l," you may say, "if that is so, what does it matter, then, what I
do? If disobedience or sin cannot make me less God's child, why should
I be good and obedient?" Because, dear heart, your conduct changes
your attitude towards Him. You might not know that I am your mother;
you might know it and choose to disobey my wishes; yet in both cases I
should still be your mother, and no more or less in one case than in
the other. But you will have no difficulty in understanding that in
one case you would be a loving, helpful, obedient daughter, a comfort
and delight to me; in the other, a disobedient, willful, unloving
daughter, a care and trouble.

We are God's children, each of us, dependent on His love and bounty
for protection, food, friends, intellect, even life. Is it dignified
and noble in us to ignore and disobey Him? Indeed the most worthy and
dignified thing we can do is to recognize ourselves as God's children
and be obedient. It is a wonderful glory to be a child of God. It
means that we have Godlike powers. The children of human parents are
like them in their capacities. Children of God must have capacities
that are Godlike.

This is true even of the most ignorant or degraded. They have in
themselves divine possibilities.

If you can get this thought fully engrafted into your consciousness,
it seems to me you can never willfully do wrong, can never condescend
to a mean or ignoble deed, because you recognize your divine
inheritance, and feel compelled by it to live truly, nobly.

Being children of God puts on us certain obligations towards Him, but
it also puts on God certain obligations towards us. "What!" you say;
"God the Infinite under obligations to man, the finite? The Creator
under obligations to the created?" Oh, yes.

We recognize the fact that human parents are under obligations to care
for their children, to protect them, to educate them, to give them
opportunities. Even such are the obligations of God towards His human
children, and He fulfills them. All our earthly blessings are from His
hand. Home, friends, shelter, food, are gifts of His love. He takes
such minute care of us that if for one second of time He would forget
us, we should be annihilated. He educates us. He does not send us away
to a boarding-school where we hear from Him but seldom, but He has a
home-school where He is both Father and Teacher, and His methods of
instruction are divinely wise.

The injudicious love of earthly parents