"I do not suppose things about God. I do not think it is right to inquire as to what He may do."
"Jane, it is useless to twist my question into another meaning. Suppose you had not destroyed our other children before they saw the light?"
"John," she cried, "how dare you say such dreadful things to me? I will not listen to you. Open the door. You might well put the key in your pocket—and I have been so ill. I have suffered so much—it is dreadful"—and she fell into a fit of hysterical weeping.
John waited patiently until she had sobbed herself quiet, then he continued, "When I think of my sons or daughters, written down in God's Book and blotted out by you."
"I will not listen. You are mad. Your 'sons or daughters' could not be hurt by anyone before they had life."
"They always had life. Before the sea was made or the mountains were brought forth,
'Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,
God thought on me his child,'
and on you and on every soul made for immortality by the growth that fresh birth gives it. He loves us with an everlasting love. No false mother can
destroy a child's soul, but she can destroy its flesh and so retard and interfere with its eternal growth. This is the great sin—the sin of blood-guiltiness—any woman may commit it."
"You talk sheer nonsense, John. I do not believe anything you say."