SERMON 144: The Love of God
An Introductory Comment


Here is the young Wesley under the influence of those 'mystic writers' whom he would come later to deplore. It is, in effect, an exaltation of the First Commandment―the entire, unqualified, disinterested love of God―with no more than a muted acknowledgement of the Second Commandment, about the love of neighbour (linked though they are in all three Synoptic Gospels).1 He would seem to have taken his cue from John Norris: 'that God be not only the principal but the only object of our love'(I.5). Ancient Christian ascetics and medieval mystics had turned away from 'the world' (as in Jas. 4:4) and toward 'a disinterested love of God's creatures as a subordinate share of our love of God'. There are fulsome quotations here from John Norris of Bemerton and Edward Young ('the Elder') and mystical echoes from quietists like De Renty, Gregory Lopez, Madame Guyon, et al., but with no apparent awareness of Thomas Aquinas's valiant struggle to hold a vital balance.2
This sermon, however, throws a useful light on Wesley's later comments, in Savannah, on the deathbed statements of a colonial surgeon, Henry Lascelles:
The next day [May 31, 1736] I made Mr. Lascelles's will; who, notwithstanding his great weakness, was quite revived when any mention was made of death or eternity.
Tuesday, June 1. After praying with [Mr. Lascelles], I was surprised to find one of the most controverted questions in divinity, disinterested love, decided at once by a poor old man without education or learning, or any instructor but the Spirit of God. . . .'Let God put me where he will or do with me what he will, so I may but set forth his honour and glory. . . . Let him work his will, in my life or in my death.'3
It would become the hallmark of Wesley's mature theology that the two commandments would be coupled, always in the right order; indeed, he would come to define holiness as 'the love of God and neighbour'. Would this marked shift in perspective explain why so eloquent a sermon would go unpublished? Or was it merely the circumstance that, once Charles had borrowed the original, John did not see it again?
At any rate, it survives only in Charles's MS volume of his brother's sermons, where it stands as the first entry.4 On the last page, a postscript reads: 'Transcribed on board the London Galley, off Boston, September 4, 1736, from my brother's copy'謡hich suggests that Charles was looking ahead to a further ministry back in England. Overleaf, there is a list, in Charles's hand, of the earlier occasions where John had preached this sermon before the two of them set out on their Georgia mission:
All Saints [i.e. the 'city church' of Oxford, on the corner of The Turl and The High, adjoining John's own college, Lincoln]
Hampton Gay
St. Mary's, Oxford [the 'university church'; February 10, 1734]
St. Sepulchre's [London, across from the Newgate Prison]
Epworth
John's diary indicates that he composed it, in the first place over the course of a fortnight, September 2-15, 1733. He then preached it at All Saints sometime shortly thereafter. In the list of his early sermons, it is numbered '61'.5 A heavily edited version of it was finally published in Sermons by the late Charles Wesley (1816), with its title supplied; John's holograph sermons have texts but no titles. The present text is Charles's 1736 transcription.
The Love of God
Mark 12:30
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
1. When God had formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him the breath of life,1 when he had stamped his own image and superscription2 upon him, in his understanding, will, and affections, he gave him a law, even to love him in whose image he was made. And love, the one thing [that] his Creator required in return for all his benefits, he therefore required, because it was the one thing needful3 to perfect his creature's happiness.
2. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, was the whole of that law which God gave to man in his original state. But when he had wilfully degraded himself from that state of happiness and perfection, by transgressing the single prohibition which was appointed for the test of his love, a more particular law became needful for him, for a remedy of those many inventions he had found out, whereby, being alienated from the love of God, he was enslaved to the love of his creatures, and consequently to error and vice, to shame and misery. A more particular law was accordingly given him, by the rules whereof he was fully apprised of every avenue at which sin and pain might break in upon his soul. By this too he was directed to those several means which God had appointed for the renewal of his nature. And to complete its use, till his nature was renewed after the image of him that created him, it pointed out all those thoughts, and words, and works, by so many express injunctions, which the love of God, when that was the spring of his soul, produced without any injunction.
