Treatise on the Love of GodBook I. Introduction to the whole treatise

Faculties to the Gill. U* ION between several and distinct parts pro- } duces order; from order spring adaptation and proportion, and these, when carried to perfection, result in beauty. An army is perfect when all its several branches are so perfectly ordered that their distinct parts are combined into thorough co-operation, so as to make one whole. To produce beautiful music we require not only clear, well-accentuated, separate voices, but that these voices be so combined together as to produce correct consonance and harmony, by means of the union of their distinct parts, and by the individuality of separate voices amid that union, which results in a perfect combination not unsuitably called harmonious discord.

Now, as is well said by the Angelical Doctor S. Thomas, quoting S. Denys the Great, the beautiful and the good are not the same thing, though they are closely allied. The good pleases the appetite and the will, the beautiful the mind and understanding; or, to put it in another way, the good is that the enjoyment of which satisfies us, while of the beautiful the perception delights us. Thus we never attribute corporal beauty to any objects save those which are tangible to the sight or hearing; we do not speak of

beautiful scents or tastes, but we do of beautiful voices or colours. If, then, the beautiful is such because its perception delights us, it must require, beyond. unity of its distinctive parts, order and adaptation, a certain brightness and splendour, in order that it may be visible and recognisable. A voice, to be beautiful, must be clear and distinct; speech must be intelligible; a colour bright and pure. Shadow and darkness are not beautiful, and do not impart beauty, because amid them we cannot distinguish order or separation, unity or adaptation; and thus S. Denys has said that “God, as Sovereign Beauty, is the Author of all the beautiful adaptation, all the brilliancy, and all the grace we find ;” suffering His own rays of light to fall on all things, inasmuch as these three properties are essential to beauty. And assuredly beauty were unreal, profitless, and dead, unless kindled and inspired by brightness and splendour, which ‘gives it life. But living things cannot attain to beauty without that good grace which, to the adaptation of parts, adds adaptation of movement and action, which is the soul and life of beauty in animated objects. So in the Sovereign Beauty of God we recognise union, as well as unity of Being in the brightness of the Divine Persons, joined to an incomprehensible adaptation of all perfection in action and movement, adjusted, so to say, in the one and singular perfection of that purely Divine Act, which is God Himself, Unchangeable, Invariable, as we shall consider further on.

Thus God, willing all things to be good and beautiful, has reduced their multiplicity and diverseness to perfect unity, and has, so to say, ordered them on monarchical principles, so that they should hang one upon another, all ultimately depending upon Him, the Sovereign Monarch. He combines all members in one body under a head; individuals He combines into a family, families into a town, towns into a province, provinces into a kingdom, placing a single king over each kingdom. And in like measure, amid the innumerable variety of actions, impulses, feelings, likings, habits, passions, faculties, and powers which are in man, God has established a natural monarch—the Will—which governs and presides over all the elements of the little world within, as though He said to the Will what Pharaoh said to Joseph: “Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled. . . . See, I have set thee over all the land.”'. Nevertheless this domination of the will is very variously exercised.

The father of a family governs his wife, children, and servants by rules and orders, which they are bound to obey, although they have the power to dispute them. Serfs or slaves he governs by force, and they have no power to resist. But he governs his horses, mules, and oxen by art; bridling, loosing, urging, or restraining them. Now, the will governs our external movements after the manner of slaves; for unless there be some literal obstacles, these are always obedient to the will. We open or shut our mouth, we move tongue, hands, feet, eyes, and all other members endowed with the power of movement, according to our will, without resistance. But the senses, and the faculties of nourishing, growing, or propagating, are not so easily controlled: therein we require the assistance of art. If you call a slave, he comes; if you bid him halt, he halts; but you cannot look for the like obedience from your falcon. Would you recall him, you must hold out his lure; would you tame him, you must put on his hood. You bid a servant turn to the right or the left, and he does so; but if you would turn a horse in like manner you must use the bridle. You cannot bid your eyes not to see, your ears not to hear, your hands not to feel, your stomach not to digest, your body not to grow; for none of these are intelligent agents, or capable of obedience. “No man can add one cubit to his stature.”² Rachel desired to conceive offspring, but could not.2, Men sometimes eat without being nourished or making increase. He who would rule his powers must do it by diligence. When a physician treats a baby, he gives it no orders; but he bids its nurse do certain things for it, or he prescribes a certain diet or medicine for herself, so that, by means of her milk, the doctor’s will is carried out in the sick child, who is not even capable of recognising it. It is useless to lay down rules of abstinence and sobriety to the throat or stomach; you must forbid the hands to supply the mouth with meat or drink beyond a certain limit. You must give or hold supplies as reason dictates to the faculty which takes action; you must turn aside the eyes, or cover them with their natural hood, and shut them, if you would not have them see; and by such contrivances you will bring them into subjection to the will. Even so our Lord tells us that there are eunuchs who are such for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake,3 that is to say, by force of will, not of necessity. It were folly to bid a horse not grow, or wax fat, or become frisky; if you desire all this, you must limit his rack: there is no use in giving him orders, you must subdue him by force.

