"Well, I say--as we're not quite good ourselves, it's just possible
that things may be too good for us to do them the justice of
believing in them."

"But there are things, you must allow, so plainly wrong!"

"So much so, both in the world and in myself, that it would be to me
torturing despair to believe that God did not make the world; for
then, how would it ever be put right? Therefore I prefer the theory
that He has not done making it yet."

"But wouldn't you say, sir, that God might have managed it without
so many slips in the making as your way would suppose? I should
think myself a bad workman if I worked after that fashion."

"I do not believe that there are any slips. You know you are making
a coffin; but are you sure you know what God is making of the
world?"

"That I can't tell, of course, nor anybody else."

"Then you can't say that what looks like a slip is really a slip,
either in the design or in the workmanship. You do not know what end
He has in view; and you may find some day that those slips were just
the straight road to that very end."

"Ah! maybe. But you can't be sure of it, you see."

"Perhaps not, in the way you mean; but sure enough, for all that, to
try it upon life--to order my way by it, and so find that it works