han the case of Keats--who, after all, had more joy of
the finest quality in his short life than most of us achieve. I mean the
cases of men and women with fine and sensitive instincts, who by being born
under base and down-trodden conditions are never able to get a taste of
clean, wholesome, and beautiful life at all--that's a much darker
problem."

"But how do you fit that into your theories of life at all?" said Vincent.

"Oh, it fits my theory of life well enough," said Father Payne. "You see, I
believe it to be a real battle, and not a sham fight. I believe in God as
the source of all the fine, beautiful, and free instincts, casting them
lavishly into the world, against a horribly powerful and relentless but
ultimately stupid foe. 'Who put the evil there?' you may say, 'and how did
it get there first?' Ah, I don't know that--that is the origin of evil. But
I don't believe that God put it there first, just for the interest of the
fight. I don't believe that He is responsible for waste--I think it is one
of the forces He is fighting. He pushes battalion after battalion to the
assault, and down they go. It's cruel work, but it isn't anything like so
cruel as to suppose that He arranged it all or even permitted it all. That
would indeed sicken and dishearten me. No, I believe that God never wastes
anything; but it's a fearful and protracted battle; and I believe that He
will win in the end. I read a case in the paper the other day of a little
child in a workhouse that had learnt a lot of infamous language, and cursed
and swore if it was given milk instead of beer or brandy. Am I to believe
that God was in any way responsible for putting a little child in that
position?--for allowing things to take shape so, if He could have checked
it? No, indeed! I do not believe in a God as helpless or as wicked as that!
There is something devilish there, for which He is not responsible, and
against which He is fighting as hard as He can."

"But doesn't heredity come in there?" said Vincent. "It isn't the child's
fault, and probably no amount of decent conditions would turn that child
into anything respectable."

"Yes," said Father Payne; "heredity is just one of the evil devices--but
don't you see the stupidity of it? It stops progress, but it also helps it
on--it hinders, but it also helps; and nothing in the world seems to me so
Divine as the way in which God is using and mastering heredity for good. It
multiplies evil, but it a