"
"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?"
"Yes--if he was not good--and so I could not trust him. If he said I
was to do one kind of thing, and he did another kind of thing
himself, then of course I could not have faith in him."
"And yet you might feel you must do what he told you!"
"Yes.
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