3. Yet we may easily observe that even in this state of man, love is still the fulfilling of the law;4 of every law which hath proceeded out of the mouth of God,5 at sundry times and in divers manners, and particularly of that which in these last days he hath given us by his Son.6 Love is the end of every commandment7 of Christ, all of which, from the least even to the greatest, are given to man, not for their own sakes, but purely in order to this. The negative commands, what are they but so many cautions against what estranges us from the love of God? And the positive either enjoin the use of the means of grace, which are only so many means of love, or the practice of those particular virtues which are the genuine fruits of love, and the steps whereby we ascend from strength to strength, towards a perfect obedience of the first and great commandment葉hat commandment which contains all, which preceded all, and which shall remain when all the rest are done away: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.'
I shall endeavour, first, to lay down a plain sense of this commandment;
Secondly, to prove this sense to be the true one; and,
Thirdly, to answer the grand objection against it.
I. First, I am to lay down a plain sense of this commandment, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.'
1. The love of God may be taken in various senses: as it is, first, for obedience to him. So St. John: 'This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.'8 And such a metonymy,9 or putting of the cause for the effect, frequently occurs in the Sacred Writings; whereby, as the love of him is put for the outward obedience, of which it is the vital principle, so the fear of God is said to be 'the departing from evil',10 which is the necessary effect of it.
2. By the same figure, the love of God has been sometimes taken for a desire of enjoying him. For this too immediately flows from love, and increases in the same proportion with it. Whence some eminent men have unwarily confounded the stream with the fountain, and have improperly termed the desire of enjoying God, love of desire. As if love and desire were all one, whereas desire is as essentially distinct from the love that produces it as is any fruit from the tree upon which it grows.
3. Love itself is, by the common consent of mankind, and agreeably to universal experience, divided into love of complacency, or delight, and love of gratitude, or benevolence.11 And accordingly the love of God may be divided into love of delight, and love of gratitude―the one regarding what he is in himself, the other what he is to us. The boundless perfections of his nature are an eternal ground of delight to every creature capable of apprehending them. And the numberless exertions of all those perfections on our behalf lay the strongest claim to our gratitude. In the former sense, every reasonable creature is to love God, because his power, wisdom, yea, and his goodness, are infinite. In the latter, 'We love Him', says the Apostle, 'because he first loved us.'12 When these fountains have once united their streams, they flow with redoubled violence, and bear the Christian strongly forward to please and obey the All-merciful, and to be made one with the All-perfect;13 to love the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength.
4. As to the measure of love prescribed in these words, all commentators agree that they mean at least thus much: we must not love anything more than God, we may not love the creature above the Creator.14 Nay, that we must not love anything so much as him; that he claims of us a love of pre-eminence; that we must reserve for him the highest seat in our hearts, the largest and choicest share of our affection. They are all likewise agreed that we must entertain no love which is contrary to the love of him; that whatever affection we find, or have reason to suspect, will either prevent the kindling of this divine flame, or quench it when kindled, or any way obstruct its increase, or diminish its heat and brightness―that affection we must not give place to for a moment, but immediately resist with all our might.
5. But we must go higher than this, or we shall never rise up to the plain sense of this commandment. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength' imports in ordinary construction (to use the words of a great master of reason as well as love), 'that we love God, not only with the most and best, but with the whole of our affection; that we love him not only with every capacity, passion, and faculty, with the understanding, will, and affections, but with every degree of every power, with all the latitude of our will, with the whole possibility of our souls; that we devote to him, not only the highest degree of our love, but every degree of it; in one word, that God be not only the principal, but the only object of our love.'a
6. Not that God is so to be the only object of our love as to exclude his creatures from a subordinate share of it. 'The Lord rejoiceth in his works';15 and consequently man, made after his likeness, not only may, but ought to imitate him therein, and with pleasure to own that 'they are very good.'16 Nay, the love of God constraineth those in whose hearts it is shed abroad17 to love what bears his image. And we cannot suppose any love forbidden by God which necessarily flows from this love of him.
7. And even that love of the creatures which does not flow from the love of God, if it lead thereto, is accepted. For this end hath he given us them to enjoy, that by these steps we may ascend to higher enjoyments. Therefore whatever love tends to the love of God is no more forbidden than that which flows from it.
