She read the youthful Bernal’s effort to rehabilitate the much-blemished reputation of Judas—­a paper that had been curiously preserved by the old man.

“Poor Judas, indeed!” The novelty was not lost upon Aunt Bell, expert that she was in all obliquities from accepted tradition.

“The funny boy!  Very ingenious, I’m sure.  I dare say no one ever before said a good word for Judas since the day of his death, and this lad would canonise him out of hand.  Think of it—­St. Judas!”

Nancy lay back among the cushions, talking idly, inconsequently.

“You see, there was at least one man created, Aunt Bell, who could by no chance be saved—­one man who had to betray the Son of Man—­one man to be forever left out of the Christian scheme of salvation, even if every other in the world were saved.  There had to be one man to disbelieve, to betray and to lie in hell for it, or the whole plan would have been frustrated.  There was a theme for Dante, Aunt Bell—­not the one soul in hell, but the other souls in heaven slowly awakening to the suffering of that one soul—­to the knowledge that he was suffering in order that they might be saved.  Do you think they would find heaven to be real heaven if they knew he was burning?  And don’t you think a poet could make some interesting talk between this solitary soul predestined to hell, and the God who planned the scheme?”

Aunt Bell looked bored and uttered a swift, low phrase that might have been “Fiddlesticks!”

“My dear, no one believes in hell nowadays.”

“Does any one believe in anything?”

“Belief in the essentials of Christianity was never more apparent.”

It was a treasured phrase from the morning’s sermon.

“What are the essentials?”

“Belief that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
Son—­you know as well as I, child—­belief in the atoning blood of the
Christ.”

“Wouldn’t it be awful, Aunt Bell, if you didn’t believe in it, and had to be in hell because the serpent persuaded Eve and Eve persuaded Adam to eat the apple—­that’s the essential foundation of Christianity, isn’t it?”

“Why, certainly—­you must believe in original sin—­”

“I see—­here’s a note in Bernal’s hand, on one of these old papers—­evidently written much later than the other:  ’The old gentleman says Christmas is losing its deeper significance.  What is it?  That the Babe of Bethlehem was begotten by his Father to be a sacrifice to its Father—­that its blood might atone for the sin of his first pair—­and so save from eternal torment the offspring of that pair.  God will no longer be appeased by the blood of lambs; nothing but the blood of his son will now atone for the sin of his own creatures.  It seems to me the sooner Christmas loses this deeper significance the better.  Poor old loving human nature gives it a much more beautiful significance.’”

“My dear,” began Aunt Bell, “before I broadened into what I have called the higher unbelief, I should have considered that that young man had a positive genius for blasphemy; now that I have again come into the shadow of the cross, it seems to me that he merely lacks imagination.”