“I don’t see that that makes it a hair easier, in the face of such a set of gaping noodles as--” “I beg your pardon:--there is more lack of conscience than of brains in the Abbey of a Sunday, I fear.” “Well, all I have to say is, I can’t for the life of me see what you want to believe in a God for! It seems to me the world would go rather better without any such fancy. Look here now: there is young Spenser--out there at Harwood--a patient of mine. His wife died yesterday--one of the loveliest young creatures you ever saw. The poor fellow is as bad about it as fellow can be. Well, he’s one of your sort, and said to me the other day, just as you would have him, ‘It’s the will of God,’ he said, ‘and we must hold our peace.’--‘Don’t talk to me about God,’ I said, for I couldn’t stand it. ‘Do you mean to tell me that, if there was a God, he would have taken such a lovely creature as that away from her husband and her helpless infant, at the age of two and twenty? I scorn to believe it.’” “What did he say to that?” “He turned as white as death, and said never a word.” “Ah, you forgot that you were taking from him his only hope of seeing her again!” “I certainly did not think of that,” said Faber. “Even then,” resumed Wingfold, “I should not say you were wrong, if you were prepared to add that you had searched every possible region of existence, and had found no God; or that you had tried every theory man had invented, or even that you were able to invent yourself, and had found none of them consistent with the being of a God. I do not say that then you would be right in your judgment, for another man, of equal weight, might have had a different experience. I only say, I would not then blame you. But you must allow it a very serious thing to assert as a conviction, without such grounds as the assertor has pretty fully satisfied himself concerning, what COULD only drive the sting of death ten times deeper.” The doctor was silent. “I doubt not you spoke in a burst of indignation; but it seems to me the indignation of a man unaccustomed to ponder the things concerning which he expresses such a positive conviction.” “You are wrong there,” returned Faber; “for I was brought up in the straitest sect of the Pharisees, and know what I am saying.” “The straitest sect of the Pharisees can hardly be the school in which to gather any such idea of a God as one could wish to be a reality.” “They profess to know.” “Is that any argument of weight, they and their opinions being what they are?--If there be a God, do you imagine he would choose any strait sect under the sun to be his interpreters?” “But the question is not of the idea of a God, but of the existence of any, seeing, if he exists, he must be such as the human heart could never accept as God, inasmuch as he at least permits, if not himself enacts cruelty. My argument to poor Spenser remains--however unwise or indeed cruel it may have been.”