“Of this world,” she continued, “wherein is so much of beauty, happiness, and love. And can that exist in the created which is not in the Creator! Must not, therefore, the great Spirit of the Universe be a Spirit of Love?”
“Your argument contradicts itself,” was the desponding answer. “Can you speak thus—you, whose heart yet bleeds with recent suffering?”
“Suffering which my faith has changed into joy. Never until this hour did I look so clearly from this world into the world of souls—never did I so strongly feel within me the presence of God's spirit, a pledge for the immortality of mine.”
“Immortality! Alas, that dream! And yet,” he added, looking at her reverently, even with tenderness, “I could half believe that a life like yours—so full of purity and goodness—can never be destined to perish.”
“And can you believe in human goodness, yet doubt Him who alone can be its origin? Can you think that He would give the yearning for the hereafter, and yet deny its fulfilment? That he would implant in us love, when there was nothing to love; and faith, when there was nothing to believe?”
Harold seemed struck. “You speak plain, reasonable words—not like the vain babblers of contradictory creeds. Yet you do profess a creed—you join in the Church's service?”
“Because, though differing from many of its doctrines, I think its forms of worship are pure—perhaps the purest extant. But I do not set up the Church between myself and God. I follow no ritual, and trust no creed, except so far as it is conformable to the instinct of faith—the inward revelation of Himself which he has implanted in my soul—and to that outward revelation, the nearest and clearest that He has ever given of Himself to men, the Divine revelation of love which I find here, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, my Lord.”
As she spoke, her hand rested on the Bible out of which she had last read to her mother. It opened at the very place, and from it there dropped the little book-marker which Mrs. Rothesay always used, one worked by Olive in her childish days. The sight drew her down to the helplessness of human woe.
“Oh, my mother!—my mother!” She bowed her head upon her knees, and for some minutes wept bitterly. Then she rose somewhat calmer.
“I am going upstairs”—— Her voice failed.