"We will not dispute about words! The question is, do you place your faith for salvation in the sufferings of Christ for you?" "I do not, mother. My faith is in Jesus himself, not in his sufferings." "Then the anger of God is not turned away from you." "Mother, I say again--I love God, and will not believe such things of him as you say. I love him so that I would rather lose him than believe so of him." "Then you do not accept the Bible as your guide?" "I do, mother, for it tells me of Jesus Christ. There is no such teaching as you say in the Bible." "How little you know your New Testament!" "I don't know my New Testament! It is the only book I do know! I read it constantly! It is the only thing I could not live without!--No, I do not mean that! I COULD do without my Testament! Christ would BE all the same!" "Oh, Ian! Ian! and yet you will not give Christ the glory of satisfying divine justice by his suffering for your sins!" "Mother, to say that the justice of God is satisfied with suffering, is a piece of the darkness of hell. God is willing to suffer, and ready to inflict suffering to save from sin, but no suffering is satisfaction to him or his justice." "What do you mean by his justice then?" "That he gives you and me and everybody fair play." The homeliness of the phrase offended the moral ear of the mother. "How dare you speak lightly of HIM in my hearing!" she cried. "Because I will speak for God even to the face of my mother!" answered Ian. "He is more to me than you, mother--ten times more." "You speak against God, Ian," she rejoined, calmed by the feeling she had roused. "No, mother. He speaks against God who says he does things that are not good. It does not make a thing good to call it good. I speak FOR him when I say lie cannot but give fair play. He knows he put rue where I was sure to sin; he will not condemn me because I have sinned; he leaves me to do that myself. He will condemn me only if I do not turn away from sin, for he has made me able to turn from it, and I do." "He will forgive sin only for Christ's sake." "He forgives it for his own name's sake, his own love's sake. There is no such word as FOR CHRIST'S SAKE in the New Testament--except where Paul prays us for Christ's sake to be reconciled to God. It is in the English New Testament, but not in the Greek." "Then you do not believe that the justice of God demands the satisfaction of the sinner's endless punishment?" "I do not. Nothing can satisfy the justice of God but justice in his creature. The justice of God is the love of what is right, and the doing of what is right. Eternal misery in the name of justice could satisfy none but a demon whose bad laws had been broken." "I grant you that no amount of suffering on the part of the wicked could SATISFY justice; but it is the Holy One who suffers for our sins!" "Oh, mother! JUSTICE do wrong for its own satisfaction! Did Jesus DESERVE punishment? If not, then to punish him was to wrong him!"