“But what if it was just that suffering that made the man think there could not be a God?”

“That looks to me very close to believing in God.”

“How do you conclude that?”

“If a man believed in a God that did not heed the suffering of the creation, one who made men and women and beasts knowing that they must suffer—and went on believing such however you tried to make him think about it, I should say to him, ‘You believe in a devil, and so are in the way to become a devil yourself.’ A thousand times rather would I believe that there was no God, and that the misery came by chance from which there was no escape. What I do believe is, that there is a God who is even now doing his best to take all men and all beasts out of the misery in which they find themselves.”

“But why did he let them come into it?”

“That God will tell them, to their satisfaction, as soon as they shall have become capable of understanding it. There must be things so entirely beyond our capacity, that we cannot now see enough of them to be able even to say that they are incomprehensible. There must be millions of truths that have not yet risen above the horizon of what we call the finite.”

“Then you would not think a person wicked, for not believing in a God?”

“That depends on the sort of God he fancied himself asked to believe in. Would you call a Greek philosopher wicked for not believing in Mercury or Venus? If a man had the same notion of God that I have, or anything like it, and did not at least desire that there might be such a God, then I confess I should have difficulty in understanding how he could be good. But the God offered him might not be worth believing in. It might even be such that it was virtuous to refuse to believe in him.”

“One thing more, Mr. Wingfold—and you must not think I am arguing against you or against God—tell me, mightn’t a man think the idea of such a God as you believe in, too good to be true?”