world who can deprive them of this right or dispossess them of this inheritance, because it is a portion descended from heaven and not a transferable possession.[1]
17. Sixthly, although gold and silver are gifts of God, yet they are not such gifts as those to which He has promised an angelic guardianship from heaven; nay, Satan mostly intermingles himself with gold and silver so as to use them as nets and snares to entangle the unwary, drawing them as it were with thongs, to avarice, haughtiness, and prodigality; whereas the care of little children is always committed to angelic guardianship, as the Lord himself testifies. Hence he who has children within his house, may be certain that he has therein the presence of angels; he who takes little children in his arms may be assured that he takes angels; whosoever, surrounded with midnight darkness, rests beside an infant, may enjoy the certain consolation that with it he is so protected that the spirit of darkness cannot have access. How great the importance of these things!
18. Seventhly, gold, silver, and other external things do not procure for us the love of God, nor, as children do, defend us from His anger; for God so loves children, that for their sake He occasionally pardons parents; Nineveh affords an example, inasmuch as because there were many children therein, God spared the parents from being swallowed up in the threatened judgment.[2]
19. Eighthly, human life does not consist in abundance of wealth, as our Lord says, since without God’s blessings
- ↑ Horace Mann asks: “Whoever saw a wretch so heathenish, so dead, that the merry song or shout of a group of gleeful children did not galvanize the misanthrope into an exclamation of joy? What orator or poet has eloquence that enters the soul with such quick and subtle electricity as a child's tears of pity for suffering or his frown of indignation at wrong?”
- ↑ Jonah iv. 11.
