“It is God, sir, who is the key,” said the charwoman.
“That throws us back,” said Northcote, “to our original necessity to have a religion. To my mind, Mrs. Brown, you have indicated that need in a very lucid and practical manner. And how, Mrs. Brown, as you appear to have given some thought to these things, do you suppose this reticent mother of mine views this God who holds the key to the watch, who winds it up and keeps it going? How would you say she regards Him personally?”
“Perhaps she doesn’t think about Him much, sir. Perhaps as a girl she troubled her head about Him a bit; but when she got older and had to take heavy burdens on her shoulders, she was always too tired to think of Him, except when she said her prayers.”
“Do you suppose there have been times when in her great fatigue she has fallen asleep while she has been in the act of saying them?”
“Yes, sir, I suppose there may have been,” said the old woman.
“So, then, you would say there is nothing definite, forceful, all-compelling about this God of hers? You would say He had no particular personality to speak of?”
“Perhaps He is very real to her, sir, just as to the watch the key must be very real that winds it up and keeps it going.”
“I suppose, Mrs. Brown, you have never by any lucky chance arrived at the reason why He does wind you up and keep you going? Yet surely you have asked yourself the question why it is necessary that you should be wound up and kept going.”
“I may have done, sir, now and again. But then it has been a wicked thought.”
“It is an intensely natural thought, and the wickedness of sheer undraped nature is one of those hard doctrines I have never been able to accept. When in the depth of winter you have laid an old skirt on your bed because you did not happen to possess an extra blanket, and you have crept with your shivering limbs into the cold sheets, I suppose you have asked yourself occasionally why you who do not even perform the humble functions of a clock, since you keep no time, should yet be wound up and set going, when, as a matter of choice, you would prefer to remain in bed in the morning and be allowed to sleep on forever?”