“Is that thy religion, Maiden?” responded Gerhardt with a pitying smile.
“It’s about all I know. Why?—isn’t it good?”
“Friend, if thou wert to suffer for ten thousand years, without a moment’s intermission, thy sins could never be balanced by thy sufferings. Suffering is finite; sin is infinite. It is not only what thou hast done, or hast left undone. The sin of thy whole nature requires atonement. Thou art sin! The love of sin which is in thee is worse than any act of sin thou couldst commit. What then is to be done with thy sins?”
Leuesa looked up with an expression of wistful simplicity in her blue eyes.
She might be older than her years in some respects, thought Gerhardt, but there were some others in which she was a very child.
“I don’t know!” she said blankly, with a frightened accent. “Can’t you tell me?”
“Thank God, I can tell thee. Thou must get rid of this load of sin, by laying it on Him who came down from Heaven that He might bear it for thee. Tell me whom I mean.”
The flaxen head was shaken. “I can’t—not certainly. Perhaps it’s a saint I don’t know.”
“Dost thou not know Jesu Christ?”
“Oh, of course. He’s to judge us at the last day.”