"Yes," said Mr. Alden, his sad eye lighting up; "I like that thought. Life is continuous, I'm sure. It is sweet to think of my little Gracie's purified life going on, under fairer, purer conditions. There seems to me a touch of truth in the old Greek saying, that 'whom the Gods love die young.' She was a little Christian from her infancy; but I used sometimes to fear for her happiness in this rude life of ours. She had such a tender and gentle spirit; with the moral sensitiveness of generations of Puritans so exquisitely keen in her, that a comparatively small wrong would give her great pain. We always tried to keep the knowledge of evil as far from her as possible. When she was a very little child, she would cry if she fancied that her mother and I had even a trifling disagreement. She was always our little peacemaker. But what she was, she was by the grace of God."
"Would you mind," said Roland, presently,—partly to give Mr. Alden's mind a little diversion, partly to satisfy a wish he had felt for some time,—"would you mind telling me what you think about some things that seem to me to stand in the way of my ever being what most people mean by a 'believer'?"
"Certainly, not!" said Mr. Alden, looking interested at once.
"Well, then," said Roland, "I never could believe that 'God is love,' and that he could create millions of people to be lost forever because they lived and died where they could never hear the story of Christ's life and death, never hear what people call the 'gospel,' or even because they could not receive it as literal truth. So I have felt as if I would rather trust to a vague, indefinite love, of which my own heart tells me, than to any such narrow gospel as that."
"Certainly, my dear fellow, I think you are perfectly right. I couldn't believe any such narrow gospel. It would be no 'good news' to me."
"Then you don't—" began the young man, with a puzzled air. "But I'm sure I've heard you, sir, in the pulpit, emphasize the Scripture declaration, that 'there is no other name given whereby man can be saved'!"
"Certainly! I could emphasize that truth everywhere—die for it, I trust, if need were. To me it is as precious as the love and Fatherhood of God."
"Then if there is 'no other name,' what becomes of those who never heard of it, but who are doing all they can—living up to the light they have? What can man do more?"
"I'm afraid most of us do a great deal less!" said Mr. Alden. "But I wish people would only read their Bibles with the intelligent common-sense with which they read other books;—history, for example. We Americans are always talking of our Declaration of Independence, just as Englishmen do of their Magna Charta. It affects the position, the freedom of every man, woman and child in this great country. We talk of George Washington as the deliverer of his country, of his heroism as affecting the destinies of every one in it, even the infant in arms! So we may speak of Lincoln's proclamation as freeing the black race in America. But does any one suppose that no one can benefit by these, except those who know the whole story of these deliverances, of the pain and struggle that led up to them, or of their complex relation with our whole social life and Constitutional history?"
"But then it seems to be presupposed that people are saved through hearing and believing the gospel, and you know Paul says that 'Faith cometh by hearing.'"