"But the innocent do suffer for the guilty," she said, "even in the very earth-world, by the laws of which you wish to judge the heavenly one. You profess yourself willing to abide by the evidence of your senses, and if you will only look back upon the earth-life which you have left, you will see that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and that the innocent are suffering for the guilty every day, and that God, for some good reason of His own, allows it to be so. As for what you say about your sense of justice, I agree with you that if a man run into your debt--run into your debt by wilful and wicked courses--he must be held answerable for the repayment of the money. But supposing one comes forward who loves him, and who has watched his sinnings with sorrow, and says, 'I will pay for my friend that which he cannot pay for himself,' would not your sense of justice be satisfied?" "Even then the moral obligation remains," I objected. "Yes, but that obligation has been transferred," she said, "although as a matter of fact, it is against God rather than against man, that our blackest sins are committed. But, independently of that side of the question, Christ has taken the consequences of your sin, and of the wrong you did Dorothy--the consequences to her, as well as to yourself--upon Himself, and has suffered for you and for her in His own person, and if He be willing to forgive, then are you forgiven indeed! "That reconciliation by the Saviour should at any time have been to me an intellectual stumbling-block is now beyond my comprehension," she continued earnestly. "In its very adaptability to our human needs, Christianity bears the stamp of its divine origin. Left to himself, the very best of us must feel his inability either to atone for the evil he has already done, or to withstand the temptations which yet await him in the future, and though he struggle right manfully to clamber out of the gulf into which he has fallen, the dead-weight of his sins, which he carries and must carry chained log-like about him, is ever the heaviest clog to drag him back. But Christianity does more for a man than merely forgive him his debts. It sets the bankrupt upon his legs again, a solvent man and sane, with a clean bill of health, and with a fresh start in life. It is _the_ religion of Hope, for none is too sinful for the Saviour to save, and to the man who brings his sins, as well as his inability to resist his sins, to the feet of Christ, there is indeed a present Help and Hope in all his troubles! There is much--very much--in Christianity that I cannot and do not pretend to understand, but I can understand enough to make me very loving and very trustful. The only mystery which still sometimes troubles me is that most terrible of all mysteries--the mystery of human suffering. But even that I am content to leave, for is not our God Himself a suffering God? and who that witnessed the sufferings of Jesus Christ