"But," said Rose, "what you say kind of frightens me, Mr. Talmadge. If we can't ever see God, even in Heaven, how can we be sure that He _is_?" "Have you ever seen ... love?" queried the minister softly. "No, sir." "Yet you know that _it_ is. You've never seen, tasted, touched or smelled thought, but you know that it exists. In the same mysterious way we know, and we shall know more perfectly hereafter, that the Great Spirit--I've always loved that beautiful Indian expression--_is_." "Yes," she said, somewhat uncertainly. "I _think_ that I understand. But it's powerful hard to understand how I can be His little child if He isn't a person." "I don't wonder that it puzzles you, dear. It is hard for even the oldest of us to try to imagine something entirely different from what we have actually seen with our mortal eyes, and we can hardly conceive of a spirit, or even a ghost, as something without some sort of a form, even though it be a very misty one. But the _real_ you isn't the flesh that we can see and touch, but the spirit that dwells inside, and, just as some of your earthly father and mother is in your body, so you have something of God within you, which was given you at birth. We call it ..." "My soul." "Yes. And as that was part of Him you are His child ... so are we all--spiritual children." "And Jesus? Was He His son in the same way?" whispered the girl. "Exactly, only to a far greater degree than we can hope to be, for to Him the Heavenly Father gave His spirit in fuller measure than He ever had before to mankind, so that He might set an example to the world and teach us the way we should try to live." There was silence for a moment, and then Smiles spoke the thought that had been troubling her. "But, Mr. Talmadge, if God hasn't any body and our spirits are like him, why heaven ..." Mr. Talmadge sent a glance of smiling appeal at the doctor as though to say, "Now I'm in for it. How can I explain heaven as a spiritual condition?" Aloud he said, "I won't pretend to know just what heaven is like, but, of course, our spirits won't need an earth like this to walk on." "But," persisted the child, "the Good Book says that there are many mansions there, and golden streets, and also that it is a land flowing with milk and honey." "So it does, and very likely there are, in the realms of the spirit, things which correspond to those that we have known on earth, but I am quite sure that they are not _material_ things." "Ef thar haint no real heaven, thar haint no real hell," broke in Big Jerry, whose mind had been slowly grasping the meaning of the minister's words. "I reckon thar must be a place uv punishment fer sinners." Painstakingly, as though explaining to a child, Mr. Talmadge answered, "Mr. Webb, did you ever do something wrong, because of which your conscience troubled you later?" "Reckon I hev. Reckon I suffered the torments uv the damned fer hit." "Did you ever burn your hand?" "Yes, I done thet, too; powerful bad."