When we had walked a little further, Amroth said to me, “Come, I will give you three guesses.  Who do you think, by the light of your psychology, are all these simple people?” I guessed in vain.  “Well, I see I must tell you,” he said.  “Would it surprise you to learn that most of these people whom you see here passed upon earth for wicked and unsatisfactory characters?  Yet it is true.  Don’t you know the kind of boys there were at school, who drifted into bad company and idle ways, mostly out of mere good-nature, went out into the world with a black mark against them, having been bullied in vain by virtuous masters, the despair of their parents, always losing their employments, and often coming what we used to call social croppers—­untrustworthy, sensual, feckless, no one’s enemy but their own, and yet preserving through it all a kind of simple good-nature, always ready to share things with others, never knowing how to take advantage of any one, trusting the most untrustworthy people; or if they were girls, getting into trouble, losing their good name, perhaps living lives of shame in big cities—­yet, for all that, guileless, affectionate, never excusing themselves, believing they had deserved anything that befell them?  These were the sort of people to whom Christ was so closely drawn.  They have no respectability, no conventions; they act upon instinct, never by reason, often foolishly, but seldom unkindly or selfishly.  They give all they have, they never take.  They have the faults of children, and the trustful affection of children.  They will do anything for any one who is kind to them and fond of them.  Of course they are what is called hopeless, and they use their poor bodies very ill.  In their last stages on earth they are often very deplorable objects, slinking into public-houses, plodding raggedly and dismally along highroads, suffering cruelly and complaining little, conscious that they are universally reprobated, and not exactly knowing why.  They are the victims of society; they do its dirty work, and are cast away as offscourings.  They are really youthful and often beautiful spirits, very void of offence, and needing to be treated as children.  They live here in great happiness, and are conscious vaguely of the good and great intention of God towards them.  They suffer in the world at the hands of cruel, selfish, and stupid people, because they are both humble and disinterested.  But in all our realms I do not think there is a place of simpler and sweeter happiness than this, because they do not take their forgiveness as a right, but as a gracious and unexpected boon.  And indeed the sights and sounds of this place are the best medicine for crabbed, worldly, conventional souls, who are often brought here when they are drawing near the truth.”

“Yes,” I said, “this is just what I wanted.  Interesting as my work has lately been, it has wanted simplicity.  I have grown to consider life too much as a series of cases, and to forget that it is life itself that one must seek, and not pathology.  This is the best sight I have seen, for it is so far removed from all sense of judgment.  The song of the saints may be sometimes of mercy too.”