hild, but of the childhood
that constitutes him a child, therefore the childness is of the divine
nature. The child may not indeed be capable of looking into the father's
method, but he can in a measure understand his work, has therefore free
entrance to his study and workshop both, and is welcome to find out what
he can, with fullest liberty to ask him questions. There are men too,
who, at their best, see, in their lower measure, things as they are--as
God sees them always. Jesus saw things just as his father saw them in
his creative imagination, when willing them out to the eyes of his
children. But if he could always see the things of his father even as
some men and more children see them at times, he might well feel
_almost_ at home among them. He could not cease to admire, cease to love
them. I say _love_, because the life in them, the presence of the
creative one, would ever be plain to him. In the Perfect, would
familiarity ever destroy wonder at things essentially wonderful because
essentially divine? To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the
childlike to the commonplace--the most undivine of all moods
intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not
wonderful to us.

Could we see things always as we have sometimes seen them--and as one
day we must always see them, only far better--should we ever know
dullness? Greatly as we might enjoy all forms of art, much as we might
learn through the eyes and thoughts of other men, should we fly to these
for deliverance from _ennui_, from any haunting discomfort? Should we
not just open our own child-eyes, look upon the things themselves, and
be consoled?

Jesus, then, would have his parents understand that he was in his
father's world among his father's things, where was nothing to hurt him;
he knew them all, was in the secret of them all, could use and order
them as did his father. To this same I think all we humans are destined
to rise. Though so many of us now are ignorant what kind of home we
need, what a home we are capable of having, we too shall inherit the
earth with the Son eternal, doing with it as we would--willing with the
will of the Father. To such a home as we now inhabit, only perfected,
and perfectly beheld, we are travelling--never to reach it save by the
obedience that makes us the children, therefore the heirs of God. And,
thank God! there the father does not die that the children may inherit;
for, bliss of heaven! we in