Paul smiled again. “Why, you let Mr. Edison--with all due respect to his knowledge of merely material things--you let him loom too large before your sight. One may hold a little ugly insect so close to the eye that it will shut out the light of billions of suns and stars. When it is a question of opinion alone it would be better to go to specialists in the particular field we are investigating. Mr. Edison is a specialist in _material_ things, not spiritual things. We would not go to a coal-miner who had spent his life underground to render an opinion on the effects of sunlight on flowers; nor to a boilermaker for an opinion on music played to the vanishing-point of delicate expression. We have one great historical authority on spiritual matters. Christ told us that there is a life beyond this, and he died asserting it. There was another--Socrates--who realized it so strongly that he laughed in the face of death. Ethel, I cannot believe that God would create men like those, allow them to suffer for others as they did, and then prove them to be liars outright or self-deceived simpletons.” “Oh, I'm so glad I came this morning!” Ethel cried, looking up at him gratefully. “You have given me so much hope. Your faith is wonderful, and you seem to inspire me with it.” “No, we really must not go to our material scientists for hope in such things,” Paul resumed, “but rather to our great imaginative poets, artists, and idealistic philosophers, all of whom knew there could be no continuity of progress without eternal life. Evolution of matter is only a visible symbol of the evolution of the unseen. I can fancy Jesus meeting one of our great self-satisfied materialists and hear Him say: 'Verily, verily, thou hast thy reward; sooner shalt thou see through a mountain of adamant than look into the kingdom of heaven.'” Ethel laughed softly. “You are making me ashamed of myself, Paul. I am going to try harder than ever to do my duty. I know what it is, but I am simply stunned. My uncle and aunt write me that the young man Jennie was to have married has gone to drinking again. He simply could not stand his great grief. That is another thing that seems so unfair and unreasonable. For Jennie's sake he gave up the habit, and promised her and her parents never to drink again. Now he is going to ruin, when if Jennie had lived--” Ethel's voice broke, and she did not finish what she had started to say. “But can't you see what your cousin may have escaped?” Paul reasoned. “A young man who is weak enough to allow a sorrow--even a sorrow like that--to throw him into dissipation would not be likely to make a worthy husband. After marriage some other disappointment might have upset him, and a woman married to such a man would have led a miserable life.” “Oh, that's true,” Ethel admitted, “and Jennie never could have borne it; she was so frail and sensitive.”