And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plaine,
Where first I left my glorious traine;
From whence th' inlightned spirit sees
That shady City of palme trees.

Whoever has thus gazed on flower or cloud; whoever can recall poorest
memory of the trail of glory that hung about his childhood, must have
some faint idea how his father's house and the things in it always
looked, and must still look to the Lord. With him there is no fading
into the light of common day. He has never lost his childhood, the very
essence of childhood being nearness to the Father and the outgoing of
his creative love; whence, with that insight of his eternal childhood of
which the insight of the little ones here is a fainter repetition, he
must see everything as the Father means it. The child sees things as the
Father means him to see them, as he thought of them when he uttered
them. For God is not only the father of the child, but of the childhood
that constitutes him a child, therefore the childness is of the divine
nature. The child may not indeed be capable of looking into the father's
method, but he can in a measure understand his work, has therefore free
entrance to his study and workshop both, and is welcome to find out what
he can, with fullest liberty to ask him questions. There are men too,
who, at their best, see, in their lower measure, things as they are--as
God sees them always. Jesus saw things just as his father saw them in
his creative imagination, when willing them out to the eyes of his
children. But if he could always see the things of his father even as
some men and more children see them at times, he might well feel
_almost_ at home among them. He could not cease to admire, cease to love
them. I say _love_, because the life in them, the presence of the
creative one, would ever be plain to him. In the Perfect, would