“Yes, my dear, most assuredly. It is no fiction, but a real difference that lies between excusing ourselves and excusing other people. No doubt the same excuse is just for ourselves that is just for other people. But we can do something to put ourselves right upon a higher principle, and therefore we should not waste our time in excusing, or even in condemning ourselves, but make haste up the hill. Where we cannot work--that is, in the life of another--we have time to make all the excuse we can. Nay more; it is only justice there. We are not bound to insist on our own rights, even of excuse; the wisest thing often is to forego them. But we are bound by heaven, earth, and hell to give them to other people. And, besides, what a comfort to ourselves to be able to say, ‘It is true So-and-so was cross to-day. But it wasn’t in the least that he wasn’t friendly, or didn’t like me; it was only that he had eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him. I could see it in his eye. He had one of his headaches.’ Thus, you see, justice to our neighbour, and comfort to ourselves, is one and the same thing. But it would be a sad thing to have to think that when we found ourselves in the same ungracious condition, from whatever cause, we had only to submit to it, saying, ‘It is a law of nature,’ as even those who talk most about laws will not do, when those laws come between them and their own comfort. They are ready enough then to call in the aid of higher laws, which, so far from being contradictory, overrule the lower to get things into something like habitable, endurable condition. It may be a law of nature; but what has the Law of the Spirit of Life to _propound anent_ it? as the Scotch lawyers would say.” A little pause followed, during which I hope some of us were thinking. That Wynnie, at least, was, her next question made evident. “What you say about a law of nature and a law of the Spirit makes me think again how that walking on the water has always been a puzzle to me.” “It could hardly be other, seeing that we cannot possibly understand it,” I answered. “But I find it so hard to believe. Can’t you say something, papa, to help me to believe it?” “I think if you admit what goes before, you will find there is nothing against reason in the story.” “Tell me, please, what you mean.” “If all things were made by Jesus, the Word of God, would it be reasonable that the water that he had created should be able to drown him?” “It might drown his body.”