But you have been thinking of me all the while as an incarnate
fiend--dead in trespasses and sins--a child of wrath and the devil. What
right have you to be astonished if I should do my father's works?"
"You may be ignorant of vital religion," she answered; "and you may insult
me. But if you make a mock of God's Word, you leave my house. If you can
laugh at religion, you can deceive me."
The pent-up scepticism of years burst forth.
"Mother," I said, "don't talk to me about religion, and election, and
conversion, and all that--I don't believe one word of it. Nobody does,
except good kind people--(like you, alas! I was going to say, but the devil
stopped the words at my lips)--who must needs have some reason to account
for their goodness. That Bowyer--he's a soft heart by nature, and as he
is, so he does--religion has had nothing to do with that, any more than it
has with that black-faced, canting scoundrel who has been telling you lies
about me. Much his heart is changed. He carries sneak and slanderer written
in his face--and sneak and slanderer he will be, elect or none.
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