8. Yet farther, there are many of the works of his hands which God expressly commands us to love; and that not only with a love of gratitude or benevolence, but of complacence, too. For such surely is natural affection; such is that tenderest of all passions toward our fellow-creatures, which our blessed Redeemer does not disdain to compare to the love between himself and his church.18 And such is the delight which we ought to have in the saints that are upon earth, and in those that excel in virtue. The contrary opinion, that we are forbid to love any creature in any degree,19 supposes the all-knowing God to command our love of himself, and yet to prohibit the immediate necessary effect of it. It charges the All-wise with enjoining the end, and in that very injunction forbidding the means. It blasphemes his most holy and perfect law, as notoriously contradictory to itself, as requiring elsewhere what was absolutely condemned in the very first commandment of it.
9. This therefore considered, the sense of that command is easily resolved into this: 'Thou shalt so love the Lord thy God with all thy powers, and with the whole force of all, as ever to remember that thou art bound, yea, by this very law, (1) to obey him thou lovest, and therefore to love those things which he commands thee to love, so far as he commands it; (2) to cherish that love which is the necessary effect of thus loving the Lord thy God, viz., the love of those men who are renewed after his image in righteousness and true holiness; and, (3) to use all the means which experience and reason recommend as conducive to this great end擁n particular, to love all his creatures so far as it tends to the love of thy Creator.' Indeed this third rule includes both the preceding, seeing all obedience to God tends to the love of him; and seeing every other fruit of divine love increases the love from which it sprung. The full sense of the first and great commandment is therefore contained in this single sentence・Thou shalt love God alone for his own sake, and all things else only so far as they tend to him.'20
II. That this is the mark toward which we are all to press if we would attain the prize of our high calling;21 that none can attain it unless they press towards this mark, according to the several abilities God hath given them; that this plain sense of the great command is the true one, I am in the second place to show. And this I shall endeavour to prove, (1) from the Holy Scriptures; (2) from reason.
1. From every part of the Holy Scriptures it appears that love is the proper worship of a reasonable nature.22 To go no farther than the words immediately preceding the text: 'Hear, O Israel', says our Divine Teacher, 'the Lord thy God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God.'23 Thou shalt love him邑hy? Because he is 'the Lord thy God', and as such has a just claim to thy love; because love is the worship due to thy God; because it is the proper homage of a rational creature to his Creator. 'Thinkest thou that he will eat bulls' flesh, and drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgivings, and pay thy heart to the most Highest.'24 Without this he will not be pleased, though thou shouldst give him thousands of rams,25 or give all thy substance to feed his poor.26 But with love every sacrifice is accepted; in this he is always well pleased.
2. 'Hear, O Israel, God is thy Lord!'27 Therefore shalt thou worship him. And all worship but love is an abomination before him. Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God. But 'the Lord thy God is one Lord.' Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; thou shalt not divide thy heart. He has the right to it all; thou mayst not alienate any part of it. Reserve for him, not the largest share, but the whole of thy affection. Hadst thou more lords thou mightst have more loves than one; but if thou hast no other God, thou canst have no other love. 'It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.'28 Behold, love is the worship of thy Lord; this alone is his reasonable service.29 Therefore thou shalt delight in the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou love.
3. What wonder is it, then, that the essential wisdom of the Father knew no mean between a single and an evil eye!30 That his inspired Apostle cries out with such vehemence of affection, 'Purify your hearts, ye double-minded';31 that his beloved disciple, after 'This is the true God,' immediately subjoins, 'Little children, keep yourselves from idols.'32 What idols and what idolatry we are to keep ourselves from he elsewhere explicitly declares, in those well-known words, 'Love not the world, neither the things of the world: if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.'33
4. If any farther proof from the Holy Scriptures be required of this first principle of all religion, let us hear St. Paul's words: 'Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God.'34 It is here enjoined that whatever use we make of any power which God hath given us, whatever act of any faculty we exert, all should tend to the glory, the love, of God. And it is enjoined expressly. We need not argue from a parity of reason・whether ye eat or drink', therefore, 'whether ye rejoice or love'. We need not argue from the less to the greater擁f every bodily action, which at best profiteth but little, how much more is every movement of our soul to be subordinated to the end of our being! No, we have yet a more sure word of direction; the very terms are, 'whatever ye do'. This commandment is indeed exceeding broad. Not a word of our tongue,35 not a thought of our heart, can escape it. Do ye act, do ye speak, do ye reason, do ye love? Do all to the glory of God.
5. 'Tis true, if the literal sense of these Scriptures were absurd, and apparently contrary to reason, then we should be obliged not to interpret them according to the letter, but to look out for a looser meaning.36 To guard those, therefore, who desire to love God even as he requires from this specious pretence for idolatry, I hasten to show that this very sense is not contrary but agreeable to the strictest reason.
