hat would be hell
enough, sometimes. But I shall never, never believe in it as you do."

"Oh, Helen," her husband said, "I cannot cease to hope while I have power
to pray."

Helen sighed. "I wish you could understand how useless it is, dearest, or
how it hurts me, this talk of hell. For people to be good for fear of
hell is like saying 'Honesty is the best policy;' it is degrading. And
it seems selfish to me, somehow, to think so much about one's own
salvation,--it is small, John. The scheme of salvation that the elders
talk so much about really resolves itself into a fear of hell and hope of
heaven, all for the individual soul, and isn't that selfish? But after
all, this question of eternal punishment is such a little thing, so on
the outside of the great puzzle. One goes in, and in: Why is sin, which
is its own punishment, in the world at all? What does it all mean,
anyhow? Where is God, and why does He let us suffer here, with no
certainty of a life hereafter? Why does He make love and death in the
same world? Oh, that is so cruel,--love and death together! Is He, at
all? Those are the things, it seems to me, one has to think about. But
why do I go all over it? We can't get away from it, can we?"

"Those questions are the outgrowth of unbelief in justice," he said
eagerly; "if you only realized justice and mercy, the rest would be
clear."

She came over to him, and, kneeling down, put her head on his knee. "Oh,
John, how can I leave you to-morrow?"

It was true that they could not drop the subject. Hour after hour they
had sat thus, John instructing, proving, reasoning, with always the
tenderest love and patience in his voice. Helen listening with a sweet
graciousness, which kept her firm negations from making her husband
hopeless. He had showed her, that Sunday evening after the sermon on
foreign missions, what he felt had been his awful sin: he had deprived
his people of the bread of life for her sake, and, for fear of jarring
the perfect peace of their lives and giving her a moment's unhappiness,
he had shrunk from his duty to her soul.

At first Helen had been incredulous. She could not realize that her mere
unbelief in any doctrine, especially such a doctrine as this of eternal
punishment, could be a matter of serious importance to her husband. It
needed an effort to treat his argument with respect. "What does it
matter?" she kept saying. "We love each other, so never mind what we
believe. Believe anythin