multitude; there I gained the knowledge that before all things it is necessary to reject all influence from what the crowd calls religion. Superstition is a hollow tooth; it leaves you long in peace, but a harder morsel, or a colder whiff of air, and you are maddened by it. Try to draw it out,