There & Back

“Then,” said Barbara at length, still thinking of Richard, “if you believe that even the beasts are saved, you must think it very bad of a man not to believe in a God!”

“I should think anyhow that he didn’t care much about the beasts—that he hadn’t a heart big enough to take the beasts in!”

“But he couldn’t, you know, if he didn’t believe in God!”

“I understand; only, if he loved the poor beasts very much, and thought what a bad time they have of it in the world, I don’t know how he could help hoping at least, that there was a God somewhere who would somehow make up to them for it all! For my own part I don’t know how to be content except the beasts themselves, when it is all over and the good time come, are able to say, ‘After all, it is well worth it, bad as it was!’”

“But what if it was just that suffering that made the man think there could not be a God, or he would put a stop to it?”

“That looks to me very close to believing in God.”

“How do you make that out?”

“If a man believed in a God that did not heed the suffering of the creation, one who made men and women and beasts knowing that they must suffer, and suffer only—and went on believing so however you set him thinking about it, I should say to him, ‘You believe in a devil, and so are in the way to become a devil yourself.’ A thousand times rather would I believe that there was no God, and that the misery came by chance from which there was no escape. What I do believe is, that there is a God who is even now doing his best to take all men and all beasts out of the misery in which they find themselves.”

“But why did he let them come into it?”

“That the God will tell them, to their satisfaction, so soon as ever they shall have become capable of understanding it. There must be things so entirely beyond our capacity, that we cannot now see enough of them to be able even to say that they are incomprehensible. There must be millions of truths that have not yet risen above the horizon of what we call the finite.”

“Then you would not think a person so very, very wicked, for not believing in a God?”

“That depends on the sort of God he fancied himself asked to believe in. Would you call a Greek philosopher wicked for not believing in Mercury or Venus? If a man had the same notion of God that I have, or anything like it, and did not at least desire that there might be such a God, then I confess I should have difficulty in understanding how he could be good. But the God offered him might not be worth believing in, might even be such that it was a virtuous act to refuse to believe in him.”

“One thing more, Mr. Wingfold—and you must not think I am arguing against you or against God, for if I thought there was no God, I should just take poison:—tell me, mightn’t a man think the idea of such a God as you believe in, too good to be true?”

“I should need to know something of his history, rightly to understand that. Why should he be able to think anything too good to be true? Why should a thing not be true because it was good? It seems to me, if a thing be bad, it cannot possibly be true. If you say the thing is, I answer it exists because of something under the badness. Badness by itself can have no life in it. But if the man really thought as you suggest, I would say to him, ‘You cannot know such a being does not exist: is it possible you should be content that such a being should not exist? If such a being did exist, would you be content never to find him, but to go on for ever and ever saying, He can’t be! He can’t be! He’s so good he can’t be! Supposing you find one day that there he is, will your defence before him be satisfactory to yourself: “There he is after all, but he was too good to believe in, therefore I did not try to find him”? Will you say to him—“If you had not been so good, if you had been a little less good, a little worse, just a trifle bad, I could and would have believed in you?”’”

“But if the man could not believe there was any such being, how could he have heart to look for him?”

“If he believed the idea of him so good, yet did not desire such a being enough to wish that he might be, enough to feel it worth his while to cry out, in some fashion or other, after him, then I could not help suspecting something wrong in his will, or his moral nature somewhere; or, perhaps, that the words he spoke were but words, and that he did not really and truly feel that the idea of such a God was too good to be true. In any such case his maker would not have cause to be satisfied with him. And if his maker was not satisfied with what he had made, do you think the man made would have cause to be satisfied with himself?”

“But if he was made so?”

“Then no good being, not to say a faithful creator, would blame him for what he could not help. If the God had made his creature incapable of knowing him, then of course the creature would not feel that he needed to know him. He would be where we generally imagine the lower animals—unable, therefore not caring to know who made him.”

“But is not that just the point? A man may say truly, ‘I don’t feel I want to know anything about God; I do not believe I am made to understand him; I take no interest in the thought of a God’!”

