“You committed no blunder. They simply did not want religion.”
“Why did they not want it?”
“Because it doesn’t promise them good food, and fine clothes, and plenty of leisure.”
“But it gives them the promise of an eternity of happiness.”
“Eternity is too far away for them. They want their good things in this life. They want to live their lives as they will, to go and come as they choose, to be free from rules that bind them, from laws that oppress them, from customs that restrain them. I, myself, have taught them that that is their right as human beings.”
“And have you taught them wisely?”
“I don’t know. Oh, I don’t know! Who can say what is wise, or right, or good? Surely not I; not I!”
She began to wring her hands in apparent self-reproach. She seemed so distraught that he pitied her. Her face was expressive of an agony that he could but dimly understand.
“God forgive us,” he said, “if we have both been wrong. But you came to see me on some special errand. Pardon me for interjecting my own troubles. They seem to me to be mountains nigh to-night. Perhaps yours are even greater. How can I help you?”