The man who is proud of our Christian civilisation has ideals susceptible of immense elevation.  Christianity has more souls in its hell and fewer in its heaven than any other religion whatsoever.  Naturally, Christian society is one of extremes and of gross injustice—­of oppression and indifference to suffering.  And so it will be until this materialism of separation is repudiated:  until we turn seriously to the belief that men are truly brothers, not one of whom can be long happy while any other suffers.

Come, Grandad, let us give up this God of Moses.  Doubtless he was good enough for the early Jews, but man has always had to make God in his own image, and you and I need a better one, for we both surpass this one in all spiritual values—­in love, in truth, in justice, in common decency—­as much as Jesus surpassed the unrepentant thief at his side.  Remember that an honest, fearless search for truth has led to all the progress we can measure over the brutes.  Why must it lose the soul?

BERNAL.

(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.)

My boy, I shall not believe you are sane until I have seen you face to face.  I cannot believe you have fallen a victim to Universalism, which is like the vale of Siddim, full of slime-pits.  I am an old man, and my mind goes haltingly, yet that is what I seem to glean from your rambling screed.  Come when you are through, for I must see you once more.

“For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.  He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God.”

Lastly—­doubt in infinite things is often wise, but doubt of God must be blasphemy, else he would not be God, the all-perfect.

I pray it may be your mind is still sick—­and recall to you these words of one I will not now name to you:  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

ALLAN DELCHER.

CHAPTER V

“IS THE HAND OF THE LORD WAXED SHORT?”

A dismayed old man, eagerly trying to feel incredulous, awaited the home-coming of his grandsons at the beginning of that vacation.

Was the hand of the Lord waxed short, that so utter a blasphemer—­unless, indeed, he were possessed of a devil—­could walk in the eye of Jehovah, and no breach be made upon him?  Even was the world itself so lax in these days that one speaking thus could go free?  If so, then how could God longer refrain from drowning the world again?  The human baseness of the blaspheming one and the divine toleration that permitted it were alike incredible.

A score of times the old man nerved himself to laugh away his fears.  It could not be.  The young mind was still disordered.