"Souls, brother. I plucks brands from the burning with j'y and gather sheaves with gratitood. You've 'eard o' body-snatchers, I suppose?" "I have." "Well, I'm a soul-snatcher. I snatches 'em to the Lord whensoever and wheresoever I can, brother." "But surely," I demurred, "the soul, which is an abstraction, a part of the Infinite and thus of God Himself, is therefore imperishable. Socrates taught this, Pantheism is based on this, the arguments of the Peripatetic Philosophers all trend to this belief, and Christ preached the Soul's immortality and life after death. Thus, if the Soul is immortal and cannot perish, how may it be saved?" "By the Blood o' the Lamb, brother; otherwise ye shall be cast into outer darkness to weep and gnash." "But why?" "For sins, committed in the flesh and unrepented." "Supposing a man sins daily for threescore years and ten and dies unrepentant, must he go down to hell and be tormented for ever and ever for so short a time of sinning?" "He must, brother, alas!" "Horrible!" I cried. "Horrible, and most unjust." "Why, it do seem a bit 'ard to the likes o' we, brother, but then we only see as through a glass darkly. God is a just God, a jealous God and a God o' Vengeance; 't is in the Book--" "Then this is not Christ's Heavenly Father, but Jehovah, the blood-spattered deity of the Jews, a God of battles, of sacrifices and death, a God pitiless and without mercy. But man's soul, being conceived of the Infinite Mind, may never utterly perish even though corrupt with sin or debased by ignorance, for even then that divine Spark which is the very life of the soul shall sooner or later grow to a flame, burning up the evil, lighting the gloom of ignorance until in course of time, years, ages, or aeons, the soul purified and perfected shall win back to the God whence it came!" For a full minute after I had ended Jessamy Todd was silent, staring from me to the cloudless sky and back again with a look of growing perplexity; at length he spoke: "You've seen better days, brother, I'm thinking." "No, indeed," I answered, "never so good as these." "I'm likewise thinkin' as your speech and talk don't rightly match your rig-out, brother." "Which, on the whole, is just as well," I answered. "And you've read and learned a lot from books, brother." "But you have read a better book, friend Todd, and much more of it." "Ah, you mean this, brother?" said he, taking out a small, well-worn Bible. "I mean the Book of Life," I answered; "you have lived while I have only dreamed, so far." "Why, to be sure, I've seen a good deal o' life and something o' death, one way or another. I've known friendship and loneliness, plenty and poverty, been hooted and cheered and had a prince shake my fist--" "What for?" "'T was arter I'd beat the Chelsea Snob, him as licked the Bristol Slasher; they thought the Snob would eat me but--ah, well these were days o' vanity, brother, and no grace about me--no, not a ha'porth."