Part 45 (2/2)
”Tell me how I should be unlike myself. Think.”
”You would not be reasonable.”
”What would you say to me?”
”I should say, 'Please, sir, let me learn the proposition first, and then I shall be able to admire it. I don't know it yet!'”
”Very good!--Now again, suppose, when you tried to learn it, you were not able to do so, and therefore could see no beauty in it--should I blame you?”
”No, sir; I am sure you would not--because I should not be to blame, and it would not be fair; and you never do what is not fair!”
”I am glad you think so: I try to be fair.--That looks as if you believed in me, Davie!”
”Of course I do, sir!”
”Why?”
”Just because you are fair.”
”Suppose, Davie, I said to you, 'Here is a very beautiful thing I should like you to learn,' and you, after you had partly learned it, were to say 'I don't see anything beautiful in this: I am afraid I never shall!'--would that be to believe in me?”
”No, surely, sir! for you know best what I am able for.”
”Suppose you said, 'I daresay it is all as good as you say, but I don't care to take so much trouble about it,'--what would that be?”
”Not to believe in you, sir. You would not want me to learn a thing that was not worth my trouble, or a thing I should not be glad of knowing when I did know it.”
”Suppose you said, 'Sir, I don't doubt what you say, but I am so tired, I don't mean to do anything more you tell me,'--would you then be believing in me?”
”No. That might be to believe your word, but it would not be to trust you. It would be to think my thinks better than your thinks, and that would be no faith at all.”
Davie had at times an oddly childish way of putting things.
”Suppose you were to say nothing, but go away and do nothing of what I told you--what would that be?”
”Worse and worse; it would be sneaking.”
”One question more: what is faith--the big faith I mean--not the little faith between equals--the big faith we put in one above us?”
”It is to go at once and do the thing he tells us to do.”
”If we don't, then we haven't faith in him?”
”No; certainly not.”
”But might not that be his fault?”
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