6. And how reasonable it is so to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our strength as to love nothing else but for his sake and in subordination to the love of him, may appear, first, from the general concession of all men 'that we ought to love nothing above God'. This is granted to be of the last concern. All men own that on this eternity depends. Reason, therefore, must direct to make all sure here; to run no hazard of so mighty a stake; whatever we do, to secure from all possible danger our passport into a happy eternity. But this cannot be done while we retain any love not subordinate to the love of God. For while we love any object besides God, we are never secure that we shall not love it above him. So long as the very disease of our nature is the loving the creature above the Creator,37 so long as the love of anything for its own sake so imperceptibly steals upon us that it is impossible to fix its bounds, and to say, 'Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther';38 it is equally impossible that we should be safe from loving it more than God. If then reason forbid us to run any the least hazard of loving anything more than God, and if we must be in imminent hazard of doing so while we love anything without reference to him, then reason, as well as the Holy Scriptures, requires that we should so love God with all our heart as to love nothing else but for his sake, and in subordination to the love of him.
7. The same truth may be as evidently inferred from that other concession made by all men, 'that we may not entertain any love which is contrary to, or obstructive of, the love of God'. For all love which does not either directly or remotely tend to the love of God obstructs it.39 If it does not lessen what we have already attained, it prevents our attaining what we otherwise might attain. For the force of a divided can never be equal to that of an united heart; nor is it possible that a part of our strength should carry us so far as the whole.
8. But this is not the heaviest charge against that love of the creatures which is not conducive to the love of God. No; it is not only obstructive, but subversive of it葉hey are inconsistent and incompatible. Indeed many loves may consist in the same heart, so they be all subordinate to one. But two ultimate loves are as flat a contradiction as two firsts, or two lasts. So that when the son of Sirach says, 'Woe be to the fearful hearts, and faint hands, and the sinner that goeth two ways,'40 he can only mean, either, [he] that flatters himself he goes both toward God and toward his idol, or rather, [he] that is unstable in his ways, sometimes walking in one, and sometimes in the other. That this is frequent, our own unhappy experience is sufficient to prove. But not the Almighty himself can make it possible for us to walk in two ways at the same time. All our habitual love must at any one time terminate either in God or in some of his creatures. And if it terminates in him, then it does not in them; if in them, then not in him. We cannot therefore have two ultimate loves; and by undeniable consequence, when we have any ultimate love but that of God, the love of God is not in us.
9. Nor can it be said that there may be an unsubordinate love which yet is not an ultimate love. For as every end which is subordinate to no other is itself an ultimate end, so every love which is subordinate to no other is itself an ultimate love, ultimate and subordinate being contradictory terms, between which there is no mean.
10. But who is this, touching whom we thus coldly debate whether he should wholly possess or only share our affection? Is it not the Lord―our God―the All-sufficient! The All-perfect! In whom are hid all the treasures of loveliness! Is it not he of whose faithfulness, of whose wisdom, of whose goodness, there is no number? And are we afraid of loving him too much? With too fervent, too entire an affection? Hath the love of God toward us been restrained? Hath he set any bounds to this ocean? Who is he that hath raised us from the dust? Who breathed into us these living souls? Who upholdeth us by the word of his power? Who protects us by his gracious providence? Who redeemed us by the blood of his Son? Who sanctifies us by the grace of his Spirit? O God, are the creatures of thy hand, the purchase of thy Son's blood, disputing whether they may not love thee too much? Whether thou art worthy of all their affection? Does not then the essential loveliness of his nature deserve, not all, but infinitely more than all our love? Is not our whole affection immeasurably less than the least of his mercies? Or if the whole mite of our love would overpay these, hath he no more? Is his hand shortened? Is he not able, is he not willing, hath he not sworn, to render us a thousandfold for every particle of love we give him? Can we withhold from him one atom of the whole mass without tearing one star from our own crown?41 And shall it be thought unreasonable that he should demand the whole? That he should require all our love? Yea, worthy art thou, O Lord, of all the love of all the creatures whom thou hast made! Especially of those whom thou hast redeemed! Whom thou now guidest by thy counsel, and wilt hereafter receive into thy glory!
