As to his rougher formulae, he knew better than to apply them to a creature of her fine texture.  If he had been disposed to do so, her simple questions and answers to his inquiries would have made it difficult.  But it was in her bright and beautiful eyes, in her handsome features, and her winning voice, that he found his chief obstacle.  How could he look upon her face in its loveliness, and talk to her as if she must be under the wrath and curse of God for the mere fact of her existence?  It seemed more natural and it certainly was more entertaining, to question her in such a way as to find out what kind of theology had grown up in her mind as the result of her training in the complex scheme of his doctrinal school.  And as he knew that the merest child, so soon as it begins to think at all, works out for itself something like a theory of human nature, he pretty soon began sounding Myrtle’s thoughts on this matter.

What was her own idea; he would be pleased to know, about her natural condition as one born of a sinful race, and her inherited liabilities on that account?

Myrtle smiled like a little heathen, as she was, according to the standard of her earlier teachings.  That kind of talk used to worry her when she was a child, sometimes.  Yes, she remembered its coming back to her in a dream she had, when—­when—­(She did not finish her sentence.) Did he think she hated every kind of goodness and loved every kind of evil?  Did he think she was hateful to the Being who made her?

The minister looked straight into the bright, brave, tender eyes, and answered, “Nothing in heaven or on earth could help loving you, Myrtle!”

Pretty well for a beginning!

Myrtle saw nothing but pious fervor in this florid sentiment.  But as she was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without bringing his flattering assertion to the test of another question.

Did he suppose, she asked, that any persons could be Christians, who could not tell the day or the year of their change from children of darkness to children of light.

The shrewd clergyman, whose creed could be lax enough on occasion, had provided himself with authorities of all kinds to meet these awkward questions in casuistical divinity.  He had hunted up recipes for spiritual neuralgia, spasms, indigestion, psora, hypochondriasis, just as doctors do for their bodily counterparts.

To be sure they could.  Why, what did the great Richard Baxter say in his book on Infant Baptism?  That at a meeting of many eminent Christians, some of them very famous ministers, when it was desired that every one should give an account of the time and manner of his conversion, there was but one of them all could do it.  And as for himself, Mr. Baxter said, he could not remember the day or the year when he began to be sincere, as he called it.  Why, did n’t President Wheelock say to a young man who consulted him, that some persons might be true Christians without suspecting it?