ed in all things like us, except in sinning.'" [Hebrews
4, verse 15, Vulgate version.]

"If one could see!" said the Earl, almost in a whisper.

"It would be easier, without doubt. Yet `blessed are they who see not,
and believe.' God can see. I would rather He saw and not I, than--if
such a thing were possible--that I saw and not He. Whether is better,
my Lord, that the father see the danger and guard the child without his
knowing anything, or that the child see it too, and have all the pain
and apprehension consequent upon the seeing? The blind has the
advantage, sometimes."

"Yet who would wish to be blind on that account?" answered the Earl,
quickly.

"No man could wish it, nor need he. Only, the blind man may take the
comfort of it."

"But you have not answered one point, Father. Why does God rouse
longings in our hearts which He never means to fulfil?"

"Does God rouse them?"

"Are they sin, then?"

"No," answered the Prior, slowly, as if he were thinking out the
question, and had barely reached the answer. "I dare not say that.
They are nature. Some, I know, would have all that is nature to be sin;
but I doubt if God treats it thus in His Word. Still, I question if He
raises those longings. He allows them. Man raises them."

"Does He never guide them?"

"Yes, that I think He does."

"Then the question comes to the same thing. Why does God not guide us
to long for the thing that He means to give us?"

"He very often does."

"Then," pursued the Earl, a little impatiently, "why does He not turn us
away from that which He does not intend us to have?"

"My Lord," said the Predicant, gravely, "from the day of his fall, man
has always been asking God _why_. He will probably go on doing it to
the day of the dissolution of all things. But I do not observe that God
has ever yet answered the question."

"It is wrong to ask it, then, I suppose," said the Earl, with a weary
sigh.

"It is not faith that wants to know why. `He that believeth hasteneth
not.' [Isaiah 28, verse 16, Vulgate version.] `What I do, thou knowest
not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.' [John 13 verse 7.] We can
afford to wait, my Lord."

"Easily enough," replied the Earl, with feeling, "if we knew it would
come right in the end."

"It will come as He would have it who laid down His life that you should
live for ever. Is that not enough for my Lord?"

Perhaps the Prince felt it enough. At all events, he gave