III.1. The grand objection that has been frequently made against this sense of the great commandment (to which most others are easily reducible), which I proposed to consider in the third place, is this, 'that did it oblige us so to love God with all our heart as to love nothing else but for his sake, and in order to the love of him, such an obligation would be destructive of that happiness which our blessed religion was designed to establish. It would reduce us to a gloomy and melancholy state, and make the true Christian of a sad countenance.42 It would deprive us of all the innocent pleasures of life, and reduce our enjoyments to so narrow a compass that they would not suffice for a balance to our pains, and a support under the evils to which we are exposed. So that if only in this life only there were hope, we should be of all men most miserable.'43
2. I shall reply first to the particular branches of this objection, and then in general to the whole. And with regard to the first branch of it, be it observed that the happiness whereof it supposes the entire love of God to be destructive is a happiness that is to result from an enjoyment of the creatures, not referred to the Creator: that is, it is such a happiness as never did, nor ever will exist. 'That happiness is not, cannot be found in any creature' (to use the beautiful words of the above-cited author),44 'is plain from experience, from the vanity which we find in all things, and from that restlessness and desire of change which is consequent upon it. We try one thing after another, as the searching bee wanders from flower to flower, but go off from every one with disappointment and a deluded expectation. Though almost everything promises, nothing answers; and even the succession of new enjoyments (the best remedy we have for the emptiness we find in each) amuses, but does not satisfy.'45 A glorious happiness this! 'Tis vexation, and pain, disappointment and loss, all over! And of this happiness it must be allowed the entire love of God is absolutely destructive.
[3.] But does it not make men gloomy and melancholy, by depriving them of the innocent pleasures of life? They who speak thus seem not to be aware how easy it is to produce a cloud of witnesses, and those heathen as well as Christian, who, though they allow there are a thousand sorts of pleasure, which, considered with regard to the whole species, are neither good nor bad, yet utterly deny that any individual pleasure is barely innocent. But we need them not, since plain reason is enough to show (how strange soever it may sound to some ears) that this expression can never be used with propriety. It must import either too much or too little. For every pleasure, weighed with the circumstances that attend it, is either more or less than innocent. If it tends to the love of God, it is more; if it does not, it is less than innocent. Pleasures of all sorts, used in that proportion wherein they enliven and strengthen our minds, and make us more fit for discharging the duties of our respective stations, deserve a better title than that of innocent: they are virtuous and rewardable. And pleasures of any sort, used in any other proportion, deserve not so good a title, as implying a sinful and punishable waste of time, and of the other talents which God hath lent us. If these be the innocent pleasures in the objection, we own the entire love of God does destroy them. But it deprives us of none that in any way conduce to that even cheerfulness which is both the parent and daughter of divine love, and life of virtue, and the beauty of holiness.
[4.] The clearness and strength of reason with which one of our most celebrated divines confirms this important truth will excuse the repetition of his words:
Some of the heathen philosophers were of opinion that no actions (whether pleasing or not) are indifferent, but that all are positively either good or evil. Wherein they meant, not that no actions are indifferent in their own nature, but that no actions are indifferent in fact. In fact, I say, for in this state actions, besides their formal essence, include the end and intention of the doer. And in this sense they affirmed that a good man made all his indifferent actions good; and on the contrary an ill man made all his indifferent actions evil. For they laid down this for a rule, that every man ought to fix a certain general purpose and scope to all his actions, viz., to act agreeably to right reason, and that while a man held his eye upon this, so long all his actions, even those that were in themselves indifferent, were made wise and good. But on the contrary, while this was not fixed, all a man's actions, however indifferent in their own nature, became loose, irrational, and evil. And so St. Paul tells us that every Christian ought to have a general purpose to which all his actions should be directed. The charge runs: 'Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' Now 'tis certain that if we have an eye to the glory of God in all that we do, this is an aim that will sanctify all our actions, though in themselves indifferent. But on the contrary, so long as we have not an eye to this general end, all the mass of our indifferent actions become an irrational and profuse wasting of that precious time which God has given us for better uses, i.e., to devote and give it back again to himself. We should therefore be often putting the question to our soul・ Dic anima, quo tendis? et in quod dirigis arcum?46・ 'Say, my soul, whither aimest thou? Whither tends this action?' Hast thou the glory of God in prospect? Or else shootest thou at rovers,47 and only beatest the air. This kind of reflection will consecrate the soul in all she does, and make every natural action turn into religious; and make us meet God everywhere, and converse with his wisdom, goodness, providence in our walk, at our business, at our table; and render us more holy to God at our work than without this we can be at our prayers.b
[5.] As to the last part of this objection, that such a love of God would reduce our enjoyments to so narrow a compass that they would not balance our pains, nor suffice for our support under the troubles we are daily exposed to, I answer, it was never designed they should: God hath provided for other supports for us. And, in fact, who is he whom these did ever support under sharp pain, or heavy affliction? For whom did these comforts ever suffice when God wrote bitter things against him? When the waters came in even unto his soul, and the floods of trouble ran over him? Not one, ever since the world began・miserable comforters are they all,'48 utterly unable to heal the broken in heart, unfit medicines for that sickness!