The will, moreover, has power over the understanding and memory, since, amid sundry matters which the understanding may receive or the memory may retain, it rests with the will to decide to which these powers shall be applied. Of course it cannot wield or marshal them as peremptorily as it does hands, feet, or tongue, because the sensitive faculties, especially imagination, do not obey the will promptly or infallibly, and both memory and understanding depend on these faculties for their operation; but nevertheless the will excites, uses, and directs them at its pleasure, though not so continuously or invariably but that a changeable imagination is liable to distract them, even as the Apostle exclaims, “What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that I do;”? and we too are often constrained to lament that we dwell rather upon the evil which we hate than the good that we love.

We see, then, that the will rules the memory, understanding, and imagination, not forcibly, but in virtue of its authority, so that it is not invariably obeyed, any more than a father is always obeyed by his children and servants. It is the same with the sensuous appetite, which, as S. Augustine says, is called concupiscence in sinners, and is subject to the mind and will, as a wife to her husband; inasmuch just as it was said to the woman, “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee ;”? so it was said to Cain that his desire should be to his lusts, and they should reign over him:3 for the desire being to anything implies that it will rule or reign over a man. S. Bernard says: “O man, it is in thy power if thou wilt to make a servant of thine enemy; thine appetite is subject to thee, and thou canst govern it. The enemy may excite a sense of temptation in thee, but it rests with thee to consent or refuse. If thou sufferest appetite to lead thee into sin, then thou wilt be subject to it, and it will master thee, for who so committeth sin he is the servant of sin; but before thou hast sinned, and while thou hast not as yet consented to sin, and hast only felt the temptation, thine appetite is subject to thee, and thou canst master it.”

Before the Emperor is elected, he is subject to the electors, who reign over him, having it in their power to raise him to imperial dignity or to reject him; but once elected by them, they are subject to him, and he reigns over them. Before the will consents to the appetite, it rules over it, but having consented, the will becomes a slave. In short, this sensuous appetite is verily a rebellious, seditious, restless subject, and we must own ourselves unable so entirely to subdue it but that it will raise itself up again, plot, and attack us; yet, nevertheless, the will is so much stronger than it that, if it chooses, it can check, defeat, and repulse the sensuous appetite, which is repulsed directly we refuse consent to its suggestions. We cannot hinder the conception of sin, but we may strangle it before coming to the birth by means of action.

Now, this lust or sensuous appetite has twelve actions, by means of which, as so many mutinous leaders, it seduces men. These trouble the soul and excite the body: accordingly S. Augustine calls the first perturbations, and the last passions. They bear reference to good and evil, either to be obtained or avoided. Good, simply looked at in itself, excites the foremost and chief of all passions—love: if we possess it not, it excites desire; if we expect to be able to gratify this desire, hope is kindled; if we do not expect to attain it, we feel despair; when we actually possess it, it excites joy. On the other hand, so soon as we perceive evil, we hate it; if absent, we fly from it; if we believe ourselves unable to avoid it, we fear; if we imagine that it can be avoided, we become bold; if we realise its presence, we are sad; and then wrath and anger rise up to repulse, or at all events to avenge it. Should such vengeance fail, we are grieved; if it succeeds, we feel that satisfaction and strength which are the charm of triumph; for just as the attainment of good rejoices the heart, so victory over evil confirms courage. And meanwhile the will reigns over all this throng of sensuous passions, rejecting their suggestions, repulsing their attacks, hindering their effect, stedfastly refusing that consent without which they can do no harm, and thereby defeating them sooner or later; crushing, beating down, repressing, and if not wholly exterminating them, at least rendering them powerless.

