"It was a wonderful discourse, sir," she said; "seems as if nobody could stand against such doctrine as you gave us. I could have wished, though, you'd have told us your thoughts about infants being lost. There is a difference of opinion between Mr. Grier and two of our elders."
"What does Brother Grier hold?" asked the preacher.
"Well," Mrs. Grier answered, shaking her head, "he does say they are all saved. But the elders, they say that the confession of faith teaches that elect infants are saved, and of course it follows that those not elect are lost. My father, Mr. Ward, was a real old-fashioned Christian, and I must say that was what I was taught to believe, and I hold by it. There now, Ellen, you take your little sister and go out into the garden, like a good girl."
She lifted the baby down from her chair, and put her hand into that of her elder sister.
"Mrs. Grier," Helen said, speaking quickly, "you say you believe it, but if you had ever lost a child, I am sure you could not."
"I have, ma'am,"—Mrs. Grier's thin lip quivered, and her eyes reddened a little,—"but that can't make any difference in truth; besides, we have the blessed hope that she was an elect infant."
It would have been cruel to press the reason for this hope, and Helen listened instead with a breath of relief to what John was saying,—he, at least, did not hold this horrible doctrine.
"No, I agree with your husband," he said. "True, all children are born in sin, and are despised and abhorred as sinners by God. Jonathan Edwards, you know, calls them 'vipers,' which of course was a crude and cruel way of stating the truth, that they are sinners. Yet, through the infinite mercy, they are saved because Christ died, not of themselves; in other words, all infants who die, are elect."
Mrs. Grier shook her head. "I'm for holding to the catechism," she said; and then, with a sharp, thin laugh, she added, "But you're sound on the heathen, I must say."
Helen shivered, and it did not escape her hostess, who turned and looked at her with interested curiosity. She, too, had heard the Lockhaven rumors.