Erica shook her head.
“More likely to be a little bit of one of my covenanting ancestors coming out in me. Still, I own that the hope of the hereafter is the one point in which you have the better of it. Life must seem very easy if you believe that all will be made up to you and all wrong set right after you are dead. You see we have rather hard measure here, and don't expect anything at all by and by. But all the same, I am always rather ashamed of this instinct, or selfishness, or Scottish inheritance, whichever it is!”
“Ashamed! Why should you be?”
“It is a sort of weakness, I think, which strong characters like my father are without. You see he cares so much for every one, and thinks so much of making the world a little less miserable in this generation, but most of my love is for him and for my mother; and so when I think of death—of their death—” she broke off abruptly.
“Yet do not call it selfishness,” said Brian, with a slightly choked feeling, for there had been a depth of pain in Erica's tone. “My father, who has just that love of humanity of which you speak, has still the most absolute belief in—yes, and longing for—immortality. It is no selfishness in him.”
“I am sure it is not,” said Erica, warmly, “I shouldn't think he could be selfish in any way. I am glad he spoke tonight; it does one good to hear a speech like that, even if one doesn't agree with it. I wish there were a few more clergymen like him, then perhaps the tolerance and brotherliness he spoke of might become possible. But it must be a long way off, or it would not seem such an unheard-of thing that I should be talking like this to you. Why, it is the first time in my whole life that I have spoken to a Christian except on the most every-day subjects.”
“Then I hope you won't let it be the last,” said Brian.
“I should like to know Mr. Osmond better,” said Erica, “for you know it seems very extraordinary to me that a clever scientific man can speak as he spoke tonight. I should like to know how you reconcile all the contradictions, how you can believe what seems to me so unlikely, how even if you do believe in a God you can think Him good while the world is what it is. If there is a good God why doesn't He make us all know Him, and end all the evil and cruelty?”
Brian did not reply for a moment. The familiar gas-lit street, the usual number of passengers, the usual care-worn or vice-worn faces passing by, damp pavements, muddy roads, fresh winter wind, all seemed so natural, but to talk of the deepest things in heaven and earth was so unnatural. He was a very reserved man, but looking down at the eager, questioning face beside him his reserve all at once melted. He spoke very quietly, but in a voice which showed Erica that he was, at least, as she expressed it “honestly deluded.” Evidently he did from his very heart believe what he said.
“But how are we to judge what is best?” he replied. “My belief is that God is slowly and gradually educating the world, not forcing it on unnaturally, but drawing it on step by step, making it work out its own lessons as the best teachers do with their pupils. To me the idea of a steady progression, in which man himself may be a co-worker with God, is far more beautiful than the conception of a Being who does not work by natural laws at all, but arbitrarily causes this and that to be or not to be.”