Inspiration that could allow discrepancies in the simplest details of the most important things--one gospel giving the Annunciation to Mary, another to Joseph--one giving the Anointing by a woman to the beginning of the ministry, the others to the eve of the Crucifixion--all differing in the statement of the great and solemn act of the very Crucifixion--one stating that the Christ bore His cross, the others that Simon bore it--disagreeing even as to the bitter drink that was given and when given--disagreeing as to the hour of the great tragedy--every one of them all contradicting each other as to the sayings on the cross--the statement by Christ in one gospel to the repentant thief that they would that day be in Paradise denying that the Christ really descended into Hell and rose again the third day--one gospel contradicting the others as to the acts and sayings of these thieves--all at variance even about the last dying words--all writing different inscriptions over the suffering head--one stating that the body was embalmed, another denying its embalming. There were larger discrepancies: How could the devil tempt God? And even so, what virtue were in so easy a triumph? Why had God, out of His creation of all things, created the devil? How could He punish for sin who had created sin? Why did God create a world so faultily that He Himself condemned it? Why punish His own bungling upon His miserable creatures? How could He set up as eternal reward the prospect of the good being with Him in the heavens and listening to the agony of the victims of His poor maimed handiwork in hell? What had man done more loathsome than to create a Hell? Was this gruesome heaven of gloating over the agony of the damned to be our Immortality? If these things had been written to-day instead of coming out of the dim glamour of the centuries, would they be believed? The vicar was genuinely shocked. He stammered of Conduct--he did not guess the extent of the boy’s reading. The good man had always looked upon any who questioned Christianity as atheists and agnostics--upon atheists and agnostics as criminal and brutish persons. He had never realized that some of the noblest, greatest, purest and sweetest lives had been lived by these--nor that some of the foulest, most damnable, and criminal lives had been spent in vileness by princes of the Church. The boy bent his brows on the old gentleman’s embarrassment.... Already bored by the vicar’s dusty sermons, and now baffled to find that what had baffled him likewise baffled the vicar, he turned his back on the Church of his people and went with Betty to the pro-cathedral of Rome.