The Fisherman's Lady

I should not be surprised," said Mr. Graham, "that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, or a good being who could not help, but that there could not be a being both all good and omnipotent or else he would never have suffered things to be as they are.

A library cannot be made all at once, any more than a house or a nation or a tree; they must all take time to grow, and so must a library. I wouldn't even know what books to go and ask for. I dare say, if I were to try, I couldn't at a moment's notice tell you the names of more than two score of books at the outside. Folk must make acquaintance among books as they would among living folk.

...he believed in God and he believed that when the human is still, the Divine speaks to it, because it is its own.

The claim that hung over him haunted his very life, turning the currents of his thought into channels of speculation unknown before. One day when these questions were fighting in his heart, all at once it seemed as if a soundless voice in the depth of his soul replied, "Thy soul, however it became known to itself, is from the pure heart of God." And with the thought, the horizon of his life began to clear.

Do you really suppose God cares whether a man comes to good or ill?" "If He did not, He could not be good himself..." "...Then He can't be so hard on us as the parsons say, even in the after-life?" "He will give absolute justice, which is the only good thing. He will spare nothing to bring His children back to himself, their sole well-being, whether He achieve it here--or there.