When Ian ceased, a silence deep as the darkness around, fell upon them. To Ian, the silence seemed the very voice of God, clear in the darkness; to the mother it was a darkness interpenetrating the darkness; it was a great gulf between her and her boy. She must cry to him aloud, but what should she cry? If she did not, an opportunity, perhaps the last, on which hung eternal issues, would be gone for ever! Each moment's delay was a disobedience to her conscience, a yielding to love's sinful reluctance! With "sick assay" she heaved at the weight on her heart, but not a word would come. If Ian would but speak again, and break the spell of the terrible stillness! She must die in eternal wrong if she did not speak! But no word would come. Something in her would not move. It was not in her brain or her lips or her tongue, for she knew all the time she could speak if she would. The caitiff will was not all on the side of duty! She was not FOR the truth!--could she then be OF the truth? She did not suspect a divine reluctance to urge that which was not good. Not always when the will works may we lay hold of it in the act: somehow, she knew not how, she heard herself speaking. "Are you sure it was God, Ian?" she said. The voice she heard was weak and broken, reedy and strained, like the voice of one all but dead. "No, mother," answered Ian, "but I hope it was." "Hopes, my dear hoy, are not to be trusted." "That is true, mother; and yet we are saved by hope." "We are saved by faith." "I do not doubt it." "You rejoice my heart. But faith in what?" "Faith in God, mother." "That will not save you." "No, but God will." "The devils believe in God, and tremble." "I believe in the father of Jesus Christ, and do not tremble." "You ought to tremble before an unreconciled God." "Like the devils, mother?" "Like a sinful child of Adam. Whatever your fancies, Ian, God will not hear you, except you pray to him in the name of his Son." "Mother, would you take my God from me? Would you blot him out of the deeps of the universe?" "Ian! are you mad? What frightful things you would lay to my charge!" "Mother, I would gladly--oh how gladly! perish for ever, to save God from being the kind of God you would have me believe him. I love God, and will not think him other than good. Rather than believe he does not hear every creature that cries to him, whether he knows Jesus Christ or not, I would believe there was no God, and go mourning to my grave." "That is not the doctrine of the gospel." "It is, mother: Jesus himself says, 'Every one that hath heard and learned of the Father, cometh unto me.'" "Why then do you not come to him, Ian?" "I do come to him; I come to him every day. I believe in nobody but him. He only makes the universe worth being, or any life worth living!" "Ian, I can NOT understand you! If you believe like that about him,--" "I don't believe ABOUT him, mother! I believe in him. He is my life."