'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.' 'But what is the good of all you say, if the child is such that the father cannot take him to his heart?' 'Ah, indeed, I grant you, nothing!--so long as the child does not desire to be taken to the father's heart; but the moment he does, then it is everything to the child's heart that he should be indeed the child of him after whom his soul is thirsting. However bad I may be, I am the child of God, and therein lies my blame. Ah, I would not lose my blame! in my blame lies my hope. It is the pledge of what I am, and what I am not; the pledge of what I am meant to be, what I shall one day be, the child of God in spirit and in truth.' 'Then you dare to say the apostle is wrong in what he so plainly teaches?'