Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/204

 Rodman says it's that we don't know beauty when we see it."

"Inez Rodman? O, that woman of the Yellow Canyon! If there were a minister in Lost Chief, she wouldn't be in the Valley."

"O, I don't know! Religion doesn't seem to affect her kind, anywhere. But Peter says we'd ought to have built a church along with the schoolhouse. I don't see myself how the kind of Bible stuff you teach could help a hard living, hard thinking kind of people like us."

"Did you ever read the Bible, Douglas?" asked the preacher.

"I've tried to. If you ask me to read it like it was only more or less true history, I could get away with it. But when you tell me it's the actual word of God and show me a picture of God in long white whiskers and a white robe, why you can't get away with it, that's all. I know that nothing like that ever produced Fire Mesa or Lost Chief Range or—or Judith."

Mr. Fowler groaned. "Douglas, you are blasphemous!"

"I'm not. I'm just unhappy. I think I was meant to be a religious guy. I'm of New England stock and they all depended a lot on religion. But I just can't swallow it."

"And you never will as long as you take the point of view you do. You must wipe your mind clear of all you have read and thought, for God says that unless we become as little children, we cannot believe. Religion is not a matter of knowledge and reason. Religion is a matter of hope and faith."

Douglas sat turning this over in his mind, his yellow hair rumpled, his clear eyes, with the sun wrinkles in the