Marvyn watched it a few moments,--the gay creature, so full of exultant
life,--and then smothered down an inward groan, and Mary thought she
heard her saying, "Thy will be done!"

"Mary," she said, gently, "I hope you will forget all I said to you that
dreadful day. It had to be said, or I should have died. Mary, I begin to
think that it is not best to stretch our minds with reasonings where we
are so limited, where we can know so little. I am quite sure there must
be dreadful mistakes somewhere.

"It seems to me irreverent and shocking that a child should oppose a
father, or a creature its Creator. I never should have done it, only
that, where direct questions are presented to the judgment, one cannot
help judging. If one is required to praise a being as just and good, one
must judge of his actions by some standard of right,--and we have no
standard but such as our Creator has placed in us. I have been told it
was my duty to attend to these subjects, and I have tried to,--and the
result has been that the facts presented seem wholly irreconcilable with
any notions of justice or mercy that I am able to form. If these be the
facts, I can only say that my nature is made entirely opposed to them.
If I followed the standard of right they present, and acted according to
my small mortal powers on the same principles, I should be a very bad
person. Any father, who should make such use of power over his children
as they say the Deity does with regard to us, would be looked upon as a
monster by our very imperfect moral sense. Yet I cannot say that the
facts are not so. When I heard the Doctor's sermons on 'Sin a Necessary
Means of the Greatest Good,' I could not extricate myself from the
reasoning.

"I have thought, in desperate moments, of giving up the Bible itself.