“Take comfort, dear; there is deep sorrow, but there can be no bitterness in the thought of a child’s death.”
“Ah, that is what you religious people say,” cried Eve, rebelliously, “but I have not faith enough to feel that. Why should she be taken? Life was all before her, full of happiness, of beautiful sights and sounds, and joys untasted. She was taken from the evil to come, you will say—but there might be no evil. There has been no evil in your life! See how peacefully it has glided by.”
“You forget, Eve, that I have had to sorrow for a beloved husband.”
“Oh, forgive me. Yes, you have felt the burden—the shadow has fallen upon you too—the shadow, and the burden of death. Why did the Creator make a beautiful world, and then spoil it?”
“Eve, this is blasphemy.”
“The heart must rebel sometimes; one must ask these questions. ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’ Is it only the fool who says that? Is it not the bitter cry of all humanity at some time or other?”
“Eve, you are writhing under your first sorrow. Let it turn your heart to God, not away from Him. Do you think the unbeliever’s creed will give you any comfort?”
“Comfort? No. There is no comfort in religion, or in unbelief. Religion only means obedience, and public worship, and kindness to the poor, and a good orderly life. It doesn’t mean the certainty of getting back our dead—somewhere, somehow, and being happy again as we have been.”
“We can rest in the hope of that, Eve, knowing that we are immortal.”
“Knowing? But we don’t know. Nobody has ever come back to tell us. Oh, if but once, only once, for one moment in a year, our dead could come back and look at us, and speak to us, death would not be death.”