Soon, he finds that he has to encounter opposition. The children are free to go wrong, and wrong some of them will go: evil appears in that household where it was not known. The father sorrows over this, but when he reviews his condition he finds that he has a countervailing comfort; the good that is left about him is now real good. It is the good of persons who have known and resisted evil. Besides this, there is more life and greater vigour of character in his family, than there was before. They no longer sit with folded hands always waiting for direction; they have the air of persons who see a purpose before them; and they move along their way “with the certain step of man.” So he concludes that it is better that all should engage in the struggle with evil, even though some should fail, than that they should move along paths ready shaped out for them, shewing a merely mechanical goodness. A great change has come over his life in another respect, he is now no longer _alone_. Other wills come into contact, sometimes into collision, with his will; a host of qualities, which had been folded up and laid by for years, come again into use. He is no longer among echoes of himself, but there are real voices in his new world. His views may still prevail, but it must be, not merely because they are _his_, but because they stand on solid ground. He may still lead in action; but it must be because he has the leader’s strength, because he will venture when others waver, and decide when others doubt. Here we must leave him, and say a word or two before making the obvious application of the parable: We must not press the application too closely or draw conclusions from the mere machinery of the parable: it must not, of course, be supposed that I conceive God to have dealt with man as the father does with his children; that is to say, to have kept him at first in tutelage, and then found it desirable to enfranchise him. The sole object of the story is to familiarise the reader with the need of freedom in moral growth. It shews that for education to be carried out, the _will_ must be free to act. When we have brought this home to his mind, we shall be the better able “to justify the ways of God to man” in some important particulars.