Mother Hubbard's eyes lit up. "Yes, sir," she said, "and I do not think he grieved too much because the first design went wrong. He just made it again another vessel. Perhaps he meant at first to make a very beautiful and graceful vessel, but there were imperfections and flaws in the material, so he made it into a homely jug; and yet it was useful."
"Oh, Mother Hubbard!" I said, "there are all sorts of imperfections and flaws in your logic, and I know people who would shake it to pieces in a moment."
"Well, love, perhaps so; but they would not shake my faith:
"'To one fixed ground my spirit clings,
I know that God is good.'"
>BR?
"Stick to that, Mrs. Hubbard," said the squire earnestly; "never let go that belief. Faith is greater far than logic. I would sooner doubt God's existence than His goodness. Problems of sin and suffering have oppressed my brain and heart all my life, but like you I have got clearer vision during these later days. The clouds often disperse towards the sunset, and my mental horizon is undimmed now. You and I cannot explain life's mysteries, but God can, and meanwhile I hold
"'That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.'"
"Tennyson was not Paul," I remarked.
"Why should he have been?" he asked. "He was a Christian seer, none the less, and he had the heavenly vision."
"But you cannot call his theology orthodox," I persisted; "is it in any sense Biblical?"