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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 everyday 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 selfinterest, 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

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