“It’s solemn hard words,” said the mother, with a sigh.
“No harder than it should be. Just and right!”
“I was only thinking—the New Testament—perhaps there might be something there to make it easier.”
“Make it easier! God’s Law to be made easier! Are you utterly lost in sin, woman? Or do you think I would tamper with the Holy Scriptures? Read for yourself—there!”
He snatched the old Bible from its shelf and flung it down on the sewing-machine. Fru Egholm looked at the thick, heavy tome with something like fear in her eyes.
“I only meant ... if it was really God’s will that we should starve to find that money for Karlsen.”
“Starve—and what’s a trifle of starvation when the reward’s so much the greater? What does it say there, only a little farther on: ‘Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it’?
“Isn’t that a glorious promise? Perhaps the finest in the whole Bible. Are you so destitute of imagination that you cannot see the Lord opening the windows of heaven, and the money pouring out like a waterfall, like a rainbow, over us poor worms that have not room enough to receive it?”
“Money?—but it doesn’t say anything about money.”