"Why do you think"—and she hesitated. "How do you know," she began again, "that any such Being as Jesus exists and comes to any one's help?"
"Granting that the story I have told you is true, how did his disciples know that he came to their help? Did not the hushed winds prove it? Did not the quieted waters prove it? Did not his presence with them assure them of it? By equal proof I know that he can and will come to the aid of those who look to him for aid. I have passed through darker nights and wilder storms than ever lowered over the Sea of Galilee, and I know by simple, practical, happy experience that Jesus Christ, through his all-pervading Spirit, has come to me in my utter extremity again and again, and that I have the same as felt his rescuing hand. Not that my trials and temptations have been greater than those of many others, but I have been weaker than others, and I have often been conscious of his sustaining power when otherwise I would have sunk beneath my burden. This is not a theory, Miss Amy, nor the infatuation of a few ignorant people. It is the downright experience of multitudes in every walk of life, and, on merely scientific grounds, is worth as much as any other experience. This story of Jesus gains the sympathy of little Bertha; it also commands the reverent belief of the most gifted and cultivated minds in the world."
"Oh, that I could believe all this; but there is so much mystery, so much that is dark." Then she glanced at her mother, who had turned away her face and seemed to be sleeping, and she asked: "If Christ is so strong to help and save, why is he not strong to prevent evil? Why is there a cry of agony going up from this stricken city? Why must father die who was everything to us? Why must mother suffer so? Why am I so shadowed by an awful fear? Life means so much to me. I love it," she continued in low yet passionate tones. "I love the song of birds, the breath of flowers, the sunlight, and every beautiful thing. I love sensation. I am not one who finds a tame and tranquil pleasure in the things I like or in the friends I love. My joys thrill every nerve and fibre of my being. I cling to them, I cannot give them up. A few days ago life was as full of rich promise to me as our tropical spring. It is still, though I will never cease to feel the pain of this great sorrow, and yet this horrible pit of death, corruption, and nothingness yawns at my very feet. Mr. Haldane," she said in a still lower and more shuddering tone, "I have a terrible presentiment that I shall perish with this loathsome disease. I may seem to you, who are so quiet and brave, very weak and cowardly; but I shrink from death with a dread which you cannot understand and which no language can express. It is repugnant to every instinct of my being, and I can think of it only with unutterable loathing. If I were old and feeble, if I had tasted all the joys of life, I might submit, but not now, not now. I feel with father that it is fiendish cruelty to give one such an intense love of life and then wrench it away; and, passionately as I love life, there is one far more dear. There is that in your nature which has so won my confidence that I can reveal to you my whole heart. Mr. Haldane, I love one who is like you, manly and noble, and dearly as I prize life, I think I could give it away in slow torture for his sake, if required. How often my heart has thrilled to see his eyes kindle with his foolish admiration, the infatuation of love which makes its object beautiful at least to the lover. And now to think that he does not know what I suffer and fear, to think that I may never see him again, to think that when he returns I may be a hideous mass of corruption that he cannot even approach. Out upon the phrases 'beneficent nature,' and 'natural law.' Laws which permit such things are must unnatural, and to endow one with such a love of life, such boundless capabilities of enjoying life, and then at the supreme moment when the loss will be most bitterly felt to snatch it away, looks to me more like the work of devilish ingenuity than of a 'beneficent nature.' I feel with father, it is fiendish cruelty."
Haldane bowed his head among Bertha's curls to hide the tears that would come at this desperate cry of distress; but Amy's eyes were hard and dry, and had the agonized look which might have been their expression had she been enduring physical torture.
"Miss Amy," he said brokenly after a moment, "you forget that your father said, 'If this life is all, it is fiendishly cruel to tear us from that which we have learned to love so dearly,' and I agree with him. But this life is not all; the belief that human life ends at death is revolting to reason, conscience, and every sense of justice. If this were true the basest villain could escape all the consequences of his evil in a moment, and you who are so innocent, so exquisite in your spiritual organization, so brave and noble that you can face this awful fear in your devotion to those you love—you by ceasing to breathe merely would sink to precisely the same level and be no different from the lifeless clay of the villain. Such monstrous injustice is impossible; it outrages every instinct of justice, every particle of reason that I have.
"Miss Amy, don't you see that you are like the disciples in the boat out in the midst of the sea? The night is dark above you, the storm is wild around you, the waves are dashing over you, the little boat is frail, and there are such cold, dark depths beneath it. But we can't help these things. We can't explain the awful mystery of evil and suffering; sooner or later every human life becomes enveloped in darkness, storm, and danger. That wave-tossed boat in the midst of the sea is an emblem of the commonest human experience. On the wide sea of life, numberless little barks are at this moment at the point of foundering. Few are so richly freighted as yours, but the same unknown depths are beneath each. But, Miss Amy, I pray you remember the whole of this suggestive Bible story. Those imperilled disciples were watched by a loving, powerful friend. He came to their aid, making the very waves that threatened to engulf the pathway of his rescuing love. He saved those old-time friends. They are living to-day, they will live forever. I can't explain the dark and terrible things of which this world is full, I cannot explain the awful mystery of evil in any of its forms. I know the pestilence is all around us; I know it seems to threaten your precious, beautiful life. I recognize the fact, as I also remember the fact of the darkness and storm around the little boat. But I also know with absolute certainty that there is one who can come to your rescue, whose province it is to give life, deathless life, life more rich and full of thrilling happiness than you have ever dreamed of, even with your vivid imagination."
"How, how can you know this? What proof can you give me?" she asked; and no poor creature, whose life was indeed at stake, ever bent forward more eagerly to catch the sentence of life or death, than did Amy Poland the coming answer.
"I know it," he replied more calmly, "on the strongest possible grounds of evidence—my own experience, the experience of Mrs. Arnot, who is sincerity itself, and the experience of multitudes of others. Believers in Jesus Christ have been verifying his promises in every age, and in every possible emergency and condition of life, and if their testimony is refused, human consciousness is no longer a basis of knowledge. No one ever had a better friend than Mrs. Arnot has been to me; she has been the means of saving me from disgrace, shame, and everything that was base, and I love her with a gratitude that is beyond words, and yet I am not so conscious of her practical help and friendship as that of the Divine Man who has been my patient unwavering friend in my long, hard struggle."
Under his words, the hard, dry despair of Amy had given way to gentler feelings, which found expression in low, piteous sobbing.
"Oh, when will he come to me?" she asked, "for I cannot doubt after such words."