ed at him with grave
surprise in her calm brown eyes. "How can you think such a thing?" she
asked. "It seems to me a libel upon the goodness of God."

"But justice, Miss Jeffrey," he said anxiously; "surely we must
acknowledge the righteousness and justice of God's judgments."

"If you mean that God would send a soul to hell forever, if you call that
his judgment, it seems to me unrighteous and unjust. Truly, I can think
of no greater heresy, Mr. Ward, than to deny the love of God; and is not
that what you do when you say he is more cruel than even men could be?"

"But the Bible says"--he began, when she interrupted him.

"It does not seem worth while to say, 'the Bible says,'" she said,
smiling a little as she looked into his troubled face. "The Bible was the
history, and poetry, and politics of the Jews, as well as their code of
ethics and their liturgy; so that, unless we are prepared to believe in
its verbal inspiration, I don't see how we can say, as an argument, 'the
Bible says.'"

"And you do not believe in its verbal inspiration?" he said slowly.

"No," Helen answered, "I could not."

It was not for John Ward to ask how she had been taught, or to criticise
another minister's influence, but as he walked home, with anxious,
downcast eyes, he wondered what Dr. Howe's belief could be, and how it
had been possible for her soul to have been so neglected. This woman,
whose gracious, beautiful nature stirred him with profound admiration,
was in the darkness of unbelief; she had never been taught the truth.

As he said this to himself, John Ward knew, with sudden, passionate
tenderness, that he loved her. Yet it was months before he came and told
her. What right had he to love her? he said to himself, when he knelt and
prayed for her soul's salvation: she was an unbeliever; she had never
come to Christ, or she would have known the truth. His duty to his people
confronted him with its uncompromising claim that the woman whom he
should bring to help him in his labors among them should be a Christian,
and he struggled to tear this love out of his heart.

John Ward's was an intellect which could not hold a belief subject to
the mutations of time or circumstances. Once acknowledged by his soul,
its growth was ended; it hardened into a creed, in which he rested in
complete satisfaction. It was not that he did not desire more light; it
was simply that he could not conceive that there might be more light. And
granting h