“The children of Satan.”
“Then how are they to be blamed for doing the deeds of their father?”
“You know very well what I mean! Satan did not make them. God made them, but they sinned and fell.”
“Then did God repudiate them?”
“Yes.”
“And they became the children of another?”
“Yes, of Satan.”
“Then God disowns his children, and when they are the children of another, adopts them? Miss Carmichael, it is too foolish! Would that be like a father? Because his children do not please him, he repudiates them altogether; and then he wants them again—not as his own, but as the children of a stranger, whom he will adopt! The original relationship is no longer of any force—has no weight even with their very own father! What ground could such a parent have to complain of his children?”
“You dare not say the wicked are the children of God the same as the good.”
“That be far from me! Those who do the will of God are infinitely more his children than those who do not; they are born of the innermost heart of God; they are then of the nature of Jesus Christ, whose glory is obedience. But if they were not in the first place, and in the most profound fact, the children of God, they could never become his children in that higher, that highest sense, by any fiction of adoption. Do you think if the devil could create, his children could ever become the children of God? But you and I, and every pharisee, publican, and sinner in the world, are equally the children of God to begin with. That is the root of all the misery and all the hope. Because we are his children, we must become his children in heart and soul, or be for ever wretched. If we ceased to be his, if the relation between us were destroyed, which is impossible, no redemption would be possible, there would be nothing left to redeem.”