“Before I could answer you concerning such a man, I should want to know whether he had not been doing as he knew he ought not to do, living as he knew he ought not to live, and spoiling himself, so spoiling the thing that God had made that, although naturally he would like to know about God, yet now, through having by wrong-doing injured his deepest faculty of understanding, he did not care to know anything concerning him.”

“What could be done for such a man?”

“God knows—God does know. I think he will make his very life a terrible burden, so that for pure misery he will cry to him.”

“But suppose he was a man who tried to do right, who tried to help his neighbour, who was at least so far a good man as to deny the God that most people seem to believe in—what would you say then?”

“I would say, ‘Have patience.’ If there be a good God, he cannot be altogether dissatisfied with such a man. Of course it is something wanting that makes him like that, and it may be he is to blame, or it may be he can’t help it: I do not know when any man has arrived at the point of development at which he is capable of believing in God: the child of a savage may be capable, and a gray-haired man of science incapable. If such a man says, ‘The question of a God is not interesting to me,’ I believe him; but, if he be such a man as you have last described, I believe also that, as God is taking care of him who is the God of patience, the time must come when something will make him want to know whether there be a God, and whether he cannot get near him, so as to be near him.’ I would say, ‘He is in God’s school; don’t be too much troubled about him, as if God might overlook and forget him. He will see to all that concerns him. He has made him, and he loves him, and he is doing and will do his very best for him.’”

“Oh, I am so glad to hear you speak like that!” cried Barbara. “I didn’t know clergymen were like that! I’m sure they don’t talk like that in the pulpit!”

“Well, you know a man can’t just chat with his people in the pulpit as he may when he has one alone to himself! For, you see, there are hundreds there, and they are all very different, and that must make a difference in the way he can talk to them. There are multitudes who could not understand a word of what we have been saying to each, other! But if a clergyman says anything in the pulpit that differs in essence from what he says out of it, he is a false prophet, and has no business anywhere but in the realm of falsehood.”

“Why is he in the church, then?”

“If there be any such man in the church of England, we have to ask first how he got into it. I used to think the bishop who ordained him must be to blame for letting such a man in. But I am told the bishops haven’t the power to keep out any one who passes their examination, provided he is morally decent; and if that be true, I don’t know what is to be done. What I know is, that I have enough to do with my parish, and that to mind my work is the best I can do to set the church right.”

“I suppose the bishops—some of them at least—would say, ‘If we do not take the men we can get, how is the work of the church to go on?’”

“I presume that even such bishops would allow that the business of the church is to teach men about God: that they cannot get men who know God, is a bad argument for employing men who do not know him to teach others about him. It is founded on utter distrust of God. I believe the only way to set the thing right is to refuse the bad that there may be room for God to send the good. By admitting the false they block the way for the true. But the poor bishops have great difficulties. I am glad I am not a bishop! My parish is nearly too much for me sometimes!”

Barbara could not help thinking how her mother alone had been almost too much for him.

Their talk the rest of the way was lighter and more general; and to her great joy Barbara discovered that the clergyman loved books the same way the bookbinder loved them. But she did not mention Richard.

The parson took leave of her at a convenient issue from the park. But before she had gone many steps he came running after her and said—

“By the way, Miss Wylder, here are some verses that may please you! We were talking about our hopes for the animals! I heard the story they are founded on the other day from my friend the dissenting minister of the village. The little daughter of Dr. Doddridge, the celebrated theologian, was overheard asking the dog if he knew who made him. Receiving no reply, she said what you will find written there as the text of the poem.”

He put a paper in her hand, and left her. She opened it, and found what follows:—

DR. DODDRIDGE’S DOG

“What! you Dr. Doddridge’s dog, and not know who made you!”

My little dog, who blessed you
With such white toothy-pegs?
And who was it that dressed you
In such a lot of legs!

I’m sure he never told you
Not to speak when spoken to!
But it’s not for me to scold you:—
Dogs bark, and pussies mew!

I’ll tell you, little brother,
In case you do not know:—
One only, not another,
Could make us two just so.

You love me?—Quiet!—I’m proving!—
It must be God above
That, filled those eyes with loving!—
He was the first to love!

One day he’ll stop all sadness—
Hark to the nightingale!
Oh blessed God of gladness!—
Come, doggie, wag your tail!