Of a truth it is in order to train us in virtue and spiritual strength that this multitude of passions is suffered to linger about our souls; and the Stoics, who professed that wise men are exempt from them, were greatly mistaken. However, while denying the fact, they practically proved it, as we may judge from an anecdote related by S. Augustine. Aulus Gellius, he says, when at sea with a famous Stoic, and being overtaken by a heavy storm, the Stoic was overwhelmed with fear, grew pale, and trembled, so that all on board noticed it with amazement, even while sharing his danger. The storm over and danger past, one after another began to laugh at the Stoic for his terror, among others an Asiatic voluptuary, who taunted him with having been ashy-white with fear, while he himself remained unmoved. To which the Stoic replied by quoting the answer of Aristippus the philosopher on a similar occasion: “Verily,” he said, “you had no need to fear for the soul of such a worthless | fellow, but I rightly dreaded the loss of the soul of Aristippus ;”—which story Aulus Gellius, an eyewitness, related, and in which we find witness from their own mouths that two Stoics were overwhelmed with fear, and that by fear which takes expression in the countenance, thereby proving itself to be a passion.

It is a great folly to affect an impossible wisdom; and the Church has condemned such folly in certain presumptuous anchorites who went in opposition to all Holy Scripture, especially to the great Apostle, who says, “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind.”' S. Augustine says that the citizens of the Holy City of God, who pass through this life’s pilgrimage according to God’s Will, fear, desire, suffer, and rejoice, although their passions are different to ours; and S. Jerome and the Schoolmen who follow him dare not call them passions, out of reverence, but prefer the name of pro-passion, implying that the active emotions which our Lord experienced took the place of passions, without being actually such, inasmuch as He only endured so much thereof and as He willed, ruling and guiding them at His pleasure; which is not the case with us sinners, who are subject to these passions without respect to our will, and greatly to the damage of our soul’s health.

Love being the first attraction we have to what is good, it surely must precede desire; for what do we desire save that which we love? It precedes delectation; for how can we take pleasure in the enjoyment of a thing we do not love? It precedes hope, for we only hope for that which we love. It precedes hatred, for we hate evil only out of love for what is good, and evil is only evil inasmuch as it is contrary to what is good. Even so with all other passions and affections, which all have their root in love. So again these passions are good or bad, virtuous or vicious, according as the love whence they spring is good or bad, for it so animates them that these seem all one with it. S. Augustine reduces all passions and affections to four, therein following Boetius, Cicero, Virgin, and most ancient writers. These he defines as love seeking to possess itself of the beloved object, which he calls lust, attaining and possessing it, which is joy, flying from what is opposed to it, which is fear; and if overtaken thereby and suffering, grief. All these passions become evil if the object of love be evil; good if it be good. The inhabitants of the City of God fear, hope, suffer, and rejoice; and because their love is upright so are all their affections. The doctrines of Christianity subject the mind to God, that He should guide and sustain it, ‘and subject all these passions to it, so that, being guided aright, they may be used to promote truth and justice. An upright will is holy love; an evil will is love of evil; in a word, love so rules the will as to make it whatever itself is. A woman when she marries takes her husband’s rank, becoming noble if he be noble, a queen if he be king, a duchess if he be duke. Just so the will assumes the character of that love to which it is wedded,—carnal if it be carnal, spiritual if it be spiritual; and all the affections which issue thence,—desire, joy, hope, fear, sadness, take their shape likewise from that source. The will is acted upon by the affections, among which love is foremost, and it shapes all that follow.

But all this does not hinder the will from ruling over love, all the more that it must love voluntarily, and among a choice of affections it may select what seems it good; else there were no forbidden or enjoined love. So the will is mistress over the affections, as a maiden over her suitors, among whom she can select whom she pleases. But even as with marriage she renounces her freedom and becomes subject to her husband, so when the will has chosen the object of its affection, it becomes subject thereto; and as the wife is subject to her husband so long as he lives, but if he dies she resumes her liberty and may marry another, so while the will holds to an affection it reigns, and the will is subject, but if that affection chance to perish it can pursue another. But the will has a freedom which the wife has not, for the will can cast aside its attachment whensoever it pleases, by means of the understanding and of a firm resolution; e.g., when a man desires that the Love of God should reign supreme in his heart, he can cast out self-love, or, if not wholly cast it out, at least he can so crush it that, while yet lingering, it has no power; and, on the other hand, he may forsake the higher Divine Love and cleave to creatures, therein committing that spiritual adultery of which the Heavenly Bridegroom so often accuses sinners.

