do the wrong thing if that's the thing we choose to do. It gets easier
and easier, and at first there's a lot of pleasure to it, but by-and-by
it gets more and more dreadful, and then comes death, and that's the end
here. But God does not change because we die, and wherever we go He is
with us and gives us energy to do just what we choose to do. It's hell
before we die when we live that way, and it's hell after, for ages and
ages and worlds and worlds perhaps, just until the hell-fire of sin has
burned the wrong way of choosing out of us. But remember, God never
leaves us whatever we do; there's nothing we feel that He doesn't feel
with us; we must all come in the end to being like Himself, and there's
always open the short simple way of choosing His help to do right,
instead of the long, long way through hell. But I tell you, Ann, whether
you're good or whether you're wicked, God is in you and you are in Him.
If He left you, you would neither be good nor wicked, you would stop
being; but He loves you in a bigger, closer way than you can think of
loving anybody; and if you choose to go round the longest way you can,
through the hell-fire of sin on earth and all the other worlds, He will
suffer it all with you, and bring you in the end to be like Himself."

The calm voice was sustained in physical strength by the strength of the
new faith.

Ann's reply followed on the track of thoughts that had occurred to her.
"Well now, there's that awful low girl, Nelly Bowes. She's drunk all the
time, and she's got an awful disease. She's as bad as bad can be, and so
is the man she lives with; and that little child of hers was born a
hard-minded, sickly little beast." Her words had a touch of triumphant
opposition as she brought them out slowly. "It's a mean, horrid shame
for the child to be born like that. It wasn't its fault. Do you mean to
say God is with them?"