"You certainly have been sustained throughout this dreadful scene by a principle that I cannot understand, but I would give all the world to possess it." "You may possess it, Miss Ludolph." "How? how?" she asked, eagerly. "Do you wish to believe as I do?" "Yes, indeed; and yet my heart rebels against a God who permits, even if He does not cause, all this evil." "Does it rebel against a Being who from first to last tries to save men from evil?" "Tries! tries! what an expression to apply to a God! Why does He not do it in every case?" "Because multitudes will not let Him." "Oh, that is worse still! Surely, Mr. Fleet, you let your reason have nothing to do with your faith. How can a poor and weak being like myself prevent an Almighty one from doing what He pleases?" "I am stronger than you, Miss Ludolph, and yet I could not have saved you to-night unless you had first trusted me, and then done everything in your power to further my efforts." "But your power is human and limited, and you say God is all-powerful." "Yes, but it is His plan and purpose never to save us against our will. He has made us in His own image and endowed us with reason, conscience, and a will to choose between good and evil. He appeals to these noble faculties from first to last. He has given us hearts, and seeks to win them by revealing His love to us. More than all, His Spirit, present in the world, uses every form of truth in persuading and making us willing to become His true children. So you see that neither on the one hand does God gather us up like drift-wood nor does He on the other drag us at His chariot wheels, unwilling captives, as did those who, at various times, have sought to overrun the world by force. God seeks to conquer the world by the might of the truth, by the might of love."