"But, don't you think," said Nina, "that these things do harm sometimes?"
"Alas, child, what form of religion does not? It is our fatality that everything that does good must do harm. It's the condition of our poor, imperfect life here."
"I do not like these terrible threats," said Nina. "Can fear of fire make me love? Besides, I have a kind of courage in me that always rises up against a threat. It isn't my nature to fear."
"If we may judge our Father by his voice in nature," said Clayton, "he deems severity a necessary part of our training. How inflexibly and terribly regular are all his laws! Fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind, fulfilling his word—all these have a crushing regularity in their movements, which show that he is to be feared as well as loved."
"But I want to be religious," said Nina, "entirely apart from such considerations. Not driven by fear, but drawn by love. You can guide me about these things, for you are religious."
"I fear I should not be accepted as such in any church," said Clayton. "It is my misfortune that I cannot receive any common form of faith, though I respect and sympathize with all. Generally speaking, preaching only weakens my faith; and I have to forget the sermon in order to recover my faith. I do not believe—I know that our moral nature needs a thorough regeneration; and I believe this must come through Christ. This is all I am certain of."
"I wish I were like Milly," said Nina. "She is a Christian, I know; but she has come to it by dreadful sorrows. Sometimes I'm afraid to ask my heavenly Father to make me good, because I think it will come by dreadful trials, if he does."
"And I," said Clayton, speaking with great earnestness, "would be willing to suffer anything conceivable, if I could only overcome all evil, and come up to my highest ideas of good." And, as he spoke, he turned his face up to the moonlight with an earnest fervor of expression, that struck Nina deeply.
"I almost shudder to hear you say so! You don't know what it may bring on you!"
He looked at her with a beautiful smile, which was a peculiar expression of his face in moments of high excitement.