“It is small comfort to anticipate a time of blessedness for future generations.  What benefit is steam or telegraph to the moldering mummies of the catacombs?  I want to know what good the millennium will do you and me when our dust is mingled with mother earth, in some silent necropolis?”

“Oh, Beulah, what ails you to-day?  You look so gloomy and wretched.  It seems to me you have changed sadly of late.  I knew that a life of labor such as you voluntarily assumed would chasten your spirit, but I did not expect this utter revolution of your natura so soon.  Oh, have done with skepticism!”

“Faith in creeds is not to be put on and laid aside at will, like a garment.  Granted that these same doctrines of Zoroaster are faint adumbrations of the Hebrew creed, the Gordian knot is by no means loosed.  That prologue in ‘Faust’ horrified you yesterday; yet, upon my word, I don’t see why; for very evidently it is taken from Job, and Faust is but an ideal Job, tempted in more subtle manner than by the loss of flocks, houses, and children.  You believe that Satan was allowed to do his utmost to ruin Job, and Mephistopheles certainly set out on the same fiendish mission.  Mephistopheles is not the defiant demon of Milton, but a powerful prince in the service of God.  You need not shudder; I am giving no partial account; I merely repeat the opinion of many on this subject.  It is all the same to me.  Evil exists:  that is the grim fact.  As to its origin—­I would about as soon set off to search for the city Asgard.”

“Still, I would not give my faith for all your learning and philosophy.  See what it has brought you to,” answered Clara sorrowfully.

“Your faith! what does it teach you of this evil principle?” retorted Beulah impatiently.

“At least more than all speculation has taught you.  You admit that of its origin you know nothing; the Bible tells me that time was when earth was sinless, and man holy, and that death and sin entered the world by man’s transgression—­”

“Which I don’t believe,” interrupted Beulah.

“So you might sit there and stop your ears and close your eyes and assert that this was a sunny, serene day.  Your reception or rejection of the Biblical record by no means affects its authenticity.  My faith teaches that the evil you so bitterly deprecate is not eternal; shall finally be crushed, and the harmony you crave pervade all realms.  Why an All-wise and All-powerful God suffers evil to exist is not for his finite creatures to determine.  It is one of many mysteries which it is as utterly useless to bother over as to weave ropes of sand.”