These are no less emotions in that intellectual, reasonable appetite which we call will than in the sensuous appetite; but we call the first affections and the last passions. Many heathen philosophers have loved God and their country, goodness and wisdom; they have shunned vice, coveted honour, fled despairingly from calumny; they have even craved for happiness after this life, have struggled bravely in pursuit of virtue, have feared blame, avoided many crimes, avenged injury done to others, and over-thrown tyrants in a disinterested spirit. All such emotions were of the reason, the senses being inapplicable to such matters, so that these were affections pertaining to the intellectual, not passions of the sensual appetite.

Do we not often experience sensual passions which are altogether contrary to the affections of the mind or will which we feel simultaneously? The young man of whom S. Jerome tells who bit off his own tongue and spit it into the face of the temptress who beset him, was he not inspired with a strong affection of the will, in opposition to the passion of lust which was forcibly urged upon him? Do we not many a time tremble amid the risks into which our will forces us? Do we not abhor the voluptuousness in which AFFECTIONS OF THE WILL It our senses delight, and love those spiritual blessings from which sense draws back? This is what constitutes the war we daily experience between the spirit and the flesh,—between the outward man, who cleaves to that which is sensual, and the inward man, who delights in the law of God,'—between the first Adam, who was led by his Eve—that is, by lust—and the Last Adam, Who is inspired by heavenly wisdom and holy truth.

The Stoics, while, as S. Augustine says, they denied that a wise man can have passions, yet confessed, it seems,' that he had affections, which they called eupathies, or good passions. They said that the wise man did not lust, but desired; he never exceeded though he was glad; he was not fearful, save in the way of foresight and precaution; in short, he was moved solely by reason. And therefore they specially denied that the wise man could be sad, sadness pertaining only to an actual evil, whereas no evil can happen to the wise man, who can only suffer harm through himself, according to them. Most assuredly they were not wrong in saying that there are good affections in the reasoning part of man; but they were wrong in saying that he had no passions in his sensuous part, and that sadness could not touch his heart; for, not to mention that they themselves were often troubled, how could wisdom deprive us of pity, which is a virtuous sadness which inspires the heart with a desire to succour other men in their trouble? Accordingly, the best of all heathen, Epictetus, did not hold this error that a wise man was subject to no passions, and indeed S. Augustine proves that all the Stoics’ arguments on this point were mere verbiage.

Now, the affections of our higher nature are more or less noble and spiritual according as their objects are higher or lower. Some spring from our own experience, some from human knowledge, others from faith, and some arise simply from the soul’s acquiescence in the Will of God. . The first we call natural affections,

_? Rom. vii.

for it is natural to desire health, food, clothing, congenial society. The second we call rational, being based on the perceptions of reason which excite the will to seek quietude of heart, moral virtue, true honour, and a philosophic contemplation of eternal things. The third manner of affections we call Christian, for they spring from the teaching of our Lord, causing us to love voluntary poverty, chastity, and the glories of Paradise. But the fourth kind of affections we call Divine and supernatural, because it is God Himself Who puts them into the heart, and because they look and tend to God without intermediate aid or natural light, as we shall see more fully in considering what goes on in the sanctuary of the soul. These supernatural affections may be classed under three heads,—love for the beauty of the mysteries of the Faith, love for the blessings promised us in the next life, and love for the Sovereign Goodness of the Most Holy and Eternal God.

The will governs all other mental faculties, but it is itself governed by that love which rules it and shapes it. Now the Love of God is supreme above all other loves, and that so entirely, that unless it holds sovereign sway it must perish altogether. Ishmael did not inherit with his younger brother Isaac; Esau was doomed to serve Jacob; Joseph received obeisance not only from his brethren, but from his father and his mother, as represented by Benjamin, according to his youthful dreams. Surely there is some hidden meaning in the superiority thus accorded to the younger over the elder. Divine Love is clearly the younger among human affections, for, as S. Paul says, “that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural.”¹ But this younger inherits all power; and self-love, like another Esau, is doomed to serve it, while not only all the other emotions, as brethren, do it obeisance, but likewise the understanding and will, representing father and mother. All are subject to this Heavenly Love, which must be monarch, and that supreme.

Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph had all a supernatural birth, inasmuch as Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel, barren by nature, conceived them through the grace of God; and thus they acquired superiority over their brethren. Even so holy Love is the child of miracle, for the will of man cannot compass it, unless it be shed into his heart by the Spirit of God, and thus being supernatural it must needs reign over all other affections, including the understanding and will. And though there be other supernatural emotions,—fear, piety, hope, etc.— even as Esau and Benjamin were likewise supernatural sons of barren mothers,—yet holy Love is the heir, as being the child of promise, for through it Heaven is promised to man. Salvation is set forth to faith, it is prepared for hope, but it is only given to Love. Faith points out the way to the Promised Land, like a pillar of cloud or fire—bright or dark; hope feeds us with sweetness; but Love leads us in, like the Ark of the Covenant,—crosses Jordan with us, and will abide for ever with us in that Heavenly Land promised to the true Israelite, where we shall no longer need the guidance of faith or the support of hope.

Holy Love dwells in the highest region of the mind, where it offers its sacrifice, like to Abraham on the mountain and our Lord on Calvary; so that, being exalted on high, it may be heard and obeyed by all its subjects, that is, by all our faculties and affections, which it rules most sweetly; for love has no bond-slaves, but subjects all by so acceptable a power, that although there be nought so strong as love neither is there aught so sweet.

The soul is governed by its virtues, and of these love, as chief, rules and adapts all others, not merely in right of being first, but because God, having created man in His Own Image and Likeness, wills that he should be all love, even as He is.

The will is so adapted to what is good, that directly it becomes conscious thereof it is attracted thereto, as to a thing so closely pertaining to itself, that each is necessary clearly to define the other. For what is our real good save that which we desire? and what is the will save that faculty which reaches and tends to our good, or to what we count as such?

So then the will, having a perception of its good by means of the understanding, experiences simultaneously a delectation and complaisance which urge it gently but forcibly towards that object of desire, in order to attain union thereto, to which end it is moved to seek all suitable means. Thus the will having a close sympathy with what is good, that sympathy evolves the complaisance felt by the will when perceiving it; this complaisance urges the will towards that good.; such movement tends to union, until at last the will, seeking eagerly after this union, goes in quest after all that may promote it. : Generally speaking, love comprises all this, even as a lofty tree, of which the root is the sympathy of will for what is good, the stem its moving force, all seeking, aiming, and pursuit of good the branches, while the fruit is union and enjoyment. Thus love seems to be made up of these five main parts, under which numerous smaller parts are comprised, as we shall see further on.

Call to mind the attraction between the magnet and steel, for that is a lively image of the love of which

oN I speak. Iron has so great a sympathy with the magnet, that so soon as they come within reach, it is attracted, and after sundry quivering motions inchoative of satisfaction, it draws to the magnet and struggles in every possible way to unite itself thereto. Do not these inanimate objects clearly represent the character of real love?

Complacency (or delight) and the bearing of the will towards the beloved object is love, strictly speaking; yet is that delight only the beginning of love, and the action of the will is the essential part; so that while both may be called love, there is a difference. We call dawn the day, and so this first complacency the heart feels may be called love; but even as the true day lies between dawn and sunset, so true love lies in that action of the will and heart which follow upon complacency and result in union. So to say, that which is good seizes and enthrals the heart with complacency, but draws and leads it to itself by love; complacency brings it forth, love achieves the journey; complacency awakens the heart, love leads it to action; the heart spreads its wings in complacency, but it can only fly by means of love. In short, love

