hurter instead of a healer of men."

"I think there is a fault in the analogy," said Faber. "For here am
I nothing but a slave to laws already existing, and compelled to
work according to them. It is not my fault therefore that the
remedies I have to use are unpleasant. But if there be a God, he has
the matter in his own hands."

"There is weight and justice in your argument, which may well make
the analogy appear at first sight false. But is there no theory
possible that should make it perfect?"

"I do not see how there should be any. For, if you say God is under
any such compulsion as I am under, then surely the house is divided
against itself, and God is not God any more."

"For my part," said the curate, "I think I COULD believe in a God
who did but his imperfect best: in one all power, and not all
goodness, I could not believe. But suppose that the design of God
involved the perfecting of men as the CHILDREN OF GOD--'I said ye
are gods,'--that he would have them partakers of his own blessedness
in kind--be as himself;--suppose his grand idea could not be
contented with creatures perfect ONLY by his gift, so far as that
should reach, and having no willing causal share in the perfection,
that is, partaking not at all of God's individuality and free-will
and choice of good; then suppose that suffering were the only way
through which the individual could be set, in separate and
self-individuality, so far apart from God, that it might WILL, and
so become a partaker of his singleness and freedom;--and suppose
that this suffering must be and had been initiated by God's taking