One is driven to ask whether they can be Christians any further than anxiety to secure whatever the profession may be worth to them will make them such." "Don't you think, though," said Joseph, "that some people have a trick of putting on their clothes wrong side out, and so making themselves appear less respectable than they are?
There was my sister Ann: she used to go on scolding at people for not believing, all the time she said they could not believe till God made them--if she had said _except_ God made them, I should have been with her there!--and then talking about God so, that I don't see how, even if they could, any one would have believed in such a monster as she made of him; and then, if you objected to believe in such a God, she would tell you it was all from the depravity of your own heart you could not believe in him; and yet this sister Ann of mine, I know, once went for months without enough to eat--without more than just kept body and soul together, that she might feed the children of a neighbor, of whom she knew next to nothing, when their father lay ill of a fever, and could not provide for them.

And she didn't look for any thanks neither, except it was from that same God she would have to be a tyrant from the beginning--one who would calmly behold the unspeakable misery of creatures whom he had compelled to exist, whom he would not permit to cease, and for whom he would do a good deal, but not all that he could.
Such people, I think, are nearly as unfair to themselves as they are to God." "You're right, Joseph," said Mary.

"If we won't take the testimony of such against God, neither must we take it against themselves.

Only, why is it they are always so certain they are in the right ?" "For the perfecting of the saints," suggested Joseph, with a curious smile.
"Perhaps," answered Mary.

"Anyhow, we may get that good out of them, whether they be here for the purpose or not.