Samuel was listening in consternation. “Then it isn't true what Herbert Spencer says!” he exclaimed.
“True!” cried the other. “Why, Samuel, don't you KNOW that it isn't true? Weren't you brought up to read the Bible? And do you read anything in the Bible about the struggle for existence? Were you taught there that your sole duty was to fight with other men for your own selfish ends? Was it not rather made clear to you that you were not to concern yourself with your own welfare at all, but to struggle for the good of others, and to suffer rather than do evil? Why Samuel, what would your father have said, if he could have seen you last night—his own dear son, that he had brought up in the way of the Gospel?”
“Oh, sir!” cried Samuel, struck to the heart.
“My boy!” exclaimed the other. “Our business in this world is not that we should survive, but that the good should survive. We are to live for it and to die for it, if need be. We are to love and serve others—we are to be humble and patient—to sacrifice ourselves freely. The survival of the fittest! Why, Samuel, the very idea is a denial of spirituality—what are we that we should call ourselves fit? To think that is to be exposed to all the base passions of the human heart—to greed and jealousy and hate! Such doctrines are the cause of all the wickedness, of all the materialism of our time—of crime and murder and war! My boy, do you read that Jesus went about, worrying about His own survival, and robbing others because they were less fit than He? Only think how it would have been with you had you been called to face Him last night?”
The shame of this was more than Samuel could bear. “Oh, stop, stop, sir!” he cried, and covered his face with his hands. “I see it all! I have been very wicked!”
“Yes!” exclaimed the other. “You have been wicked.”
The tears were welling into Samuel's eyes. “I can't see how I did it, sir,” he whispered. “I have been blind—I have been lost. I am a strayed sheep!” And then suddenly his emotion overcame him, and he burst into a paroxysm of weeping. “I can't believe it of myself!” he exclaimed again and again. “I have been out of my senses!”
The doctor watched him for a few moments. “Perhaps it was not altogether your fault,” he said more gently. “You have been led astray—”
“No, no!” cried the boy. “I am bad. I see it—it must be! I could never have been persuaded, if I had not been bad! It began at the very beginning. I yielded to the first temptation when I stole a ride upon the train. And everything else came from that—it has been one long chain!”
“Let us be glad that it is no longer,” said Dr. Vince—“and that you have come to the end of it.”