The chief character of right childhood is to be Loving. Give a little love to a child and you get a great deal back. It loves everything near it, when it is a right kind of a child; would hurt nothing, would give away the best it has always if you need it, does not lay plans for getting everything in the house for itself and delights in helping people; you cannot please it so much as by giving it a chance of being useful in ever so humble a way.
“For such is the kingdom of heaven.”
“Except ye be converted and become as little children.”
It is no conversion to long faces or Superstition which can save you.
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Backsliding: —
Slide back into the cradle if going on is death.
The Bible is a Book of “types.” Why should God say one thing and mean another? What is the necessity of equivocating on His part like the Oracles of Greece and Rome?
Is it gentlemanly to confound people for two thousand years and then tell them the real meaning was not what his words conveyed like…?
A Revelation (or Law) ought to be clear.
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What we like determines what we are and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.
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Taste is not only a part and an index of morality, it is the only morality.
The first and last and closest trial question to any living creature is “What do you like?” Tell me what you like and I will tell you what you are.
Acts do not constitute morality.
That man is not in the health of body who is always thinking of the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst, but the man who heartily quenches his thirst at the right time.