Part 5

“In fundamentals, perhaps,” said Ruth, “but not in all things.”

No religion could be the true religion, we said, if it fostered antagonism or bitterness toward those of another persuasion.

“One would wish to teach them,” said Marian.

“Well, then, what is the truth? We spoke of the nature of ‘God.’ What is God, the something we all know and cannot speak?”

Henry said: “I could tell better what I mean by God by saying what is not God.” We tried to make him explain.

“Nothing is not God,” said Virginia, “everything is God, good and bad, too; and the bad only seems bad to us, but really leads to good.”

“Everything is not God,” said Ruth, “for God is perfect, and we are imperfect, and are striving for his perfection. Imperfection and all bad things are not of God.”

“What are they, then?” I asked. “Surely you do not believe in two gods, like the Zoroastrians, in a good and a bad? But the wisest of them saw that the two were one.”

Ruth answered: “I have it at home in a book, how evil came into God’s world, although we are of him and he is perfect. I will bring it next time. I don’t remember it.”

“Yes, do bring it. But I believe that as long as we are not perfect, God is not perfect.”

“That seems,” answered Ruth, “as if we were God.”

“So we are a part of God, who is the whole. Anything else is unthinkable. And unless we are perfect, how can He be perfect?”

The children corrected me, for I had used the wrong word.

“God must be perfect,” they said, “if we long for that perfection.”

Virginia said: “If the world is ever to be perfect, then it is perfect now. Whatever shall be is here now, is here forever.”

“You are right,” I answered, “I should not have used that word.”

Henry said: “The apple-tree might be perfect, but the apples might still be unripe.”

“Yes,” I went on, “but the apple-tree would not be perfect unless the apples ripened.”

“The world is like a rose-bud,” said Alfred. “It is perfect as a bud, and yet it must open and evolve in its perfection.”

“Yes,” I said, “or like a sleeper who awakens.

“Now, then,” I asked, “you do all believe in progress; that the world changes and that it changes in a certain direction?”

“I don’t know,” said Virginia. “I believe that the world, that God, must always be the same, even though it change.”

“That is true, and it is a strange paradoxical truth, which I hope to make you understand later on, that all things change and progress, yet are ever the same, even as the rose-bud that unfolds.”

We had tacitly admitted that God and the aim of life stood for love and unity. Once when Henry spoke of the “fear” of God, the others corrected him.

“Now,” I said, “if there is progress, what is it?”

Ruth answered: “There is progress of individuals, not of the world. Certain men saw the truth as clearly in old times as they could now.”

“I do not believe so,” I answered her. “I think the whole must evolve and bud forth, and that it does. Now you all admit that Moses was a prophet who saw the truth?”

They said “Yes.”