"But," said Rose, "what you say kind of frightens me, Mr. Talmadge. If we can't ever see God, even in Heaven, how can we be sure that He is?"
"Have you ever seen ... love?" queried the minister softly.
"No, sir."
"Yet you know that it is. You've never seen, tasted, touched or smelled thought, but you know that it exists. In the same mysterious way we know, and we shall know more perfectly hereafter, that the Great Spirit—I've always loved that beautiful Indian expression—is."
"Yes," she said, somewhat uncertainly. "I think that I understand. But it's powerful hard to understand how I can be His little child if He isn't a person."
"I don't wonder that it puzzles you, dear. It is hard for even the oldest of us to try to imagine something entirely different from what we have actually seen with our mortal eyes, and we can hardly conceive of a spirit, or even a ghost, as something without some sort of a form, even though it be a very misty one. But the real you isn't the flesh that we can see and touch, but the spirit that dwells inside, and, just as some of your earthly father and mother is in your body, so you have something of God within you, which was given you at birth. We call it ..."
"My soul."
"Yes. And as that was part of Him you are His child ... so are we all—spiritual children."
"And Jesus? Was He His son in the same way?" whispered the girl.
"Exactly, only to a far greater degree than we can hope to be, for to Him the Heavenly Father gave His spirit in fuller measure than He ever had before to mankind, so that He might set an example to the world and teach us the way we should try to live."