“If one could see!” said the Earl, almost in a whisper.
“It would be easier, without doubt. Yet ‘blessed are they who see not, and believe.’ God can see. I would rather He saw and not I, than—if such a thing were possible—that I saw and not He. Whether is better, my Lord, that the father see the danger and guard the child without his knowing anything, or that the child see it too, and have all the pain and apprehension consequent upon the seeing? The blind has the advantage, sometimes.”
“Yet who would wish to be blind on that account?” answered the Earl, quickly.
“No man could wish it, nor need he. Only, the blind man may take the comfort of it.”
“But you have not answered one point, Father. Why does God rouse longings in our hearts which He never means to fulfil?”
“Does God rouse them?”
“Are they sin, then?”
“No,” answered the Prior, slowly, as if he were thinking out the question, and had barely reached the answer. “I dare not say that. They are nature. Some, I know, would have all that is nature to be sin; but I doubt if God treats it thus in His Word. Still, I question if He raises those longings. He allows them. Man raises them.”
“Does He never guide them?”
“Yes, that I think He does.”