“If I knew of a theory in which was never an uncompleted arch or turret, in whose circling wall was never a ragged breach, that theory I should know but to avoid: such gaps are the eternal windows through which the dawn shall look in. A complete theory is a vault of stone around the theorist—whose very being yet depends on room to grow.”
“Weel, I wad like to hear what ye hae agane Manicheism!”
“The main objection of theologians would be, I presume, that it did not present a God perfect in power as in goodness; but I think it a far more objectionable point that it presents evil as possessing power in itself. My chief objection, however, would be a far deeper one—namely, that its good being cannot be absolutely good; for, if he knew himself unable to insure the well-being of his creatures, if he could not avoid exposing them to such foreign attack, had he a right to create them? Would he have chosen such a doubtful existence for one whom he meant to love absolutely?—Either, then, he did not love like a God, or he would not have created.”
“He micht ken himsel’ sure to win i’ the lang rin.”
“Grant the same to the God of the Bible, and we come back to where we were before.”
“Does that satisfee yersel’, Maister Graham?” asked Malcolm, looking deep into the eyes of his teacher.
“Not at all,” answered the master.
“Does onything?”
“Yes: but I will not say more on the subject now. The time may come when I shall have to speak that which I have learned, but it is not yet. All I will say now is, that I am at peace concerning the question. Indeed, so utterly do I feel myself the offspring of the One, that it would be enough for my peace now—I don’t say it would have been always—to know my mind troubled on a matter: what troubled me would trouble God: my trouble at the seeming wrong must have its being in the right existent in him. In him, supposing I could find none, I should yet say there must lie a lucent, harmonious, eternal, not merely consoling, but absolutely satisfying solution.”
“Winna ye tell me a’ ’at’s in yer hert aboot it, sir?”