"I am not sure that I understand myself," he answered, with a sad smile. "Since your namesake, my sister Clarice, died, I have never thought much about religion. I have gone on—dreaming—doing nothing, in fact. If conscience awoke for a moment, I silenced her. I laid the blame of my wasted life on—circumstances, on my father, on anything and any one but myself. From this state I have been awakened—how, I hardly know. I do see my sin—I do repent; but when I would take another step and cry for mercy—then all is mist. I have amused myself by seeing how the Christian religion can be explained away, until now when I turn to it in my bitter need, it eludes my grasp—I can see no certainty—no hope. It is all mist!"
"Papa, I once heard Dr. Ausley preach on the subject of doubts and difficulties of this kind, and I will tell you something of what he said. He began, if I remember rightly, by saying that until the history of our Lord and of His apostles was proved to be a fiction from beginning to end, the credulous people were those who try to account for it on natural grounds. I am not making it plain, papa—I wish I could."
"I understand; go on."
"Then there was St. Paul. He had everything to lose, and nothing to gain. He was wise, well-educated, and had reasoning powers beyond the common. Why did he believe? He said he saw the Lord—he must have known whether that was true or false. Do men throw away everything they value in life for the pleasure of being persecuted for telling a he?"
"Go on, child—go on."
"And those twelve men of a conquered and despised nation, unlearned and ignorant men, too—yet their teaching upset the religion of great Rome, and has gone on spreading ever since. But the thing that struck me most in what Dr. Ausley said, and you said something like it just now, was—'that every Christian life, however weak and faulty, is a miracle greater than any other. Because,' he said, 'here are sinful men, weak women, silly young people, tempted and tried, and yet going on somehow, living a life that is not only not easy, but actually against their very nature.'"
"I have felt that," Mr. Egerton said. "Clarice, I think my time is short. What had I better do?"
"Papa, would you not let Aymer go to E— and ask Mr. Monroe to come to see you?"
"No, no!" he answered. "Not that—not yet. I could not bear it."
The very thought of seeing a stranger agitated him so much that Clarice felt that she could not press it.