‘Then you must give your father the same scope. He attributes what we are absolutely certain are bad things to his God—and yet he may believe in a good God, for the good in his idea of God is that alone in virtue of which he is able to believe in him. No mortal can believe in the bad.’
‘He puts the evil foremost in his creed and exhortations.’
‘That may be. Few people know their own deeper minds. The more potent a power in us, I suspect it is the more hidden from our scrutiny.’
‘If there be a God, then, Wilfrid, he is very indifferent to what his creatures think of him.’
‘Perhaps very patient and hopeful, Charley—who knows? Perhaps he will not force himself upon them, but help them to grow into the true knowledge of him. Your father may worship the true God, and yet have only a little of that knowledge.’
A silence followed. At length—‘Thank you for my father,’ said Charley.
‘Thank my uncle,’ I said.
‘For not being like my father?—I do,’ he returned.
It was the loveliest evening that brooded round us as we walked. The moon had emerged from a rippled sea of grey cloud, over which she cast her dull opaline halo. Great masses and banks of cloud lay about the rest of the heavens, and, in the dark rifts between, a star or two were visible, gazing from the awful distance.
‘I wish I could let it into me, Wilfrid,’ said Charley, after we had been walking in silence for some time along the grass.