at I was
quite wrong. To prove to you that I am no longer angry, I am going to
ask you a great favor. Will you teach me Greek? Your parable of the
heathen Chinee has set me thinking. Yours very sincerely, Erica Raeburn."

Charles Osmond felt the tears come to his eyes. The straightforward
simplicity of the letter, the candid avowal of having been "quite
wrong," an avowal not easy for one of Erica's character to make, touched
him inexpressibly. Taking a Greek grammar from his book shelves, he set
off at once for Guilford Terrace.

He found Erica looking very white and fragile, and with lines of
suffering about her mouth; but, though physically weary, her mind seemed
as vigorous as ever. She received him with her usual frankness, and with
more animation in her look than he had seen for some weeks.

"I did think you perfectly horrid yesterday!" she exclaimed. "And was
miserable, besides, at the prospect of losing one of my heroes. You can
be very severe."

"The infliction of pain is only justified when the inflictor is certain,
or as nearly certain as he can be, that the pain will be productive of
good," said Charles Osmond.

"I suppose that is the way you account for the origin of evil," said
Erica, thoughtfully.

"Yes," replied Charles Osmond, pleased that she should have thought of
the subject, "that to me seems the only possible explanation, otherwise
God would be either not perfectly good or not omnipotent. His all-wisdom
enables Him to overrule that pain which He has willed to be the
necessary outcome of infractions of His order. Pain, you see, is made
into a means of helping us to find out where that order has been broken,
and so teaching us to obey it in the long run."

"But if there is an all-powerful God, wouldn't it have been much better
if He had made it impossible for us to go wrong?"

"It would have saved much trouble, undoubtedly; but do you think that
which costs us least trouble is generally the most worth having? I
know a noble fellow who has fought his way upward through sins and
temptations you would like him, by the way, for he was once an atheist.
He is, by virtue of all he has passed through, all he has overcome, one
of the fines men I have ever known."

"That is the friend, I suppose, whom your son mentioned to me. But I
don't see your argument, for if there was an all-powerful God, He could
have caused the man you speak of to be as noble and good without passing
through pain and temptati