Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/224

 chickens or sheep. They could not be happy or help themselves except in crowds or groups. They had societies, bury-leagues, sick benefit circles, lodges.

They all belonged to Heaven's Gate Church, whose strict rules tried to curb their conduct. They allowed no ground between sinners and Christians. Church-members were all Christians, saved from sin. They, only, were the children of God and brothers and sisters of little kind Jesus. Everybody else would be damned in Hell.

Budda argued that the Christians often turned right into wrong, justice into injustice. They denied some of the plainest, simplest facts of life, and thought they could run God's business; they laid strict rules for each other because they were too timid, too coward-hearted to come out in the open and live as they wanted to live.

He lashed out against their pretenses. Sometimes they were right, but not always. Nobody is always right. Nobody always knows what right is. The wisest people in the world are ignorant about many things. The most free-handed have to be stingy sometimes and the kindest, mean. If he could only hold out to live his own life without flinching, that would be enough to ask of himself.