“I don’t say that. Don’t make a personal thing of it, sir. You’re taken in, I believe, like the rest of us. Tell me that a God governs the world! What have I done, to be used like this?” I thought with myself how I could retort for his young son: “What has he done to be used like this?” But that was not my way, though it might work well enough in some hands. Some men are called to be prophets. I could only “stand and wait.” “It would be wrong in me to pretend ignorance,” I said, “of what you mean. I know all about it.” “Do you? He has been to you, has he? But you don’t know all about it, sir. The impudence of the young rascal!” He paused for a moment. “A man like me!” he resumed, becoming eloquent in his indignation, and, as I thought afterwards, entirely justifying what Wordsworth says about the language of the so-called uneducated,—“A man like me, who was as proud of his honour as any aristocrat in the country—prouder than any of them would grant me the right to be!” “Too proud of it, I think—not too careful of it,” I said. But I was thankful he did not heed me, for the speech would only have irritated him. He went on. “Me to be treated like this! One child a ...” Here came a terrible break in his speech. But he tried again. “And the other a ...” Instead of finishing the sentence, however, he drove his plough fiercely through the groove, splitting off some inches of the wall of it at the end. “If any one has treated you so,” I said, “it must be the devil, not God.” “But if there was a God, he could have prevented it all.” “Mind what I said to you once before: He hasn’t done yet. And there is another enemy in His way as bad as the devil—I mean our SELVES. When people want to walk their own way without God, God lets them try it. And then the devil gets a hold of them. But God won’t let him keep them. As soon as they are ‘wearied in the greatness of their way,’ they begin to look about for a Saviour. And then they find God ready to pardon, ready to help, not breaking the bruised reed—leading them to his own self manifest—with whom no man can fear any longer, Jesus Christ, the righteous lover of men—their elder brother—what we call BIG BROTHER, you know—one to help them and take their part against the devil, the world, and the flesh, and all the rest of the wicked powers. So you see God is tender—just like the prodigal son’s father—only with this difference, that God has millions of prodigals, and never gets tired of going out to meet them and welcome them back, every one as if he were the only prodigal son He had ever had. There’s a father indeed! Have you been such a father to your son?” “The prodigal didn’t come with a pack of lies. He told his father the truth, bad as it was.” “How do you know that your son didn’t tell you the truth? All the young men that go from home don’t do as the prodigal did. Why should you not believe what he tells you?” “I’m not one to reckon without my host. Here’s my bill.”