F, W. Faber defines the love of complacency thus :—“When we love God, we rejoice that He is God, that He is so good and perfect as He is. We call this feeling the love of complacency” (All for Jesus, p. 63): “This complacency comes from the very knowledge of which faith imparts to us; and it is continually growing in us, unless sin and lukewarmness hinder and kill it” p. 306). “The love of complacency, strictly speaking, is the joy we feel in the infinite perfections of God, that He is what He is. But just as the knowledge of God by faith cannot stop at knowledge, but passes into a necessary complacency, and that necessary complacency into free acts of praise and of desire; so also this free love of complacency cannot terminate in itself. It passes on to another and a further love, which is called the love of Benevolence. Our love of God is just the opposite of God's Love of us. He loves us first with a love of benevolence, working in us all the good we have, and then, when it is worked, loving us with a love of complacency in His own work within us” (p. 309). Now is the “motion and drawing forth of the heart towards sundry great teachers have said that love was really the same as this complacency, since not only does the first spring of love rise from the delight which the heart feels on coming face to face with what is good, going on to a further delight through union with the object loved; but further, it is sustained by complacency, and can only exist by means of that delight which is its foster-parent; so that if delight (or complacency) cease, love likewise ceases. Even as the bee comes to life in honey, and seeks honey alone, so love is born of delight, exists for and tends to delight. It is the weight of matter which moves and arrests an object; the gravity of a stone causes it to move and to fall so soon as nothing hinders it; the same gravity keeps it moving, and finally stops it when it can go no further. And just so complacency moves the will and causes it finally to rest in the beloved object. Seeing this, it is not strange that wise men have counted love and delight as one and the same, although really, inasmuch as love is a true passion of the soul, it cannot stop short in mere complacency, but must be found in the action resulting therefrom. And this action caused by delight persists till there be union or enjoyment. Thus, when seeking a present good, it ceases not to urge and draw and join the heart to the object loved, which it enjoys in this manner; and this we call the love of complacency. But if that good which the heart seeks be distant, absent, or future, or that union cannot be so thoroughly attained as is wished, then the action of love which excites the heart presses on in longing, and is fitly called desire; for desire is but appetite, or concupiscence, for that which we have not yet fain would have.

Again, there are other impulses of love, by which we desire things which we in nowise expect or pretend to attain, as, e.g., when one says, “I would I were already in Paradise !” “Oh, that I were a king !” “Were I but young !” “Would that I had never sinned!” Such impossible desires are more accurately wishes: when we really desire we say “I will;” but when we wish what are but imperfect wishes we can but say “I would.” No one says “I do wish to be young again,” knowing it to be impossible; and such wishes, or, as the Schoolmen call them, “velleities,”* are merely an expression of will without result, because the will, conscious of their impossibility, checks the movement, and stops short in the mere wish, as if saying, “Such and such a thing would be very acceptable to me, and although I can neither ask nor hope it, I gladly would were it possible.” - In short, these wishes or velleities are a lower affection which may be called the love of simple approbation, wherein the soul confesses certain things to be admirable and desirable were they within reach.

There is another class of wishes yet more imperfect than these, in that their movements are not checked by impossibility, but by their total incompatibility with more forcible wishes or desires; as when a sick man desires unwholesome food, which is within his reach, and yet abstains from it, fearing to make himself worse: the two desires conflicting,—one to eat certain meats, the other to regain health. But because the latter is strongest it extinguishes the other. Jephthah wished to save his daughter, but inasmuch as that was incompatible with his desire to fulfil his vow, he willed that which he did not wish, i.e. to sacrifice his child, and wished that which he willed not, to save her. Pilate and Herod respectively wished to deliver the Saviour and S. John Baptist, but that wish being incompatible in the one case with Pilate’s desire to please the Jews and Caesar, in the other Herodias and her daughter, they were vain wishes. And in proportion as the things thus incompatible are unworthy so the wish becomes more imperfect. Thus

“Velleity, the lowest degree of desire.” — Johnson.

? Judges xi. 2. Mark xv. 15. 4 Mark vi.

Herod’s wish to save S. John was more imperfect than Pilate’s to deliver our Lord; because the latter feared the wrath of Caesar and of the people, while the former only feared a woman. Such wishes, which are not impossible, but incompatible with stronger desires, are vain and profitless. When impossible we say, “I wish, but I cannot ;” but in the other case, “I wish, but I will not.”

