Childlike Love

"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew 18:3

Again, the child LOVES his father. The evidences of this are constantly exhibited. He rejoices with his father's joy, and weeps with his father's sorrow. The slightest injury to his father's honor is felt as an injury to his own. The true child would not hesitate to die for its father or mother, if the occasion presented. And this strong and permanent love is not a matter of calculation, but a nature.  It is born with him, grows with him, lives with him. Blows will not beat it down; waters will not drown it; fires will not burn it.

At  his first creation, man's love to his heavenly Father was like this, — a love implanted by a divine power and kept in operation by a divine presence. He afterwards lost it, it is true; but he could not have lost it, if he had not first possessed it. As a moral being, man allowed, and perhaps we may say, was expected and required, to sanction the principles and methods of his inward vitality, by his own voluntary concurrence. Failing to do this, in a way and under circumstances which the human mind does not now perhaps fully understand, God withdrew himself as the central element of his being; and he became from that time the subject of spiritual alienation and death. But in his restoration to God through Christ, he is necessarily restored to the possession of that divine nature from which he fell. As he is made anew in faith and knowledge, so he is made anew in love. The lost principle of holy love is not only restored, but becomes again, under the transforming operations of divine grace, what it was in the beginning, namely, a nature, —  an operative life, moved by a power of movement existing in itself. In other words, it once more becomes in relation to God what the child's love is in relation to its earthly father.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 5, Chapter 8.

Childlike Knowledge

"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew 18:3.

Again, it is natural to the child to look up to the Father, and to be guided by him in matters of KNOWLEDGE. It is an established principle, in the philosophy of the human mind, that knowledge is and must be preceded by faith.

 It is impossible for us, in the very nature of things, to accept as our teacher a being in whom we have no confidence. Faith, extending to all things which are its appropriate objects, is first given to the child as an inherent and essential part of his nature. Then, under the influence of that filial confidence which leads him to look to his parents for everything else, it is natural to him (and it would be against nature to do otherwise) to look for and to receive his intellectual guidance from the same parental source. We have evidence of this original and natural tendency of the mind in what we notice every day, every hour. By a law of nature, the mind of the father becomes the mind of the child.

It was in this manner that man, at his first creation, recognized God as his teacher. He believed in God, and received him constantly as a source of inward inspiration. God was his knowledge. Such was the state of things before he fell. And such will always be the state of things, whenever, in being united with God, he is brought back to the simplicity and purity of his estate.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 5, Chapter 8.

Childlike Faith

"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." — Matthew 18:3

The earthly child, in its relations to its earthly father, is the representation, the earthly development, if we may so express it, of the relations of the child of God to his Father in heaven.

And this is seen, in the first place, in the matter of FAITH. It is very obvious, in regard to the faith which the earthly child has in its earthly parent, that it is a faith given, a faith implanted.  The filial confidence which it exhibits is not something which the child makes himself; nor is it, as some seem to suppose, the result of experience; but is innate. God himself is the giver of it. Implanted by the divine hand, and operating instinctively, the faith of the child is seen in the earliest movements of its infancy. And ever afterwards, in the various situations in which the child is placed, it retains all the attributes and exhibits all the results of an implanted or connatural principle; so much so, that, to withhold confidence from a father or mother, we all feel to be doing that which is a violation of nature.

And such precisely was the character of the faith which man possessed in his heavenly Father before he fell.

 The first man was created in the possession of faith. He could not have been created in any other way. To believe in God was a nature to him; just as we find, at the present time, that it is natural for the child to place confidence in its earthly parent. And in the full restoration of man to God, (a restoration for which provision is made in the coming and atonement of Christ, and in the renewing agency of the Holy Spirit,) the principle of faith will be re-established, not merely as a variable exercise of the mind originating in the will, but as a permanent element or nature of the mind existing in harmony with the will, and with the  will's  consent. And those who are thus restored will become, in respect to their faith, "little children."

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union Part 5, Chapter 8.

