The Gift or the Giver?

A parent, who loves an obedient and affectionate child, will sometimes give him a picture book, a musical instrument, or some other thing, as  a token of his confidence and love. But if the parent should find the child so much taken up with the picture book as to forget the parental commands, and to be getting into ways of disobedience, he will take it away. And thus God sometimes imparts especial spiritual consolations to his children; but if he finds them, as he sometimes does, more taken up with the joys he gives than they are with himself and his commands, he will remove them. And he does it in great mercy. It is certainly better to lose the gift than to be deprived of the Giver; to lose our consolations, than to lose our God.

— Religious Maxims (1846) LXXXI.