“But the Bible says so.”
“I don’t think it does; but if an angel from heaven said so, I would not believe it.”
“Margaret!”
“My lady, I love God with all my heart, and I cannot bear you should think so of him. You might as well say that a mother would go away from her little child, lying moaning in the dark, because it could not see her, and was afraid to put its hand out into the dark to feel for her.”
“Then you think he does care for us, even when we are very wicked. But he cannot bear wicked people.”
“Who dares to say that?” cried Margaret. “Has he not been making the world go on and on, with all the wickedness that is in it; yes, making new babies to be born of thieves and murderers and sad women and all, for hundreds of years? God help us, Lady Emily! If he cannot bear wicked people, then this world is hell itself, and the Bible is all a lie, and the Saviour did never die for sinners. It is only the holy Pharisees that can’t bear wicked people.”
“Oh! how happy I should be, if that were true! I should not be afraid now.”
“You are not wicked, dear Lady Emily; but if you were, God would bend over you, trying to get you back, like a father over his sick child. Will people never believe about the lost sheep?”
“Oh! yes; I believe that. But then—”
“You can’t trust it quite. Trust in God, then, the very father of you—and never mind the words. You have been taught to turn the very words of God against himself.”