“After that, too, I went to the college and there I fell in with a lady, one of the mistresses, who was the cleverest woman that I ever knew, and in her way a good woman, but one who believed that religion was the curse of the world, and who spent all her spare time in attacking it in some form or other.  Poor thing, she is dead now.  And so, you see, what between these causes and the continual spectacle of human misery which to my mind negatives the idea of a merciful and watching Power, at last it came to pass that the only altar left in my temple is an altar to the ‘Unknown God.’”

Geoffrey, like most men who have had to think on these matters, did not care to talk about them much, especially to women.  For one thing, he was conscious of a tendency to speech less reverent than his thought.  But he had not entered Beatrice’s church of Darkness, indeed he had turned his back on it for ever, though, like most people, he had at different periods of his past life tarried an hour in its porch.  So he ventured on an objection.

“I am no theologian,” he said, “and I am not fond of discussion on such matters.  But there are just one or two things I should like to say.  It is no argument, to my mind at least, to point to the existence of evil and unhappiness among men as a proof of the absence of a superior Mercy; for what are men that such things should not be with them?  Man, too, must own some master.  If he has doubts let him look up at the marshalling of the starry heaven, and they will vanish.”

“No,” said Beatrice, “I fear not.  Kant said so, but before that Moliere had put the argument in the mouth of a fool.  The starry heavens no more prove anything than does the running of the raindrops down the window-pane.  It is not a question of size and quantity.”

“I might accept the illustration,” answered Geoffrey; “one example of law is as good as another for my purpose.  I see in it all the working of a living Will, but of course that is only my way of looking at it, not yours.”

“No; I am afraid,” said Beatrice, “all this reasoning drawn from material things does not touch me.  That is how the Pagans made their religions, and it is how Paley strives to prove his.  They argued from the Out to the In, from the material to the spiritual.  It cannot be; if Christianity is true it must stand upon spiritual feet and speak with a spiritual voice, to be heard, not in the thunderstorm, but only in the hearts of men.  The existence of Creative Force does not demonstrate the existence of a Redeemer; if anything, it tends to negative it, for the power that creates is also the power which destroys.  What does touch me, however, is the thought of the multitude of the Dead. That is what we care for, not for an Eternal Force, ever creating and destroying.  Think of them all—­all the souls of unheard-of races, almost animal, who passed away so long ago.  Can ours endure more than theirs, and do you think that the spirit of an Ethiopian who died in the time of Moses is anywhere now?”