salvation to see his child worse than himself, and it's the working out
of the child's salvation to have his bad soul in a bad body. Look you,
can't you think that in the ages after death the saving of the soul of
that child may be the one thing to make that man and woman divine?
They'll never, never get rid of their child, and the child will come
quicker to the light through the blackness he is born to than if, having
the bad soul that he has, God was to set him in heaven. But, look you,
Ann, there isn't a day or an hour that God is not asking them to choose
the better and the quicker way, and there isn't a day or an hour that He
isn't asking you and me and every one else in the world to do as He does
so as to help them to choose it, and live out the sufferings of their
life with them till they do."

Ann sat quite still; she had a feeling that if she moved to make any
other sound, however slight, than that of speech some spell would be
broken. In the darkness Bart had awakened out of the stupor of his
injury; and although Ann could not have expressed it, she felt that his
voice came like the speech of a soul that is not a part of the things we
see and touch. It was so strange to her that he did not ask her where he
was. For a few minutes more at least she did not want to bring the least
rustle of material surroundings into their talk. She was still
incredulous; it is only a very weak mind that does not take time to grow
into a new point of view.

"Bart, was God with father when he tried to kill you and tied you to the
tree?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"You can't think of God being less than something else. If God was not
in your father, then space is outside God's mind. You can't think that
God wanted to save your father from doing it and didn't, unless you
think that the devil was stronger than God. You can't think that you are
more loving than God; and if He is so loving, He couldn't let any one do
what wasn't just the best thing. I tell you, it's a love that's awful to
think of that will go on giving men strength to do wrong until through
the ages of hell they get sick of it, rather than make them into
machines that would just go when they're wound up and that no one could
love."

"Do they know all this in church, Bart?" Ann asked. It had never
occurred to her before to test her beliefs by this standard, but now it
seemed necessary; she felt after tradition instinctively. The nakedness
of Bart's statement