“‘I bring you, Clyde, the mercy and the salvation of your God. He has
called on me and I have come. He has sent me that I may say unto you
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white—like snow. Though
they be red, like crimson, they shall be as wool. Come now, let us
reason together with the Lord.’”

—Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy, 1925.