“Now, Miss Wylder,” said Wingfold to his pupil, “don’t try by argument to convince the young man of anything. That would accomplish no good, even if you succeeded. Opinion is all that can result from argument, and his opinion concerning God, even if you got it set right, would not be knowledge of God, and would be worth nothing. If a man knows God, his opinion is either right, or on the nearest way to be right.

“The notion in Richard’s brain of the God he denies, is but another form of Moloch. There never was, and never could be such a God. He in whom I believe is the God that says, ‘This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.’ It is as if he said—‘Look at that man. I am just such! No other likeness of me is a true likeness. Heed my son. Heed nobody else. Know him and you know me, and then we are one for ever.’

“Talk to Richard of the God you love, the beautiful, the strong, the true, the patient, the forgiving, the loving—the one childlike, eternal power and Godhead, who would die himself and kill you rather than have you false and mean and selfish. Let him feel God through your enthusiasm for him. You cannot prove to him that there is any God. A God that could be proved, would not be worth proving. Make his thoughts dwell on such a God as he must feel would be worth having. Wake the notion of a God such as will draw him to wish there were such a God. There are many religious people who will tell you there is no such God as I mean. But God will love you for believing that he is as good and true as you can think. Throw the notions of any who tell you otherwise to the winds of hell.

“‘God is just!’ said a carping theologian to me the other day. ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘and he cannot be pleased that you should call that justice which is injustice, and attribute it to him!’

“There are many who must die in ignorance of their Father in heaven, because they will not of their own selves judge what is right. Such never get beyond the weak and beggarly elements of their so-called theology.

“Set in Richard’s eye a God worth believing in, a God like the son of God, and he will go and look if happily such a God may be found—he will call upon him, and the God who is will hear and answer him. What good would it be, what could it bring but the more condemnation, that a man should be sure there was a God, if he did not cry to him? But although a man may never doubt and never cry, I cannot imagine any man sure there is a God without his first having cried to him.