“And after you have discussed it, and acted according to our united wisdom, you will say that you have been guided.”
“Just so! That is exactly what I will say and believe, for ‘He is faithful who has promised.’”
“And if you make mistakes and go wrong, you will still hold, I suppose, that you have been guided?”
“Undoubtedly I will—not guided, indeed, into the mistakes, but guided to what will be best in the long-run, in spite of them.”
“But Fred, how can you call guidance in the wrong direction right guidance?”
“Why, Tom, can you not conceive of a man being guided wrongly as regards some particular end he has in view, and yet that same guidance being right, because leading him to something far better which, perhaps, he has not in view?”
“So that” said Tom, with a sceptical laugh, “whether you go right or go wrong, you are sure to come right in the end!”
“Just so! ‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’”
“Does not that savour of Jesuitism, Fred, which teaches the detestable doctrine that you may do evil if good is to come of it?”
“Not so, Tom; because I did not understand you to use the word wrong in the sense of sinful, but in the sense of erroneous—mistaken. If I go in a wrong road, knowing it to be wrong, I sin; but if I go in a wrong road mistakenly, I still count on guidance, though not perhaps to the particular end at which I aimed—nevertheless, guidance to a good end. Surely you will admit that no man is perfect?”