“Your God must be hard to propitiate,” said the young Jewess. “In old times, after the sacrifice was offered, a man was cleansed from sin. He had not to cleanse himself by his own pain.”
“But you are heathens,” said Avice, feeling it a condescension to argue with a Jew. “Our religion is better than yours.”
“How?” was Hester’s rejoinder.
“Because we have been redeemed by our Lord, who died to save us from Hell.”
“It does not sound like it. Then why had the little child to go there?”
“She did not go there! She went to Purgatory.”
“She went to pain, if I understood you rightly. Why did your Messiah not finish His work, and keep her from going to pain altogether?”
“I cannot answer such wicked questions,” said Avice. “The Church teaches that God’s love purifies His servants in Purgatory, and as soon as their souls are clean they go to Heaven.”
“Our God does better for us than that,” was Hester’s quiet answer. “I do not know what ‘the Church’ is. But I suppose God’s love is not for Gentiles.”
And she relapsed into silence. Avice sat and span—and thought. Both of them were terribly ignorant; but Avice did honestly desire to know God’s will, and such truth as was in Hester’s words troubled her. And as she thought, other words came to her, heard years ago from the pulpit of Lincoln Cathedral, and from the long silent lips of that holy Bishop Grosteste whom she so deeply revered.