It is to learn to love them in a far higher, deeper, tenderer, truer way than before--a way which keeps all that was genuine in the former way, and loses all that was false. We shall love _their_ selves, and disregard our own. I do not forget the word of the Lord about _hating father and mother_: I have a glimpse of the meaning of it, but dare not attempt explaining it now. It is all against the self--not against the father and mother. There is another kind of forsaking that may fall to the lot of some, and which they may find very difficult: the forsaking of such notions of God and his Christ as they were taught in their youth--which they held, nor could help holding, at such time as they began to believe--of which they have begun to doubt the truth, but to cast which away seems like parting with every assurance of safety. There are so-called doctrines long accepted of good people, which how any man can love God and hold, except indeed by fast closing of the spiritual eyes, I find it hard to understand. If a man care more for opinion than for life, it is not worth any other man's while to persuade him to renounce the opinions he happens to entertain; he would but put other opinions in the same place of honour--a place which can _belong_ to no opinion whatever: it matters nothing what such a man may or may not believe, for he is not a true man. By holding with a school he supposes to be right, he but bolsters himself up with the worst of all unbelief--opinion calling itself faith--unbelief calling itself religion. But for him who is in earnest about the will of God, it is of endless consequence that he should think rightly of God. He cannot come close to him, cannot truly know his will, while his notion of him is in any point that of a false god. The thing shows itself absurd. If such a man seem to himself to be giving up even his former assurance of salvation, in yielding such ideas of God as are unworthy of God, he must none the less, if he will be true, if he would enter into life, take up that cross also. He will come to see that he must follow _no_ doctrine, be it true as word of man could state it, but the living Truth, the Master himself.