“The best way is not to think about it at all,” returned Richard. “Why should you? Look at the butterflies. They take what comes and don’t grumble at their sunshine because there’s only one day of it.”

“But when there’s no sunshine that day?” suggested Alice.

“Well, when they lie crumpled in the rain, they’re none the worse that they didn’t think about it beforehand! We must make the best of what we have!”

“It’s not worth making the best of,” cried Alice indignantly, “if there’s nothing more to it than that!”

It may be wondered how Richard could be a lover of the best literature—much of it sacred in its influence—and talk as he did. But he had come to love the literature when young, when still under the influence of the spiritual teaching, poor as it was, of his mother. But now lately, as he had approached manhood, he had begun to admire the intellectual qualities of that literature more. He had begun to fall into the fatal error of thinking truth attainable only through the forces of the brain, alone and supreme.

In matters of conduct, John Tuke and his wife were well agreed. In matters of religious opinion, however, they differed greatly. Jane went to church regularly, listened without interest, and accepted without question. Had her husband gone, he would have listened with the interest of utter disagreement and dissent. When Jane learned that her husband no longer “believed in the Bible,” she was seized with terror lest he should die without repentance and be lost.

Thereupon followed fear for herself—was not an atheist a horribly wicked man? Yet John did not seem wicked to her! She tried to think so, but couldn’t. The only conclusion she could arrive at was that his unbelief must be affecting her. She begged him to say nothing against the Bible to Richard—at least before he arrived at an age old enough to decide for himself. John promised. But subtle effluences are subtle influences.

John Tuke did right, so far as he knew, at least he thought he did, and refused to believe in any kind of God. Jane did right, she thought as far as she knew, and never imagined God cared about her. Let him who has a mind to it discern the value of the difference.

Tuke was a thinking man—that is, if a conversation was set in any direction that interested him, he could take a few steps forward without assistance. But he could start in no direction of himself. At a small club to which he belonged, he had been brought into contact with certain ideas new to him, and finding himself able to grasp them, felt at once as if they must be true. Certain other ideas, also new to him, which came self-suggested in their train, set him to imagining himself a thinker, able to generate notions beyond the grasp of people around him.

He began to grow self-confident. He then took courage to deny things he had never believed, and finding that he gave offense, chose to imagine himself a martyr for the truth. He did not see that a denial involving no assertion cannot witness to any truth. Nor did he perceive that denial in his case meant nothing more than nonacceptance of things asserted. Had he put his rather flimsy position logically, it would have been this—I never knew such things, I do not like the notion of them, therefore I deny them. They do not exist. But when John Tuke denied the God of his feeble notion, he denied only a God that could have no existence.