‘The best school and the best teacher is close by,’ said the priest, and he named himself.
‘Oh, not to that man,’ answered the child, ‘for I am told he denies God and Heaven and Hell, and even that man has a soul, because we can’t see it; but I would soon put him down.’
The priest looked at him earnestly. ‘How?’ he inquired.
‘Why,’ said the child, ‘I would ask him if he believed he had life to show me his life.’
‘But he could not do that, my child,’ said the priest. ‘Life cannot be seen; we have it, but it is invisible.’
‘Then, if we have life, though we cannot see it, we may also have a soul, though it is invisible,’ answered the child.
When the priest heard him speak these words he fell down on his knees before him, weeping for joy, for now he knew his soul was safe; he had met at last one that believed. And he told the child his whole story: all his wickedness, and pride, and blasphemy against the great God; and how the angel had come to him and told him of the only way in which he could be saved, through the faith and prayers of some one that believed.
‘Now, then,’ he said to the child, ‘take this penknife and strike it into my breast, and go on stabbing the flesh until you see the paleness of death on my face. Then watch—for a living thing will soar up from my body as I die, and you will then know that my soul has ascended to the presence of God. And when you see this thing, make haste and run to my school and call on all my scholars to come and see that the soul of their master has left the body, and that all he taught them was a lie, for that there is a God who punishes sin, and a Heaven and a Hell, and that man has an immortal soul, destined for eternal happiness or misery.’
‘I will pray,’ said the child, ‘to have courage to do this work.’
And he kneeled down and prayed. Then when he rose up he took the penknife and struck it into the priest’s heart, and struck and struck again till all the flesh was lacerated; but still the priest lived, though the agony was horrible, for he could not die until the twenty-four hours had expired. At last the agony seemed to cease, and the stillness of death settled on his face. Then the child, who was watching, saw a beautiful living creature, with four snow-white wings, mount from the dead man’s body into the air and go fluttering round his head.