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290 who had again obliged herself to follow the discussion, now asked:

"Can we not demand from your ideas that they should heal the ills of the world, and make the sick and sorrowful whole and joyful!"

"I do not understand what you mean."

"I ask how, in your view of the creation, do you explain physical ill? That is, something actual? You have told us of the merry glass-polisher, Peter Blyning. How was the good man in fault that he should be doomed to shuffle along club-footed?"

"You confuse your questions so one with another that I must take the liberty of separating them. What consolation has the usual view of things for Peter Blyning? such as, 'Whom God loveth he chasteneth,' or 'We are here but candidates for a higher career.' The question still remains, Why should his candidature be made so difficult? Above, all will be set right for him, they say; but if he is to have two feet up there, he has not them here, and has much pain for want of them. The easiest way of shuffling off this question is to say, 'The ways of God are unfathomable;' that is, in other words, to let the question remain a question. But the solution of this problem lies in quite another direction. All ideas of perfection and imperfection, beauty and ugliness, like the final causes which we ascribe to nature, are not necessarily appropriate,