“We have given humanity a free will, which is gift enough of its kind. If they wish to tear away the chain and grope through the mist to the light, all well and good, but we will raise neither hand nor foot to help them. Because, after all, if heaven is worth winning it is worth fighting for and struggling for. We have little sympathy with those who would walk in in respectable dignity and comfort. Man, by a perfect irony, has been born to walk upright, but if he arrives at heaven it is generally by crawling on all fours.” “You do not grudge them heaven, then, if they attain it?” “Not at all. Though we often maintain the contest to the last hour. Look at Philemon here. On the earth he was a little shoemaker who died in consumption. He had a nagging wife and two children to support. I think if I remember rightly he was only in bed three days before he died, and the smell of leather is not pleasant. Now that is what I call a hero, for he never complained, and was so humble as to imagine himself no better than those around him; indeed, if anything, he imagined himself inferior by his lack of physical strength.” Philemon took this sketch of himself as unconcernedly as if he had been an outsider. “And what has become of her—his wife?” I asked, grieving that he should have been thus long a spiritual bachelor. “Well, you see, she was put there as a thorn in the flesh to aggravate and hinder him. There was a time when she did do so, but he got the better of it, though not of her. She had no real soul, you see; the cells were empty—it was a sham one. A little structure of nature that the flesh had grown over, and which a narrow intellect, or rather understanding, had killed at the birth.” “What became of her?” “I don’t know. She wasn’t bad enough for hell, I think. Oh, no. She died out.” The most curious part about this discovery was to see Philemon sitting there listening with a face extremely serious, but not sad. “You do not grieve for the loss of your wife?” said I. Here Vestasian laughed outright. “Oh, no. He was not among the converted nor those who came to the Lord. At least, he is not now, whatever he may have been then. You see, no one in heaven grieves over the loss of sham souls. They are the coarse, low, cramped natures that never probably show it on the outside, that are put into the world to act as stumbling-blocks to others. It is only on the earth that sentimental grief and prayer are attached to them. They are all so wishful to make converts and draw sinners to Christ. Why it would be hard to say. They forget that people like Mary Magdalene, whom they are so fond of quoting, went to him of herself and needed no external urging. No. Neither in heaven nor hell do we grieve over the loss of sham souls; they are simply useful in their effects on other people.” “Then surely they should not be tolerated.” Vestasian smiled.