“My dear lad,” answered my father, “how can it matter what we believe or disbelieve? It will not alter God's facts. Would you liken Him to some irritable schoolmaster, angry because you cannot understand him?”
“What do you believe,” I asked, “father, really I mean.”
The night had fallen. My father put his arm round me and drew me to him.
“That we are God's children, little brother,” he answered, “that what He wills for us is best. It may be life, it may be sleep; it will be best. I cannot think that He will let us die: that were to think of Him as without purpose. But His uses may not be our desires. We must trust Him. 'Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.'”
We walked awhile in silence before my father spoke again.
“'Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Charity'—you remember the verse—Faith in God's goodness to us, Hope that our dreams may be fulfiled. But these concern but ourselves—the greatest of all is Charity.”
Out of the night-shrouded human hive beneath our feet shone here and there a point of light.
“Be kind, that is all it means,” continued my father. “Often we do what we think right, and evil comes of it, and out of evil comes good. We cannot understand—maybe the old laws we have misread. But the new Law, that we love one another—all creatures He has made; that is so clear. And if it be that we are here together only for a little while, Paul, the future dark, how much the greater need have we of one another.”
I looked up into my father's face, and the peace that shone from it slid into my soul and gave me strength.