“Then what right have you to go and make people miserable by saying there is no God—as if you, being an honest man, knew it? Of course you have a right to say you don’t believe it—but only that! And I would think twice before I said even that.”

“I don’t know anybody it would make miserable,” said Richard.

“It would make me miserable,” returned Barbara.

“To believe in a cruel being ready to pounce upon them is enough to make anyone miserable.”

“The cruel being that made the world, you mean?”

“Yes—if the world was made.”

“If one believes in any God, it must be the same God that made this lovely night. I have no quarrel with you if you say the world’s evils are brought upon us by an evil being, because then you leave room to believe also in one fighting against him, to whom we can go for help! But to take away the notion of any kind of God, is to make life too dreary to live!”

“That would be easier to believe than what people believe now.”

“What do they believe?”

“They believe in the God of the Bible, who makes pets of a few of his creatures, and sends all the rest into eternal torment. Would you comfort people with the good news of a God like that?”

“Such a God is not to be believed in! I do not believe such a God could exist. But because there cannot be an evil God, what right have you to say there cannot be a good one? That is to reason backward! But I will not believe it!”

“The Bible says there is an evil being behind it!”

“I don’t know much about the Bible, but I don’t believe it says that.”

“Of course it calls him good, but it says he does certain things which we know to be bad.”

“You make too much of the Bible, if it says such things. But how dare you tell me there is nobody greater than me to account for me! You make of me a creature that was not worth being made—a mere ooze from nothing. I don’t know how I came to be, where I came from, or where I am going. And you say there can be nobody that knows. You tell me there is no help, that I must die in the dark I came out of, that there is no love about me knowing what it loves. How should I ever grow better? If life has nothing better, what is left but just to die and be done with it.”

Richard was again silent for a while.

“I had no intention of implying anything of the sort. I promise that I will not say anything more of that kind until I have thought a good deal more about it.”