‘I’m afraid not, dear,’ answered Miss Combe. ‘I saw my mother’s face again last night, and it never stayed so long. I take it as a warning that I shall soon be called away.’
Strange enough it seemed to both those who listened, to hear a person of Miss Combe’s advanced views talking in the vocabulary of commonplace superstition.
‘Don’t think I am repining,’ she continued. ‘If I were not ripe, do you think I should be gathered? I am going where we all must go—who knows whither? and, after all, I’ve had a “good time,” as the Yankees say. Do you believe, Mr. Bradley,’ she added, turning her keen, grave eyes on the clergyman, ‘that an atheist can be a spiritualist, and hold relations with an unseen world?’
‘You are no atheist, Miss Combe,’ he answered. ‘God forbid!’
‘I don’t know,’ was the reply. ‘I am not one in the same degree as my brother Tom of course; but I am afraid I have no living faith beyond the region of ghosts and fairies. The idea of Deity is incomprehensible to me, save as that of the “magnified non-natural Man” my teachers have long ago discarded. I think I might still understand the anthropomorphic God of my childhood, but having lost Him I can comprehend no other.’
‘The other is not far to seek,’ responded Bradley, bending towards her, and speaking eagerly. ‘You will find him in Jesus Christ—the living, breathing godhead, whose touch and inspiration we all can feel.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ said Miss Combe. ‘I can understand Jesus the man, but Christ the God, who walked in the flesh and was crucified, is beyond the horizon of my conception—even of my sympathy.’
‘Don’t say that,’ cried Alma. ‘I am sure you believe in our loving Saviour.’
Miss Combe did not reply, but turned her face wearily to the spring sunlight.
‘If there is no other life,’ she said, after a long pause, ‘the idea of Jesus Christ is a mockery. Don’t you think so, Mr. Bradley?’