"Father, I don't affect to be better than other young men, yet I think I can safely say, that if I could get to heaven by playing the hypocrite I would not, while I have it in my choice to go thither by acquiring the virtues that would give me a resemblance to God. For to say nothing of the exceeding honour of acquiring even the faintest resemblance of him, nor yet of the immense happiness which it must afford hereafter, I find that even here, and young as I am, the least step towards it, affords a greater pleasure than any thing else; indeed I find that there is so much more pleasure in getting knowledge to resemble the Creator, than in living in ignorance to resemble brutes; so much more pleasure in benevolence and doing good to resemble him, than in hate and doing harm to resemble demons, that I hope I shall always have wisdom and fortitude sufficient even for my own sake, to spend my life in getting all the useful knowledge, and in doing all the little good I possibly can."
"God Almighty confirm my son in the wise resolutions which his grace has enabled him thus early to form!"
"Yes, father, and besides all this, when I look towards futurity; when I consider the nature of that felicity which exists in heaven; that it is a felicity flowing from the smiles of the Deity on those excellent spirits whom his own admonitions have adorned with the virtues that resemble himself; that the more perfect their virtues, the brighter will be his smiles upon them, with correspondent emanations of bliss that may, for aught we know, be for ever enlarged with their ever enlarging understandings and affections; I say, father, when I have it in my choice to attain to all this in a way so pleasant and honourable as that of imitating the Deity in wisdom and GOODNESS, should I not be worse than mad to decline it on such terms, and prefer substitutes that would tolerate me in ignorance and vice?"
"Yes, child, I think you would be mad indeed."
"Yes, father, especially when it is recollected, that if the ignorant and vicious could, with all their pains, find out substitutes that would serve as passports to heaven, they could not rationally expect a hearty welcome there. For as the Deity delights in the wise and good, because they resemble him in those qualities which render him so amiable and happy, and would render all his creatures so too; so he must proportionably abhor the stupid and vicious, because deformed with qualities diametrically opposite to his own, and tending to make both themselves and others most vile and miserable."
"This is awfully true, Ben; for the Bible tells us, that the wicked are an abomination to the Lord; but that the righteous are his delight."
"Yes, father, and this is the language not only of the Bible, which is, perhaps, the grand class book of the Deity, but it is also the language of his first or horn book, I mean reason, which teaches, that if 'there be a God, and that there is all nature cries aloud through all her works, he must delight in virtue,' because most clearly conducive to the perfection of mankind; which must be the chief aim and glory of the Deity in creating them. And for the same reason he must abhor vice, because tending to the disgrace and destruction of his creatures. Hence, father, I think it follows as clearly as a demonstration in mathematics, that if it were possible for bad men, through faith, imputed righteousness, or any other leaf-covering, to get to Paradise, so far from meeting with any thing like cordiality from the Deity, they would be struck speechless at sight of their horrible dissimilarity to him. For while he delights above all things in giving life, and the duellist glories in destroying it; while he delights in heaping his creatures with good things, and the gambler triumphs in stripping them; while he delights in seeing love and smiles among brethren, and the slanderer in promoting strifes and hatreds; while he delights in exalting the intellectual and moral faculties to the highest degree of heavenly wisdom and virtue, and the drunkard delights in polluting and degrading both below the brutes; what cordiality can ever subsist between such opposite natures? Can infinite purity and benevolence behold such monsters with complacency, or could they in his presence otherwise than be filled with intolerable pain and anguish, and fly away as weak-eyed owls from the blaze of the meridian sun?"
"Well, Ben, as I said before, I am richly rewarded for having drawn you into this conversation about religion; your language indeed is not always the language of the scriptures; neither do you rest your hopes, as I could have wished, on the Redeemer; but still your idea in placing our qualification for heaven in resembling God in moral goodness, is truly evangelical, and I hope you will one day become a great christian."
"I thank you, father, for your good wishes; but I am afraid I shall never be the christian you wish me to be."
"What, not a christian!"