"Their plea is that since Adam, the actual delinquent, has been 'set free, and saved from his trespass,' they are on better grounds entitled to consideration. To the finite intelligence there would seem to be some force in the infantile argument. What says Omnipotence?
'I may deny you once to try, or grace to you to tender,
Though he finds Grace before my face who was the chief offender.
You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect,
Such you shall have, for I do save none but mine own elect;
Yet to compare your sin with their who sinned a longer time,
I do confess yours is much less, though every sin's a crime;
A crime it is, therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell,
But unto you I shall allow THE EASIEST ROOM IN HELL.'"
The doctor closed the book. "I submit that I have proved my contention," he said. "Do you doubt now that Mrs. Leonard was affected by her browsings among Leonard's books? The men who wrote the matter of which this volume is made up were largely the founders of Hampton, men whose names she has heard venerated as almost inspired of God."
"Even so, how could she believe such absurdities?"
"I do not assert that she believed. Belief in the impossible is impossible. But have you never been deeply impressed by fiction; never been scared by a ghost story? Have you shed tears over the sorrows of Colonel Newcome? The few quotations you have heard cause you to shrink, though you are well aware they are but foolish words. But if you could see the scenes herein depicted, I do not think you could bear the prospect. I am sure I should howl as lustily as any hellish monster here referred to. Well, Mrs. Leonard being so constituted, has actually seen these horrors, and, in the central figure, has contemplated the writhings of her child."
"Oh, Doctor!" she spoke in a subdued tone, her eyes expressing more than her words.
"Even you, here in this well-lighted and cheerful room, with me, a very material and matter-of-fact person, beside you, even you can feel a faint reflection of the terrors in which this woman spent the day. Alone, without food, a deserted room, a gloomy house, but lately cheerful with the prattle of a childish voice, forever silent, but of which the echoes still linger in the mother's ears—here's enough and more than enough to disturb an exalted temperament, a morbid imagination. Add this"—the doctor shook the book in his hand—"and what need of belief, if by belief you mean the result of a reasoning process? The ideas suggested here took possession of her! Belief! Pshaw! nobody believes in this stuff; but Hampton says it believes."
"But that's monstrous!"
"Nothing more common than loud assertions of belief where is no belief. That's politics, partisanship."
"But this is religion——"