‘Which wouldn’t satisfy any thinking soul, Charley—much less God,’ I said. ‘But if there be a God at all—’
Mary gave a slight inarticulate cry.
‘Dear Miss Osborne,’ I said, ‘I beg you will not misunderstand me. I cannot be sure about it, as you are—I wish I could—but I am not disputing it in the least; I am only trying to make my argument as strong as I can.—I was going to say to Charley—not to you—that, if there be a God, he would not have compelled us to be, except with the absolute fore-knowledge that, when we knew all about it, we would certainly declare ourselves ready to go through it all again if need should be, in order to attain the known end of his high calling.’
‘But isn’t it very presumptuous to assert anything about God which he has not revealed in his Word?’ said Mary, in a gentle, subdued voice, and looking at me with a sweet doubtfulness in her eyes.
‘I am only insisting on the perfection of God—as far as I can understand perfection,’ I answered.
‘But may not the perfection of God be something very different from anything we can understand?’
‘I will go further,’ I returned. ‘It must be something that we cannot understand—but different from what we can understand by being greater, not by being less.’
‘Mayn’t it be such that we can’t understand it at all?’ she insisted.
‘Then how should we ever worship him? How should we ever rejoice in him? Surely it is because you see God to be good—’
‘Or fancy you do,’ interposed Charley.