“Oh, I don’t consider myself a saint or an angel. I have done foolish things, of course, and I dare say, some things that were not exactly right. We are all sinners, I suppose, and I am much like other people. But taking one thing with another, I think I am a very decent fellow. I can’t worry over my ‘depravity,’ as you do. I am not depraved. I know several men much worse than I am in every way.”
“Is that the ell-wand by which God will measure you? He will not hold you up against those men, but against the burning snow-white light of His own holiness. What will you look like then?”
“Is that the way you are going to be measured, too?”
“I thank God, no. Christ our Lord will be measured for me, and He has fulfilled the whole Law.”
“And why not for me?” said Haimet fiercely. “Am I not a baptised Christian, just as much as you?”
“Friend, you will not be asked in that day whether you were a baptised Christian, but whether you were a believing Christian. Sins that are laid on Christ are gone—they exist no longer. But sins that are not so destroyed have to be borne by the sinner himself.”
“Well, I call that cowardice,” said Haimet, drawing a red herring across the track, “to want to burden somebody else with your sins. Why not have the manliness to bear them yourself?”
“If you are so manly,” answered Gerhardt with another of his quiet smiles, “will you oblige me, Haimet, by taking up the Castle, and setting it down on Presthey?”
“What are you talking about now? How could I?”
“Much more easily than you could atone for one sin. What do you call a man who proposes to do the impossible?”