One of the prime terrors of religion is the thought of the heavy-
handed, unintelligent, tiresome men who would make it a monopoly if
they could, and bear it triumphantly away from the hands of modest,
humble, quiet, and tender-hearted people, chiding them as nebulous
optimists.
Who are the people in this short life of ours whom one remembers
with deep and abiding gratitude? Not those who have rebuked, and
punished, and satirised, and humiliated us, striking down the
stricken, and flattening the prostrate--but the people who have
been patient with us, and kind, who have believed in us, and
comforted us, and welcomed us, and forgiven us everything; who have
given us largely of their love, who have lent without requiring
payment, who have given us emotional rather than prudential
reasons, who have cared for us, not as a duty but by some divine
instinct, who have made endless excuses for us, believing that the
true self was there and would emerge, who have pardoned our
misdeeds and forgotten our meannesses.
This is what I would believe of God--that He is not our censorious
and severe critic, but our champion and lover, not loving us in
spite of what we are, but because of what we are; Who in the days
of our strength rejoices in our joy, and does not wish to
overshadow it, like the conscientious human mentor, with
considerations that we must yet be withered like grass; and Who,
when the youthful ebullience dies away, and the spring grows weak,
and we wonder why the zest has died out of simple pleasures, out of
agreeable noise and stir, is still with us, reminding us that the
wisdom we are painfully and surely gaining is a deeper and more
lasting quality than even the hot impulses of youth.
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