If the people who say they believe in hell were in dead earnest, the world would have been converted long ago." "He is a wicked man!" Lois cried inconsequently.
But Gifford shook his head.

"No, he is not.

And more than that, Lois, you ought to consider that this belief of Ward's, if it is crude, is the husk which has kept safe the germ of truth,--the consequences of sin are eternal.

There is no escape from character." "Oh, yes," she answered, "but that is not theology, you know: we don't put God into that." "Heaven help us if we do not!" the young man said reverently.

"It is all God, Lois; perhaps not God as John Ward thinks of Him, a sort of magnified man, for whom he has to arrange a scheme of salvation, a kind of an apology for the Deity, but the power and the desire for good in ourselves.