You believe in what you call
salvation. You would struggle and die to save a soul; but in reality
you can never save a man; you must be content to struggle and die to
save a little bit of him--to prevent one habit from descending to his
children. You won't save him wholly, but you may arrest the
propagation of an evil trick, and so improve a trifle--just a trifle-
-whole generations to come. Besides, I don't believe what you will
do is nothing. 'Give a hundred thousand blackguard creatures votes'-
-well, that is something. You are disappointed they do not at once
become converted and all go to chapel. That is not the way of the
Supreme. Your hundred thousand get votes, and perhaps are none the
better, and die as they were before they had votes. But the Supreme
has a million, or millions, of years before Him."
Zachariah was silent. Fond of dialectic, he generally strove to
present the other side; but he felt no disposition to do so now, and
he tried rather to connect what she had said with something which he
already believed.
"True," he said at last; "true, or true in part. What are we?--what
are we?" and so Pauline's philosophy seemed to reconcile itself with
one of his favourite dogmas, but it had not quite the same meaning
which it had for him ten years ago.
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