“I do not know God,” she said, her voice sinking. “He is afar off, and will come no nearer.”
“Or you are afar off, and will go no nearer? Which is it?”
“I think it is the first,” she answered; “Guy of Ashridge will have it to be the second. I cannot get at God—that is all I know. And it is not for want of praying. I have begged the intercession of my patron, the holy Apostle Saint Philip, hundreds of times.”
“Do you know why you cannot get at God?”
“No. If you can guess, tell me why it is.”
“Because you have gone the wrong way. You have not found the door. You are trying to break through over the wall. And ‘he that entereth not by the door into the sheep-fold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.’”
“Explain to me what you mean, Mother, an’ it like you.”
“You know how Adam sinned in Paradise?” asked the Grey Lady.
“When he and Eva disobeyed God, and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree? Yes, I have heard that.”
“He built up a terrible wall between him and God. Every man, as born into this world, is on the hither side of that wall. He knoweth not God, he loveth not God, he careth not for God.”