difficulty. Another wrong stone
is, I think, your view of the nature of the _sin_ and _error_ which is
supposed to grieve God. I take it that sin is an absolutely necessary
factor in the production of the perfect man. It was foreseen and allowed
as a means to an end--as in fact an _education_.

"The view of all the sin and misery in the world cannot grieve God, any
more than it can grieve you to see Digby fail in his first attempt to
build a card-castle or a rabbit-hutch. All is part of the training. God
looks at the ideal man to which all tends. The popular idea of the fall
is to me a very absurd one. There was never an ideal state in the past,
but there will be in the future. The Genesis allegory simply typifies the
first awakening of consciousness of good and evil--of two _wills_ in a
mind hitherto only animal-psychic.

"Well then--there being no occasion for grief in watching the progress of
his own perfect and unfailing plans--your difficulty in God's
impassibility vanishes. Christ, _qua_ God, was, of course, impassible
too. It seems to me that your position implies that God's 'designs' have
partially (at least) failed, and hence the grief of perfect benevolence.
Now I stoutly deny that any jot or tittle of God's plans can fail. I
believe in the ordering of all for the best. I think that the pain
consequent on broken law is only an inevitable necessity, over which we
shall some day rejoice.

"The indifference shown to God's love cannot pain Him. Why? because it is
simply a sign of defectiveness in the creature which the ages will
rectify. The being who is indifferent is not yet educated up to the point
of love. But he _will be_. The pure and holy suffering of Christ was
(pardon me) _wholly_ the consequence of his human nature. True it was
because of the _perfection_ of his humanity. But his Divinity had nothing
to do with it. It was his _human heart_ that broke. It was because he
entered a world of broken laws and of incomplete education that he became
involved in suffering with the rest of his race.....

"No, Mrs. Besant; I never feel at all inclined to give up the search, or
to suppose that the other side may be right. I claim no merit for it, but
I have an invincible faith in the morality of God and the moral order of
the world. I have no more doubt about the falsehood of the popular
theology than I have about the unreality of six robbers who attacked me
three nights ago in a horrid dream. I exult and rejoic