ider, I own. Still, you can't demonstrate to me that his
love is a reality."

"But I KNOW it is!" cried Erica, vehemently.

"Of course you know, my child; you know in your heart, and our hearts
can teach us what no power of intellect, no skill in logic can every
teach us. You can't logically prove the existence of your father's love,
and I can't logically prove the existence of the all-Father; but in
our hearts we both of us know. The deepest, most sacred realities are
generally those of heart-knowledge, and quite out of the pale of logic."

Erica did not speak, but sat musing. After all, what COULD be proved
with absolute certainty? Why, nothing, except such bare facts as
that two and two make four. Was even mathematical proof so absolutely
certain? Were they not already beginning to talk of a possible fourth
dimension of space when even that might no longer be capable of
demonstration.

"Well, setting aside actual proof," she resumed, after a silence, "how
do you bring it down even to a probability that God is?"

"We must all of us start with a supposition," said Charles Osmond.
"There must on the one hand either be everlasting matter or everlasting
force, whether these be two real existences, or whether matter be only
force conditioned, or, on the other hand, you have the alternative
of the everlasting 'He.' You at present base your belief on the first
alternative. I base mine on the last, which, I grant you, is at the
outset the most difficult of the two. I find, however, that nine
times out of ten the most difficult theory is the truest. Granting the
everlasting 'He,' you must allow self-consciousness, without which there
could be no all powerful, all knowledge-full, and all love-full. We will
not quarrel about names; call the Everlasting what you please. 'Father'
seems to me at once the highest and simplest name."

"But evil!" broke in Erica, triumphantly. "If He originates all, he must
originate evil as well as good."

"Certainly," said Charles Osmond, "He has expressly told us so. 'I form
the light and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the
Lord, do all these things.'"

"I recollect now, we spoke of this two or three years ago," said
Erica. "You said that the highest good was attained by passing through
struggles and temptations."

"Think of it in this way," said Charles Osmond. "The Father is educating
His children; what education was ever brought about without pain? The
wise human fa