Charlotte Mason on Theology "In Her Own Words"

Theology, divinity, the knowledge of God, by whatever name we call it, is a sphere in which, more than any other, we must needs be ruled by the instructed conscience; and yet we are apt to think, as do the children, that God requires us to be good, and punishes us when we are bad; and this is all we care to know about religion: we leave out of count that knowledge of God which, we have it on the authority of Christ himself,'is eternal life.'

Perhaps it is because the word 'eternal' casts our thoughts into the far future, about which we do not much concern ourselves.  We do not realise that eternity is past, present, and to come.  Life, in any real sense, is the knowledge of God now; and, without that knowledge, there cannot be the free and joyous activity of our powers, the glow of our feelings, the happy living, free from care, the open eye for all beauty, the open heart for all goodness, the responsive mind, the tender heart, the aspiring soul-which go to make up fulness of life. Most people live a poor maimed life, as though they carried about one or other mortified limb, dead in itself and a burden to the body.  But they do not realise that their minds are slow and their hearts heavy for want of the knowledge which is life.

~ Ourselves  by C. M. Mason pgs 79-80