6. I come now to the direct and adequate answer to all the parts of this celebrated objection. The entire love of God, though it does exclude all such enjoyment of his creatures as neither directly nor remotely conduces to our enjoying him; though it does particularly prevent our leaning on those broken reeds when affliction presses down our soul; and though it does set us above what are sometimes called innocent pleasures, that is, unnecessary, untending,49 useless enjoyments; yet it is in no wise destructive of that happiness which our blessed religion was designed to establish. So far from it that love, entire love, is the point wherein all the lines of our holy religion centre. This is the very happiness which the great Author of it lived and died to establish among us. And a happiness it is, worthy of God! Worthy of infinite goodness and infinite wisdom to bestow! A happiness not built on imagination, but real and rational; a happiness that does not play before our eyes at a distance, and vanish when we attempt to grasp it, but such as will bear the closest inspection, and the more it is tried will delight the more. In the happiness of love there is no vanity, neither any vexation of spirit.50 No delusion, no disappointment is here; peace and joy ever dwell with love. The man who loves God feels that 'God hath given him all things richly to enjoy.'51 He delights in his works, and surveys with joy all the creatures which God hath made. Love increases both the number of his delights, and the weight of them, a thousandfold. For in every creature he sees as in a glass the glory of the great Creator.52 And while everything reflects to his enlightened eye the image of him whom his soul loves, the sense of his presence, over and above that delight which he feels in common with other men, 'imparts such a vital joy and gladness to his heart, that, were eternity added to it, it would be heaven!'53
7. Here is the sufficient, and the only sufficient support under all the evils of life. Evils? Nothing is an evil to him who loves God! All things are to him very good! He has but one desire葉o delight in God; and God hath given him the desire of his heart. And while his spirit cleaves steadfastly to him, he is safe from the power of evil. Indeed, if his heart were not whole with God, as many things as he loved besides him, so many ways would he lie open to disappointment, and fear, and grief, and misery. But so long as he has one object of his love, and regards all things else only as they minister unto it, his heart standeth fast. For he is assured that 'neither life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate him from the love of God.'54
8. I shall conclude in the words of that happy and excellent man above cited, who so well practised what he taught:
Ye have heard what is the full and true extent of divine love, and the full and true import of the great commandment謡hich now appears to be a great commandment indeed! Both worthy of him who gave it, and worthy of that solemn mark of attention wherewith it was more than once delivered, 'Hear, O Israel!' And let all the whole creation hear, and with silence attend to this great law, which, lest any should fancy himself unconcerned in it, is expressly directed to every creature: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.' 'My son, give me thy heart,'55 is the language of the great God to every rational creature. 'Give me thy heart, for it was I that made it, it was I that gave it thee! It was I that bestowed its vital motion, and that for no other end but to direct and incline it toward me. I only am thy true good: in me alone canst thou find rest for thy soul; all the springs of thy happiness are in me. Therefore, my son, give me thy heart. I only merit, and 'tis I alone that can reward, thy love! Let none have any share therein but me; and let me have it all!'56
With angels, therefore, and archangels, and all the company of heaven,57 having unclasped our arms from the embraces of the creation, let us love the Lord our God, and him alone. Let not God any longer divide with the creature (an unfit companion for so divine a guest) but let him reign an absolute monarch in our hearts, and engross our whole love. Yea, let us 'love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our mind, and with all our soul, and with all our strength!'58
Unto God the Father, who first loved us, and made us accepted in the Beloved; unto God the Son, who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood; unto God the Holy Ghost, who sheddeth the love of God abroad in our hearts, be all love and all glory for time and for eternity!59