"But, Giff," Lois said, not caring to discuss John Ward's character, "did you suppose anybody could be so narrow? Think how bigoted he is! And nobody believes in hell now as he does."
"I don't know about that, Lois," Gifford responded slowly. "Lots of people do, only they don't live up to their belief. If the people who say they believe in hell were in dead earnest, the world would have been converted long ago."
"He is a wicked man!" Lois cried inconsequently.
But Gifford shook his head. "No, he is not. And more than that, Lois, you ought to consider that this belief of Ward's, if it is crude, is the husk which has kept safe the germ of truth,—the consequences of sin are eternal. There is no escape from character."
"Oh, yes," she answered, "but that is not theology, you know: we don't put God into that."
"Heaven help us if we do not!" the young man said reverently. "It is all God, Lois; perhaps not God as John Ward thinks of Him, a sort of magnified man, for whom he has to arrange a scheme of salvation, a kind of an apology for the Deity, but the power and the desire for good in ourselves. That seems to me to be God. Sometimes I feel as though all our lives were a thought of the Eternal, which would have as clear an expression as we would let it."
Lois had not followed his words, and said impatiently as he finished, "Well, anyhow, he is cruel, and Helen should not have felt as she did when I said so."
Gifford hesitated. "She could not help it. How could she let you say it?"
"What!" cried Lois, "you think he's not cruel?"
"His will is not cruel," Gifford answered, "but I meant—I meant—she couldn't let you speak as you did of John Ward, to his wife."