“It is another difficulty. They, again, are outside of your world; they have place in the moral kingdom only. You have no morals.”
“What are morals?”
“A system of law which distinguishes between right and wrong, good morals and bad. These things do not exist for you. I cannot make it clear; you would not understand.”
“But try.”
“Well, obedience to constituted authority is a moral law. Suppose Adam should forbid you to put your child in the river and leave it there overnight--would you put the child there?”
She answered with a darling simplicity and guilelessness:
“Why, yes, if I wanted to.”
“There, it is just as I said--you would not know any better; you have no idea of duty, command, obedience; they have no meaning for you. In your present estate you are in no possible way responsible for anything you do or say or think. It is impossible for you to do wrong, for you have no more notion of right and wrong than the other animals have. You and they can do only right; whatever you and they do is right and innocent. It is a divine estate, the loftiest and purest attainable in heaven and in earth. It is the angel gift. The angels are wholly pure and sinless, for they do not know right from wrong, and all the acts of such are blameless. No one can do wrong without knowing how to distinguish between right and wrong.”
“Is it an advantage to know?”
“Most certainly not! That knowledge would remove all that is divine, all that is angelic, from the angels, and immeasurably degrade them.”