he doubts whether you know the existence. So the smile seemed tightened, and stopped just when it got half-way to its width, and was about to become hearty and begin to shine.
“May I come in?” I said.
“Come in, sir,” he answered.
“I am glad I have happened to come upon you by accident,” I said.
He smiled as if he did not quite believe in the accident, and considered it a part of the play between us that I should pretend it. I hastened to add—
“I was wandering about the place, making some acquaintance with it, and with my friends in it, when I came upon you quite unexpectedly. You know I saw you in church on Sunday afternoon.”
“I know you saw me, sir,” he answered, with a motion as if to return to his work; “but, to tell the truth, I don’t go to church very often.”
I did not quite know whether to take this as proceeding from an honest fear of being misunderstood, or from a sense of being in general superior to all that sort of thing. But I felt that it would be of no good to pursue the inquiry directly. I looked therefore for something to say.
“Ah! your work is not always a pleasant one,” I said, associating the feelings of which I have already spoken with the facts before me, and looking at the coffin, the lower part of which stood nearly finished upon trestles on the floor.
“Well, there are unpleasant things in all trades,” he answered. “But it does not matter,” he added, with an increase of bitterness in his smile.
“I didn’t mean,” I said, “that the work was unpleasant—only sad. It must always be painful to make a coffin.”
“A joiner gets used to it, sir, as you do to the funeral service. But, for my part, I don’t see why it should be considered so unhappy for a man to be buried. This isn’t such a good job, after all, this world, sir, you must allow.”
“Neither is that coffin,” said I, as if by a sudden inspiration.
The man seemed taken aback, as Old Rogers might have said. He looked at the coffin and then looked at me.
“Well, sir,” he said, after a short pause, which no doubt seemed longer both to him and to me than it would have seemed to any third person, “I don’t see anything amiss with the coffin. I don’t say it’ll last till doomsday, as the gravedigger says to Hamlet, because I don’t know so much about doomsday as some people pretend to; but you see, sir, it’s not finished yet.”
“Thank you,” I said; “that’s just what I meant. You thought I was hasty in my judgment of your coffin; whereas I only said of it knowingly what you said of the world thoughtlessly. How do you know that the world is finished anymore than your coffin? And how dare you then say that it is a bad job?”
The same respectfully scornful smile passed over his face, as much as to say, “Ah! it’s your trade to talk that way, so I must not be too hard upon you.”
“At any rate, sir,” he said, “whoever made it has taken long enough about it, a person would think, to finish anything he ever meant to finish.”
“One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” I said.
“That’s supposing,” he answered, “that the Lord did make the world. For my part, I am half of a mind that the Lord didn’t make it at all.”
“I am very glad to hear you say so,” I answered.
Hereupon I found that we had changed places a little. He looked up at me. The smile of superiority was no longer there, and a puzzled questioning, which might indicate either “Who would have expected that from you?” or, “What can he mean?” or both at once, had taken its place. I, for my part, knew that on the scale of the man’s judgment I had risen nearer to his own level. As he said nothing, however, and I was in danger of being misunderstood, I proceeded at once.
“Of course it seems to me better that you should not believe God had done a thing, than that you should believe He had not done it well!”
“Ah! I see, sir. Then you will allow there is some room for doubting whether He made the world at all?”
“Yes; for I do not think an honest man, as you seem to me to be, would be able to doubt without any room whatever. That would be only for a fool. But it is just possible, as we are not perfectly good ourselves—you’ll allow that, won’t you?”
“That I will, sir; God knows.”
“Well, I say—as we’re not quite good ourselves, it’s just possible that things may be too good for us to do them the justice of believing in them.”
“But there are things, you must allow, so plainly wrong!”
“So much so, both in the world and in myself, that it would be to me torturing despair to believe that God did not make the world; for then, how would it ever be put right? Therefore I prefer the theory that He has not done making it yet.”
“But wouldn’t you say, sir, that God might have managed it without so many slips in the making as your way would suppose? I should think myself a bad workman if I worked after that fashion.”
“I do not believe that there are any slips. You know you are making a coffin; but are you sure you know what God is making of the world?”
“That I can’t tell, of course, nor anybody else.”
“Then you can’t say that what looks like a slip is really a slip, either in the design or in the workmanship. You do not know what end He has in view; and you may find some day that those slips were just the straight road to that very end.”
“Ah! maybe. But you can’t be sure of it, you see.”
“Perhaps not, in the way you mean; but sure enough, for all that, to try it upon life—to order my way by it, and so find that it works well. And I find that it explains everything that comes near it. You know that no engineer would be satisfied with his engine on paper, nor with any proof whatever except seeing how it will go.”
He made no reply.
It is a principle of mine never to push anything over the edge. When I am successful, in any argument, my one dread is of humiliating my opponent. Indeed I cannot bear it. It humiliates me. And if you want him to think about anything, you must leave him room, and not give him such associations with the question that the very idea of it will be painful and irritating to him. Let him have a hand in the convincing of himself. I have been surprised sometimes to see my own arguments come up fresh and green, when I thought the fowls of the air had devoured them up. When a man reasons for victory and not for the truth in the other soul, he is sure of just one ally, the same that Faust had in fighting Gretchen’s brother—that is, the Devil. But God and good men are against him. So I never follow up a victory of that kind, for, as I said, the defeat of the intellect is not the object in fighting with the sword of the Spirit, but the acceptance of the heart. In this case, therefore, I drew back.
“May I ask for whom you are making that coffin?”
“For a sister of my own, sir.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“There’s no occasion. I can’t say I’m sorry, though she was one of the best women I ever
