‘And my impression is, Charley,’ I said, ‘that if such had been possible—’
‘Of course,’ he interrupted, ‘the God you believe in could have made me for a minute or two. He can, I suppose, unmake me now when he likes.’
‘Yes; but could he have made you all at once capable of understanding his plans, and your own future? Perhaps that is what he is doing now—making you, by all you are going through, capable of understanding them. Certainly the question could not have been put to you before you were able to comprehend it, and this may be the only way to make you able. Surely a being who could make you had a right to risk the chance, if I may be allowed such an expression, of your being satisfied in the end with what he saw to be good—so good indeed that, if we accept the New Testament story, he would have been willing to go through the same troubles himself for the same end.’
‘No, no; not the same troubles,’ he objected. ‘According to the story to which you refer, Jesus Christ was free from all that alone makes life unendurable—the bad inside you, that will come outside whether you will or not.’
‘I admit your objection. As to the evil coming out, I suspect it is better it should come out, so long as it is there. But the end is not yet; and still I insist the probability is that, if you could know it all now, you would say with submission, if not with hearty concurrence—“Thy will be done.”’
‘I have known people who could say that without knowing it all now, Mr Cumbermede,’ said Mary.
I had often called her by her Christian name, but she had never accepted the familiarity.
‘No doubt,’ said Charley, ‘but I’m not one of those.’
‘If you would but give in,’ said his sister, ‘you would—in the end, I mean—say, “It is well.” I am sure of that.’
‘Yes—perhaps I might—after all the suffering had been forced upon me, and was over at last—when I had been thoroughly exhausted and cowed, that is.’