Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/86

62 be talkin' to myself in this way. Wliat a wicked old sinner I be!" And. once more Joe sat down with a jerk, as if he meant to say, "I'm not going to be bothered with such thoughts any more to-night." But alas ! he found that thoughts would come whether he would or no.

"P'r'haps," he said, "we don't know nowt about it, none o* us. Mebbe God is more marcyfuller than we think. An' Pm sadly banged about that 'makin' an end o' sin'; I don't see as how He can make an end o' sin without makin' an end o' the sinner; an' whiles there is millions sich as me in hell, there'll be no end to neither on 'em. I'm sadly out in my reck'nin' somewheres, but 'pears to me if there was no sinners there 'ud be no sin; an' the way to rid the univarse of sinners is to get 'em all saved or kill 'em outright."

Much more to the same effect Joe Wrag turned over in his mind that night, but we must not weary the reader with his speculations. Like many other of God's children, he was crying in the darkness and longing for light. He had found that human creeds, instead of being a ladder leading up into the temple of truth, were rather a house of bondage. Men had spread a veil before the face of God, and he had not courage to pull it aside. Now and then through the rents he caught a ray of light, but it dazzled him so that he was afraid there was something wrong about it, and he turned away his face and looked again into the darkness. And yet the night was surely passing away. It