not indifferent to God? What so rare, even rarer
than the other, as to find one who actually loves him?

Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of destruction
are many, and those who go in at the narrow gate of life are few. For
destruction and life are but other terms for indifference to God on the
one hand, and love to him on the other. All who are indifferent to him,
die; a painless death of mere extinction, if, like the brute creation,
they have never been made capable of loving him; or a living death of
perpetual misery, if, like evil spirits and evil men, they might have
loved him and would not. And so all who love him, live a life, from
first to last, without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they
have loved him always; a life partaking at first of death, but
brightening more and more unto the perfect day, if, like Christians,
they were born in sin, but had been redeemed and sanctified to
righteousness.

Whoever has watched human character, whether in the young or the old,
must be well aware of the truth of this: he will know that the value of
any character is in proportion to the existence or to the absence of
this feeling, or rather, I should say, this principle. An exception may,
perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number of fanatics; an
apparent exception likewise exists in the case of many who seem to be
religious, but who really are not so. The few exceptions of the former
case are so very few, that we need not now stop to consider them, nor to
inquire how far even these would be exceptions if we could read the
heart as God reads it. The seeming exceptions being cases either of
hypocrisy, or of very common self-deceit, we need not regard either; for
they are, of course, no real objection to the truth of the general
statement. It remains true, then, generally, that the value of any
character is in proportion to the existence, or to the absence, in it of
the love of God.

But is there not another exception to be made for the case of children,
and of very young persons? Are they capable of loving God? and are not
their earthly relations, their parents especially, put to them, as it
were, in the place of God, as objects of trust, of love, of honour, of
obedience, till their minds can open to comprehend the love of their
Father who is in heaven? And does not the Scripture itself, in the few
places in which it seems directly to address children, content itself
with directing them