"God is answerable to Himself for His actions, and when He made man, He made a man, and not a puppet--a being of infinite possibilities for good as well as for evil, and to whom it was given to choose for himself between the doing of the right or the wrong. But God knew that many of those whom He so made would sin away all memory of their Divine origin. God did not _will_ it so, for He made us men, not machines, and the evil we do is of our own choosing, but God _foreknew_ it; and, fore-knowing that, God owed it to Himself not to call a creature into being, the result of whose creation would be that creature's infinite and eternal misery. No, even the Omnipotent dared not perpetrate so wanton and wicked a deed as that, for God is the inexorable Judge who sits in judgment upon God; and hence it was that He decreed that those for whom there could be no hope of heaven should die out at their deaths like the brutes. Doesn't that seem to you a probable solution? and isn't it rational and feasible upon the face of it? Our life--such as it is--is from God, and may not God take His own again, and withdraw that life if He wish it? and could anything better happen to many people whom you and I know, than that they should be allowed to die out, and the very memory of them pass away for ever?" I was convinced that he was mad--mad, as he had himself hinted, with the horror of his unbelief; but I was interested in what he had to say, and in his singular fancies. "Tell me more of these missing faces, and of the 'dead who die,'" I answered. "Who are they, for the most part?--murderers and criminals of the most bestial nature?" "Not always," he replied excitedly, "not always; and that is the reason why I am so fearful about my own future. Most of them are those who in their lifetime were regarded as belonging to the respectable classes, and who, so far from having come at any time within reach of the law, were looked upon as good citizens and estimable members of society. Shall I tell you what killed the immortal soul in them, and in me, and turned us into mere animated clay, fit only to die out like the beasts which perish? It was money--money, the love of which is often more deadening to the spiritual nature than actual vice or sin.