“I know what you think, father,” he said. “You and I are agreed on that point now. I admit that what appears to be evil may be made to work for good.”
“True, Jeff,” returned the captain; “but I have lived long enough to see, also, that the opposite holds good—that things which are questionably good in themselves sometimes work out what appears to be evil. For instance, I have known a poor, respectable man become suddenly and unexpectedly rich, and the result was that he went in for extravagant expenditure and dissipation which ended in his ruin.”
“But that,” said Miss Millet quickly, “was because he did not accept the gift as from God to be used in His service, but misused it.”
“True, Molly, true; and such will be my fate if I am not kept by the Holy Spirit from misusing what has been given to me.”
The Rosebud opened not her lips, only her ears, while this conversation was going on; but the next day, seated on a stool at Jeff’s feet, with her fair little hands clasped on his knee and looking up in his kind, manly face, she said—
“I wonder, Jeff, what auntie would say if, instead of working out such pleasant consequences to us, all these things had ended only in what we term disaster, and bad luck, and poverty, and death—as happens so often to many people.”
“I wonder, too, my Rosebud,” returned Jeff. “Suppose we go and put the question to her.”
Accordingly they went, and found the quiet old lady busy, as usual, knitting socks for the poor.
“Now, auntie,” said Jeff, after stating the question, “if everything had turned out apparently ill for us—according to what men usually call ill—would you still hold that everything had really turned out well?”
“Certainly I would, Jeff, on the simple ground that God is good and cannot err, though He has many and strange methods of bringing about His ends. You can prove it by taking an extreme case. Go to one of the early martyrs, who lost not only property, and health, and friends, and liberty, but finally his life at the stake. The unbeliever’s view would be that everything had gone against him; his own view, that God had put on him great honour in counting him worthy to suffer and die for Jesus; and you could not doubt his sincerity when you heard his hymns of praise on the way to the stake—ay, even in the fire.”