"Yes, as you was sayin', wife, an' I knows as you're always in the right, if the right be anyhows to be got at--as you was sayin', I say, there's no sayin' when that same as we was a speakin' of--the Almighty is the man I mean--no sayin', I say, when he may come to see as we have, as I may say, had enough on it, an' turn an' let us have a taste o' luck again! Luck's sweet; an' some likes, an' it may be as he likes to give his childer a taste o' sweets now an' again, just as you and me, that is when we can afford it, an' that's not often, likes to give ourn a bull's-eye or a suck of toffy. I don't doubt _he_ likes to see us enj'yin' of ourselves just as well as we like to see our little uns enj'yin' o' _theirselves!_--It stands to reason, wife--don't it?" "So it do seem to me, John!" answered the mother. "Well," said Franks, apparently, now that he had taken up the defence of the ways of the Supreme with men, warming to his subject, "I dessay he do the best he can, an' give us as much luck as is good for us. Leastways that's how the rest of us do, wife! We can't allus do as well as we would like for to do for our little uns, but we _always_, in general, does the best we can. It may take time--it may take time even with all the infl'ence _he_ has, to get the better o' things as stands in _his_ way! We'll suppose yet a while, anyhow, as how he's a lookin' arter us. It can't be for nothink as he counts the hairs on our heads--as the sayin' is!--though for my part I never could see what good there was in it. But if it ain't for somethink, why it's no more good than the census, which is a countin' o' the heads theirselves." There are, or there used to be when I was a boy, who, in their reverence for the name of the Most High, would have shown horror at the idea that he could not do anything or everything in a moment as it pleased him, but would not have been shocked at all at the idea that he might not please to give this or that man any help. In their eyes power was a grander thing than love, though it is nowhere said in the Book that God is omnipotence. Such, because they are told that he is omnipotent, call him Omnipotence; when told that he is Love, do not care to argue that he must then be loving? But as to doing what he wills with a word--see what it cost him to redeem the world! He did not find that easy, or to be done in a moment without pain or toil. Yea, awfully omnipotent is God. For he wills, effects and perfects the thing which, because of the bad in us, he has to carry out in suffering and sorrow, his own and his Son's Evil is a hard thing for God himself to overcome. Yet thoroughly and altogether and triumphantly will he overcome it; and that not by crushing it underfoot--any god of man's idea could do that!--but by conquest of heart over heart, of life in life, of life over death. Nothing shall be too hard for the God that fears not pain, but will deliver and make true and blessed at his own severest cost.