'It avails nothing to answer that we lost our birthright by the fall. I do not care to argue that _I_ did not fall when Adam fell; for I have fallen many a time, and there is a shadow on my soul which I or another may call a curse; I cannot get rid of a something that always intrudes between my heart and the blue of every sky. But it avails nothing, either for my heart or their argument, to say I have fallen and been cast out: can any repudiation, even that of God, undo the facts of an existent origin? Nor is it merely that he made me: by whose power do I go on living? When he cast me out, as you say, did I then begin to draw my being from myself--or from the devil? In whom do I live and move and have my being? It cannot be that I am not the creature of God.'
'But creation is not fatherhood.'
'Creation in the image of God, is. And if I am not in the image of God, how can the word of God be of any meaning to me? "He called them gods to whom the word of God came," says the Master himself. To be fit to receive his word implies being of his kind. No matter how his image may have been defaced in me: the thing defaced is his image, remains his defaced image--an image yet that can hear his word. What makes me evil and miserable is, that the thing spoiled in me is the image of the Perfect. Nothing can be evil but in virtue of a good hypostasis. No, no! nothing can make it that I am not the child of God. If one say, "Look at the animals: God made them: you do not call them the children of God!" I answer: "But I am to blame; they are not to blame! I cling fast to my blame: it is the seal of my childhood." I have nothing to argue from in the animals, for I do not understand them. Two things only I am sure of: that God is to them "a faithful creator;" and that the sooner I put in force my claim to be a child of God, the better for them; for they too are fallen, though without blame.'
'But you are evil: how can you be a child of the Good?'
'Just as many an evil son is the child of a good parent.'
'But in him you call a good parent, there yet lay evil, and that accounts for the child being evil.'
'I cannot explain. God let me be born through evil channels. But in whatever manner I may have become an unworthy child, I cannot thereby have ceased to be a child of God--his child in the way that a child must ever be the child of the man of whom he comes. Is it not proof-- this complaint of my heart at the word _Adoption_? Is it not the spirit of the child, crying out, "Abba, Father"?'
'Yes; but that is the spirit of adoption; the text says so.'
'Away with your adoption! I could not even be adopted if I were not such as the adoption could reach--that is, of the nature of God. Much as he may love him, can a man adopt a dog? I must be of a nature for the word of God to come to--yea, so far, of the divine nature, of the image of God! Heartily do I grant that, had I been left to myself, had God dropped me, held no communication with me, I could never have thus cried, never have cared when they told me I was not a child of God. But he has never repudiated me, and does not now desire to adopt me. Pray, why should it grieve me to be told I am not a child of God, if I be not a child of God? If you say--Because you have learned to love him, I answer--Adoption would satisfy the love of one who was not but would be a child; for me, I cannot do without a father, nor can any adoption give me one.'