“I will try, Uncle,” I answered. “But you said—does God never save anybody against his will?”
My Uncle Drummond was silent for a moment.
“Well, Cary, perhaps at times He does. But it is not His usual way of working. And no man has any right to expect it in his own case, though we may be allowed to hope for it in that of another.”
I wonder very much now, as I write it all down, how I ever came to say all this to my Uncle Drummond. I never meant it at all when I began. I suppose I got led on from one thing to another. When I came to think of it, I was very grateful to Flora for going away and calling Angus after her.
“But, Uncle,” I said, recollecting myself suddenly, “how does anybody know when the Lord has heard him?”
He smiled. “If you were lifted out of the tank and set on dry ground, Cary, do you think you would have much doubt about it?”
“But I could see that, Uncle.”
“Take another emblem, then. You love some people very dearly, and there are others whom you do not like at all. You cannot see love and hate. But have you any doubt whom you love, or whom you dislike?”
“No,” said I,—“at least, not when I really love or dislike them very much. But there are people whom I cannot make up my mind about; I neither like nor dislike them exactly.”
“Those are generally people of whom you have not seen much, I think,” said my Uncle Drummond; “or else they are those colourless men and women of whom you say that they have nothing in them. You could not feel so towards a person of decided character, and one whom you knew well.”