“You make too much of the Bible, if it says such things. Throw it out of the window and have done with it. But how dare you tell me there is nobody greater than me to account for me! You make of me a creature that was not worth being made; a mere ooze from nothing, like the scum on the pond, there because it cannot help it. If I have no God to be my justification, my being becomes loathsome to me. I don't know how I came to be, where I came from, or where I am going to; and you say there _can_ be nobody that knows; you tell me there is no help; that I must die in the dark I came out of; that there is no love about me knowing what it loves. Even if I found myself alive and awake and happy after I was dead, what comfort would there be if there was no God? How should I ever grow better?--how get rid of the wrong things in myself?--If life has no better thing for this poor woman, be kind and let her die and have done with it. Why keep her in such a hopeless existence as you believe in? You can have but little regard for her surely! I beg of you don't say _that thing_ to her, for you don't _know_ it.” Richard was again silent for a while; then he said-- “I had no intention of saying anything of the sort, but I promise because you wish it.” “Thank you! thank you!” “I promise too,” added Richard, “that I will not say anything more of that kind until I have thought a good deal more about it.” “Thank you again heartily!” said Barbara. “I am sure of one thing--that you cannot have ground for not hoping! Is not hope all we have got? He is the very butcher of humanity who kills its hope! It is hope we live by!” “But if it be a false hope?” “A false hope cannot do so much harm as a false fear!” “The false fear is just what I oppose. The Bible tells people--” “There you are back to the book you don't believe in! And because you don't believe in the book that makes people afraid, you insist there can be no such thing as the gladness my heart cries out for! If you want to make people happy, why don't you preach a good God instead of no God?” “I will think about what you say,” replied Richard. “Mind,” said Barbara, “I don't pretend to know anything! I only say I have a right to hope. And for the Bible, I must have a better look at it! A man who, being a good man, wants to comfort us poor women, whom men knock about so, by taking from us the idea of a living God that cares for us, cannot be so wise but that he may be wrong about a book! Have you read it all through now, Mr. Tuke--so that you are sure it says what you say it says?” “I have not,” answered Richard; “but everybody knows what it says!”