"'So find we profit by losing of our prayers.'""And yet your ideal man distinctly said: 'Ask and ye shall receive'" said Erica."There are no limitations.For aught we know, some pig-headed fanatic may be at this moment praying that God in His mercy would rid the earth of that most dangerous man, Luke Raeburn; while I might be of course I am not, but it is conceivable that I might be praying for his safety.Both of us might claim the same promise, 'Ask and ye shall receive.'""You forget one thing," said Charles Osmond."You would both pray to the Father, and His answer which you, by the way, might consider no answer would be the answer of a father.Do you not think the fanatic would certainly find profit in having his most unbrotherly request disregarded? And the true loss or gain of prayer would surely be in this: The fanatic would, by his un-Christlike request, put himself further from God; you, by your spontaneous and natural avowal of need and recognition of a Supreme loving will, would draw nearer to God.Nor do we yet at all understand the extraordinary influence exerted on others by any steady, earnest concentration of thought; science is but just awakening to the fact that there is an unknown power which we have hitherto never dreamed of.I have great hope that in this direction, as in all others, science may show us the hidden workings of our Father."Erica forgot her anxiety for a moment; she was watching Charles Osmond's face with mingled curiosity and perplexity.To speak to one whose belief in the Unseen seemed stronger and more influential than most people's belief in the seen, was always very strange to her, and with her prophet she was almost always conscious of this double life (SHE considered it double a real outer and an imaginary inner.) His strong conviction; the every-day language which he used in speaking of those truths which most people from a mistaken notion of reverence, wrap up in a sort of ecclesiastical phraseology; above all, the carrying out in his life of the idea of universal brotherhood, with so many a mere form of words all served to impress Erica very deeply.She knew him too well and loved him too truly to pause often, as it were, to analyze his character.
Every now and then, however, some new phase was borne in upon her, and some chance word, emphasizing the difference between them, forced her from sheer honesty to own how much that was noble seemed in him to be the outcome of faith in Christ.
They went a little more deeply into the prayer question.Then, with the wonder growing on her more and more, Erica suddenly exclaimed: "It is so wonderful to me that you can believe without logical proof believe a thing which affects your whole life so immensely, and yet be unable to demonstrate the very existence of a God.""Do you believe your father loves you?" asked Charles Osmond.
"My father! Why, of course."
"You can't logically prove that his love has any true existence.""Why, yes!" exclaimed Erica."Not a day passes without some word, look, thought, which would prove it to any one.If there is one thing that I am certain of in the whole world, it is that my father loves me.Why, you who know him so well, you must know that! You must have seen that.""All his care of you may be mere self-interest," said Charles Osmond."Perhaps he puts on a sort of appearance of affection for you just for the sake of what people would say not a very likely thing for Mr.Raeburn to consider, I own.Still, you can't demonstrate to me that his love is a reality.""But I KNOW it is!" cried Erica, vehemently.
"Of course you know, my child; you know in your heart, and our hearts can teach us what no power of intellect, no skill in logic can every teach us.You can't logically prove the existence of your father's love, and I can't logically prove the existence of the all-Father; but in our hearts we both of us know.The deepest, most sacred realities are generally those of heart-knowledge, and quite out of the pale of logic."Erica did not speak, but sat musing.After all, what COULD be proved with absolute certainty? Why, nothing, except such bare facts as that two and two make four.Was even mathematical proof so absolutely certain? Were they not already beginning to talk of a possible fourth dimension of space when even that might no longer be capable of demonstration.
"Well, setting aside actual proof," she resumed, after a silence, "how do you bring it down even to a probability that God is?""We must all of us start with a supposition," said Charles Osmond.
"There must on the one hand either be everlasting matter or everlasting force, whether these be two real existences, or whether matter be only force conditioned, or, on the other hand, you have the alternative of the everlasting 'He.' You at present base your belief on the first alternative.I base mine on the last, which, I grant you, is at the outset the most difficult of the two.Ifind, however, that nine times out of ten the most difficult theory is the truest.Granting the everlasting 'He,' you must allow self-consciousness, without which there could be no all powerful, all knowledge-full, and all love-full.We will not quarrel about names; call the Everlasting what you please.'Father' seems to me at once the highest and simplest name.""But evil!" broke in Erica, triumphantly."If He originates all, he must originate evil as well as good.""Certainly," said Charles Osmond, "He has expressly told us so.'Iform the light and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil;I, the Lord, do all these things.'"