Jesus' Illustration of the Little Children

One of the striking incidents in the history of our Savior is the notice which he takes of little children. "And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them; and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God." Mark 10: 13, 14. And again it is said in Matthew [Matthew 18: 3], "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

Taking all the various passages which may be found on this subject, we may properly deduce from them the following general proposition, namely: It is necessary to possess and to exhibit towards our heavenly Father such dispositions, both in kind and degree, as exist in the minds of children towards their earthly parents.

The analogy between the two cases is very striking; and it was the clear perception of its closeness, and of the beautiful and important instruction involved in it, which seems to have so much interested the Savior’s mind. As he looked upon little children, he perceived that they felt towards their earthly fathers very much as he felt towards his own Father in heaven; and, with such a striking illustration before him of what he experienced in his own bosom, he could not fail to be interested.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 5, Chapter 8.

Oh Love! Thou Day-Star of My Heart!

Oh love! thou day-star of my heart!
Ascend upon thy throne!
Victor and lord, where' er thou art, 

To all within the power impart,
Of life to God alone.

Such is the magic of thy sway
Upon the holy mind;
That sin, all powerless in thy ray,
Departs, as night-shades flee the day,
And leaves no cloud behind.

My soul was dark in other years;
The stain was on my brow;
And something whispers to my fears
The loss of all but sin and tears,
If thou should'st leave me  now.

But fears are gone, and tears are bright,
Lit with the beams of love:
There is no sin, nor grief, nor night,
To him, whose inmost soul is light
With radiance from above.

— American Cottage Life (1850).

How Happy Is the Peaceful Breast

How happy is the peaceful breast,
No agitating strife that knows; —
Through which the stream of holy rest
In one unbroken current flows?

To few, alas, that rest is given; —
And who can claim it as his own,
But he, who makes his heart a heaven,
And seats Jehovah on its throne.

Jehovah! Sovereign of the soul!
He has no throne but that within;
And grief and strife can ne'er control,
Where God destroys the reign of sin.

'Tis sin, that agitates the mind,
While sorrow, like the clouded sky,
Illumin'd soon, leaves nought behind,
But fields of light and purity.

— American Cottage Life (1850).

The Thorny Diadem

Oh, breathe not to my soul the name
Of joys that bear the mark of earth;
What bond or likeness can they claim
With souls that have a heavenly birth?

Like snows, that melt beneath the sun,
Like flowers thrown heedless on the river,
They shine a moment, then are gone,
A moment here, then flown forever.

Oh no! We cannot stop for them;
Not joys, not crowns would suit us now;
We ask the thorny diadem
Which bound the Savior's bleeding brow.

— American Cottage Life (1850).

Power of Holy Love

The  soul, that loves Thee, cannot fear;
Terror is conquer'd by desire;
For Thee it leaves each object here,
And seeks Thee with its wing of fire.

Rejecting pleasure, hating rest,
It counts for loss its highest gain,
Till of its Lord once more possess'd,
With Thee it lives, with Thee doth reign.

See how the things of lower birth,
How joy and care perplex its way!
It spurns them, as it spurns the earth,
And upward seeks the realms of day.

One object occupies its gaze;
No other can it seek or see;
Till plunging in the central blaze,
It finds itself at home with Thee.

— American Cottage Life (1850)

God Present But Not Felt

God is not a God afar off. He is ever present, ever near. But how can he be near us, and not be known? How can he be present, and not be felt? It is because we have blocked up the door of our hearts with the rubbish of the world. It is because the visitant is more ready than the host. It is he, and he only, who is willing to clear the door of entrance, that will find the divine glory coming in.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CV.

Learning to Pray Anywhere

Often amid the duties and distractions of the day, it is impossible for us to visit our usual place of retirement. It is important, therefore, if we would realize the benefits of closet worship when our closets are necessarily closed to us, that we should form the habit of interior retirement and of recollection in God. Can it be doubted, that it is our privilege by means of suitable religious training, accompanied with divine assistance, to remove in a moment every troublesome thought; and retiring inward, to hold communion with God in the secret chamber of the soul? Thus in everyplace, however disturbed by noise and perplexed by business, we may find a place of inward seclusion, a spiritual closet,  where God will meet us with his heavenly visitations.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CIV.