For God is a God of truth; a true, a faithful, and—if I may so speak—an honest and honourable, and fair God: not a deceiving or unfair God, who lays snares for his creatures, or leads them into temptation. That would be a bad God, a cruel God, very unlike the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has put us into a good world, and not a wilderness, as some people call it. If any part of this world be a wilderness, it is because men have made it so, or left it so, by their own wilfulness, ignorance, cowardice, laziness, violence. No: God, I say, has put us into a good world, and given us pure and harmless appetites, feelings, relations. Therefore all the relations of life are holy. To be a husband, a father, a brother, a son, is pure and good. To have property and to use it: to enjoy ourselves in this life as far as we can, without hurting ourselves or our neighbours; all this is pure, and good, and holy. God does not grudge or upbraid. He does not frown upon innocent pleasure. For God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Therefore he rejoices in seeing his creatures healthy and happy. Therefore, as I believe, Christ smiles out of heaven upon the little children at their play; and the laugh of a babe is heavenly music in his ears. All things are pure which God has given to man. And therefore, if a man be pure in heart, all which God has given him will not only do him no harm, but do him good. All the comforts and blessings of this life will help to make him a better man. They will teach him about his own character; about human nature, and the people with whom he has to do; ay—about God himself, as it is written, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ All the blessings and comforts of this life, my friends (as well as the anxieties which must come to those who have a family, or property, even if he do not meet with losses and afflictions), ought to help to improve a man’s temper, to call out in him right feelings, to teach him more and more of the likeness of God. If he be a married man, marriage ought to teach him not to live for himself only, but to sacrifice his own fancies, his own ease, his own will, for the sake of the woman whom God has given him; as Christ sacrificed himself, and his own life, for mankind. And so, by the feelings of a husband, he may enter into the mystery of the love of Christ, and of the cross of Christ; and so, if only he be pure in heart, he will see God.