“You see, now,” the old lady said, “what mischief all these religions make. The basis of every so-called religion is hatred of every other so-called religion. And here you are poring over De Maistre! Pshaw! Read The Age of Reason. Here it is.”
Carl was silent a moment, struggling with himself. Then he said, “I have gone round the circle, and come back to a faith in faith, and the sneers or arguments of the atheist have no more effect on me. I have found that mocking is neither noble nor manly, still less womanly; and I look back on my days of scepticism as on the freaks of a presumptuous child, who fancies itself wiser than its parents, when it is only more foolish. I have done with Tom Paine and his brotherhood.”
It is always hard to even seem to exhort our elders, and especially so when they are our intimates; and Carl spoke with such an effort that his words seemed to be a passionate outburst.
Miss Clinton looked at him a moment in silent astonishment, then laughed shrilly. “‘What is this that hath happened to the son of Kish?’” Then changing suddenly, she rang her bell. “Bird,” she said, when that person appeared, “I want you to read the paper to me. There is a beautiful case of poisoning, this evening. Young Mr. Yorke is too pious for secular reading. He has turned preacher, Bird. You and he can sing psalms together.”
“Alice, I accept one dogma of your church,” Carl said afterward to his friend. “I must believe in purgatory, for I am in it.”
“I am rejoiced to hear it,” she replied, yet looked at him sadly. She would so gladly have spared him any pain. “Purgatory is the high-road
to heaven. Of course, while you are getting your moral perspective arranged, you must feel uncomfortable; but once started in life, all will arrange itself.”
“Suppose that I should fail?” he asked.
“I dare say that you will fail, in one sense,” she replied. “Men who propose to themselves great ends always do meet with a sort of failure, as the flower fails in order to give place to the fruit. Each great success, being unique of its kind, comes in its own way. You cannot count surely, but success must come, sooner or later.”
“You speak as if I had all eternity,” he said, not without impatience.