“Oh, there ain’t any!”
He was on the witness stand. To destroy their hope would be a crueler murder than that of the innocents. No, he dared not deny God.
III—THE WAY TO HEAVEN
John Travis was like a good many young men in the tide of respectable church-going. His grandmother was an old-fashioned Christian, rather antiquated now; but he still enjoyed the old cottage and the orchard of long ago. His mother was a modern church member. They never confessed their experiences one to another in the fervent spiritual manner, but had clubs and guilds and societies to train the working-people. She was interested in charitable institutions, in homes, and the like; that is, she subscribed liberally and supervised them. Personally she was rather disgusted with the inmates and their woes, whose lives and duties were mapped out by rule, whether they fitted or not.
Then, he had two sisters who were nice, wholesome, attractive girls, who danced all winter in silks and laces, kept Lent rigorously with early services, sewing-classes, and historical lectures, and took their turns in visiting the slums. All summer there was pleasuring. The young women in their “set” were much alike, and he wondered who of them all could show these little waifs the way to heaven.
For himself, he had gone through college honorably. He was a moral young man, because a certain fine, clean instinct and artistic sense forbade any excesses. To be sure, he had read Strauss and Renan after his Darwin and Spencer, he had even dipped into the bitter fountains of Schopenhauer. He had a jaunty idea that the myths and miracles of the Bible were the fables and legends of the nations in the earlier stages of their development, quite outgrown in these later days of exact philosophical reasoning.
But as he sat there, with these children’s eyes fixed upon him with an intent life-and-death expression, uttering a strong, inward soul cry that reached his ears and would not be shut out, a certain assurance came to him. These tender little souls were waiting for the word that was to lead them in the way of life everlasting. “Whoso offendeth one of these little ones”—it was there in letters of fire.
What but heaven could compensate them for their dreary lives here! What but the love of God infold them when father and mother had failed. For surely they had not demanded any part in the struggle of life. Ah, if the dead rose not again—what refinement of cruelty to send human beings into the world to suffer like brutes, having a higher consciousness to intensify it ten-fold, and then be thrust into the terrible darkness of nothingness. Even he was not willing to come to a blank, purposeless end.
He had been sketching rapidly, but he saw the little faces changing with an uncomprehended dread. Dil’s sunshine was going out in sullen despair. Yes, he must bear witness—for to-day, for all time, for all human souls. In that moment he believed. A rejoicing, reverent consciousness was awakened within him; and the new man had been born, the man who desired to learn the way to heaven, even as these little children.
“Yes, there is a heaven.” He could feel the tremulousness in his voice, yet the assurance touched him with inexpressible sweetness, so new and strange was it. “There is a God who cares for us all, loves us all, and who has prepared a beautiful land of rest where there is no pain nor sorrow, where no one is sick or lonely or in any want, where the Lord Jesus gathers the sorrowing into his arms, and wipes away their tears, soothes them with his own great love, which is sweeter and tenderer than the best human love.”