We have said that Lottie Marsden was a pagan. That is not necessarily a reproach. Socrates was a pagan. But Lottie, in the main, was a very ordinary pagan, not better than the average. Her only superiority over other idolaters, and many nominal Christians, it might be added, was her practical common sense. The more she thought, the more unsatisfactory Hemstead's sermon grew, and the more sure she became that there was a wrong somewhere: in him, or her, or in religion itself. Her whole nature revolted at the idea of God given that morning. In her vivid fancy, she saw an unrelenting, unimpassioned, and yet all-powerful Being, from whom there was no escape, calmly subjecting one human life after another to the severest crucial tests. If one could endure them, all might be well. If, in the composition of one's character, there existed good metal, it would come out of the furnace fine gold perhaps; but if, as she feared might be true of herself, there was only dross, then the fiery trials awaiting would be as useless as cruel. "Why couldn't an all-powerful God find a pleasanter and surer way of making us good?" she asked in bitterness. "I know there is something wrong in what Mr. Hemstead preached this morning. He is different from his own doctrines, and to my mind a great deal better. He was severe upon me, but not calmly and stonily severe. He looked as if he felt for me deeply, and would, even at cost to himself, give me aid if I tried to do right. If he had shown me my faults in the calm, cold distance of immeasurable superiority which he ascribed to God, I would not have listened to a word. But his voice was gentleness itself, and it evidently pained him to give me pain; but when he came to show our relations to God, I seemed to come into the presence of stony-hearted, stony-faced fate. If this is the real God that ministers preach about, little wonder that they have such a hard time of it in persuading us to love Him. Little wonder that people forget Him as long as they can. But Mr. Hemstead seems to want us to think of these awful things nearly all the time; and what's worse, to begin torturing and mortifying ourselves, even before God is ready to commence. No, I thank you. No such religion for me. If I must go into the fiery furnace, I won't go till I must." She sprang up, and restlessly paced the room. "He's a very cheerful apostle of such a gloomy gospel," she thought. "Gospel! I thought 'gospel' meant 'good news.' I never heard worse than he told us this morning. If what he preached is true religion, he's a very inconsistent professor of it, and I would like to tell him so. "What's more, I will if I can find him"; and acting upon the impulse she left the room.