“It is a lovely idea,” said Christopher heartily. “One of my hopes is to build a small hospital for children in some lovely place, near some sad, ugly one. But I am in no hurry. Nothing worth calling good can or ever will be started full grown. The essential of any good is life, and the very body of created life, and essential to it, is growth. Small beginnings with slow growings need time to root themselves thoroughly—I do not mean in place nor yet in social regard, but in wisdom. Such even prosper by failures, for their failures are not too great to be rectified. God’s beginnings are imperceptible, whether in the region of soul or of matter.

“Besides, I believe in no good done except in people—by personal operative presence of soul, body and spirit. God is the one only person, and it is our personality alone, so far as we have any, that can work with God’s perfect personality. God can use us as tools, but to be a tool of, is not to be a fellow-worker with. How the devil would have laughed at the idea of a society for saving the world! But when he saw one take it in hand, one who was in no haste even to do that, one who would only do the will of God with all his heart and soul, and cared for nothing else, then indeed he might tremble for his kingdom!

“It is the individual Christians forming the church by their obedient individuality, that have done all the good done since men for the love of Christ began to gather together. It is individual fervour alone that can combine into larger flame. There is no true power but that which has individual roots. Neither custom nor habit nor law nor foundation is a root. The real roots are individual conscience that hates evil, individual faith that loves and obeys God, individual heart with its kiss of charity.”

“I think I understand you. I am sure I do in part, at least,” said Hester

They had unconsciously walked twice around the square as they talked, and had now a third time reached the house. He went in with her and saw his patient, then went home to an evening with his Greek New Testament.

—Thirty-Eight —

An Arrangement

Second causes are God’s as much as first, and Christ made use of them as his father’s way. It would be a sad world indeed if God’s only means of making his presence known was interference, that is, miracle. The roundabout common ways of things are just as much his as the straight, miraculous ones—I incline to think more his, in the sense that they are plainly the ways he prefers. In all things that are, he is present—even in the evil we bring into the world, to foil it and bring good out of it. We are always disbelieving in him because things do not go as we intend and desire them to go. We forget that God has larger ends, even for us, than we can see, so his plans do not fit ours. If God were not only to hear our prayers, as he does ever and always, but to answer them as we want them answered, he would not be God our Saviour, but the ministering genius of our destruction.