it all depends--doesn't it?--upon whether one can feel the underlying
truth of which you spoke in the first place; it rests upon a sense of the
prevailing goodness of things. It seems to me cruel that what is called
salvation, the solution of the problem of life, should depend upon an
accidental discovery. We are all turned loose with our animal passions
and instincts, of self-preservation, by an indifferent Creator, in a
wilderness, and left to find our way out as best we can. You answer that
Christ showed us the way. There are elements in his teaching I cannot
accept--perhaps because I have been given a wrong interpretation of them.
I shall ask you more questions some day.

"But even then," she continued, "granted that Christ brought the complete
solution, as you say, why should so many millions have lived and died,
before and after his coming, who had suffered so, and who had never heard
of him? That is the way my reason works, and I can't help it. I would
help it if I could."

"Isn't it enough," he asked, "to know that a force is at work combating
evil,--even if you are not yet convinced that it is a prevailing force?
Can you not trust that it will be a prevailing force, if your sympathies
are with it, without demanding a revelation of the entire scheme of the
universe? Of what use is it to doubt the eternal justice?"

"Oh, use!" she cried, "I grant you its uselessness. Doubt seems an
ingrained quality. I can't help being a fatalist."

"And yet you have taken your life in your own hands," he reminded her,
gently.

"Only to be convinced of its futility," she replied.