A poor unsuspecting clergyman (a Dr. Grosart) wrote to Thomas Hardy and asked his opinion on how the horrors of life could be reconciled with God’s goodness. He obviously expected a sympathetic ear, or at least a concession to his point of view that these things COULD be reconciled. Hardy replied, in the chilly third person:
Mr. Hardy regrets that he is unable to offer any hypothesis which would reconcile the existence of such evils as Dr. Grosart describes with the idea of omnipotent goodness. Perhaps Dr. Grosart might be helped to a provisional view of the universe by the recently published Life of Darwin and the works of Herbert Spencer and other agnostics.
Ahhhh. It satisfies me more with each and every reading.
That might be my favorite blog post title ever.
hahaha Poor melancholy man. But I do love his writing so.