"Assuredly not! But does Sister Eudoxia really imagine that?"
"Oh no!" responded Lady Judith. "She has not reached that point. Comparatively few get so far on the road as that. But that is whither the road is leading them."
"Then what is the root of the heresy?"
"That which I believe lies at the root of every heresy—rejecting God's Word, that we may keep our own traditions. The stem may perhaps consist of two things; the want of sufficient lowliness, and the want of a right knowledge of sin. It is not enough realised that a man's conscience, like all else in him, has been injured by the fall, but conscience is looked on as a heavenly judge, still in its original purity. This, as thou mayest guess, leads to depreciation of the Word of God, and exaltation of the conscience over the Word. And also, it is not properly seen that while a man lives, the flesh shall live with him, and the flesh and the renewed spirit must be in perpetual warfare to the end."
"But we know——" said Lady Sybil,—and there she paused.
"'We know'!" repeated Lady Judith, with a smile. "Ah, my child, we think we know a great deal. And we are like children playing on the seashore, who fancy that they know all that is in the sea, because they have scooped up a little sea-water in their hands. There are heights and depths in God's Word and in God's purposes, which you and I have never reached yet,—which perhaps we shall never reach. 'For as the heaven is high above the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts.'"
I was curious to know what Marguerite would say: she always agrees so strangely with Lady Judith, even when they have not talked the matter over at all. So I said, when I went up to change my dress—
"Margot, dost thou commit sin?"
"My Damoiselle thinks me so perfect, then?" said she, with a rather comical look.
I could not help laughing.