262 The Faith of Our Fathers depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways ! For, who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor?"345 Let us remember that heaven is a place to which none of us has any inherent right or natural claim, but that it is promised to us by the pure favor of God. He can reject and adopt whom He pleases, and can, without injustice, prescribe His own conditions for accepting His proffered boon. If your child is deprived of heaven by being deprived of Baptism, God does it no wrong because He infringes no right to which your child had any inalienable title. If [273] your child obtains the grace of Baptism be thankful for the gift. It is proper here to state briefly what the Church actually teaches regarding the future state of unbaptized infants. Though the Church, in obedience to God's Word, declares that unbaptized infants are excluded from the kingdom of heaven, it should not hence be concluded that they are consigned to the place of the reprobate. None are condemned to the torments of the damned but such as merit Divine vengeance by their personal sins. All that the Church holds on this point is that unregenerate children are deprived of the beatific vision, or the possession of God, which constitutes the essential happiness of the blessed. Now, between the supreme bliss of heaven and the torments of the reprobate, there is a very wide margin. All admit that the condition of unbaptized infants is better than non-existence. There are some Catholic writers of distinction who even assert that unbaptized infants enjoy a certain degree of natural beatitude — that is, a happiness which is based on the natural knowledge and love of God. From what has been said you may well judge how reprehensible is the conduct of Catholic parents who neglect to have their children baptized at the earliest possible moment, 345 Rom. xi. 33, 34.