We say that the eye sees, the ear hears, the tongue speaks, the understanding ponders, the memory remembers, and the will loves; but all the while we know very well that it is the man himself who does all these things by means of divers faculties and organs. Even so it is the man who, by means of that affective faculty which we call the will, tends towards the good, and has that great sympathy with it which is the first source of love. They are assuredly in error who have supposed that resemblance was the chief attraction whence love arises. Who does not see that old men often dearly love and are loved by little children? that wise men love the ignorant, provided they be teachable? that sick men love their doctors? And if we may borrow an illustration from inanimate things, what resemblance is there between the magnet and iron? or between water and a sponge? Yet this sucks up water greedily. So with earthly love, which sometimes is more passionate between persons of opposite qualities than those who resemble each other. No; the attraction lies in a certain proportion, adaptation, or sympathy between the lover and the object. of love. The sick man loves his physician because of the adaptation of the physician’s skill to the patient’s needs; the physician and the teacher love their patient or scholar because they can employ their faculty on his behalf. Old men love children, not from sympathy, but because the simplicity and weakness of the one are a counterpart to the prudence and firmness of the other; while the little ones love the aged because of their notice, and a hidden consciousness of needing their support. We find discords introduced into harmony in order to the perfection of music, and the beauty of enamel or diaper depends upon a happy contrast of precious stones and colours. Even so love does not always depend upon resemblance or sympathy, but upon that correspondence and proportion whereby each part, when united, is improved and perfected. The head nowise resembles the body, or the hand the arm, yet have they so great a mutual correspondence, and are so fitly adapted, that they perfect one another’s action. And sometimes we see glad and sorrowful, or harsh and gentle souls, drawn together by the influence each exercises over the other, thereby mutually improving one another.' Doubtless when to correspondence you add resemblance, love grows stronger; for likeness being the true soul of unity, two like objects united by correspondence to one end, they attain rather to unity than union.

So, then, the first source of love is attraction of the lover to the object of love; and this attraction consists in a correspondence which is that mutual adaptation whereby things are disposed for union, through which they tend to perfect one another. This will be clearer as we go on.

Solomon treats very exquisitely the love of the devout soul and its Saviour in that inspired Book which by reason of its sweetness we call the Song of Songs, wherein he sets forth that spiritual love which exists between God and us, by the correspondence of our heart’s affections with His sacred inspiration, under the symbolism of a pure Shepherd and shepherdess. And therein he makes the Bride to speak first, as it were taken by surprise, “Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His Mouth,”' whereby the soul aspires to a chaste union with her Bridegroom. In all times the kiss has been instinctively used as the symbol of perfect love,— the union of hearts. We display our passions and the impulses we possess in common with other animals in our eyes, brow, and general expression: but “a man may be known by his look,”? Solomon says; and Aristotle, accounting for the custom of painting the face only of great men, says it is because the face shows what we are. But we only put forth the words and thoughts which issue from our spiritual or reasonable part, and which separate us from other animals, by means of the mouth. In fact, to pour out the soul or heart means to speak. “Pour out your heart before Him,” the Psalmist says,3 we give utterance to the feelings of your heart in words. And the devout Hannah, though “her voice was not heard, only her lips moved,” said, “I have poured out my soul before the Lord.”4 Even so those who kiss lay mouth to mouth in token of a desire to pour out their hearts one to the other in perfect union; and therefore at all times, and among the holiest men of old, a kiss has been the sign of love, being employed as such universally among the primitive Christians. Thus we find S. Paul writing, “Salute one another with an holy kiss ;”⁴ and Judas betrayed our Lord with a kiss, because, as has been said, it was His custom to receive His disciples thus, as also the little children of whom we read that He took them up in His arms and blessed them.

Thus, a kiss being the token of united hearts, the Bride, whose one desire is union with her Beloved, cries out, “Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His Mouth.” What else do I crave or desire, save to pour out my soul to Him, and He to me, so that, inseparably united, we may dwell together for ever!

When the Holy Spirit speaks of perfect love it is always in terms of union: “The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul,” S. Luke says.?, And our Lord asked for His followers “that they may be one.”3 S. Paul bids us “keep unity of spirit in the bond of peace ;”⁵ all which unity is the perfection of love. Holy Scripture tells us that “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”5 S. Gregory of Nazianzen and S. Augustine speak of their friends as having but one soul with them, and even Aristotle earlier still said, “When we would express the love we bear to a friend we say, His soul and mine are but as one; hate separates, love unites.” Therefore the aim and end of love is nothing less than union between him who loves and the object of his love.

You must bear in mind that there are natural unions, such as those of resemblance, consanguinity, cause and effect, as also others which may be called voluntary, inasmuch as though of the natural order of things, they depend upon the will,—to wit, benefits conferred which unite the giver and receiver, social intercourse, and the like. Now a natural union produces love, and from out that love there springs another, perfecting love. Thus parent and child, brother and sister, united by birth, are drawn more closely together by a voluntary oneness of mind; and in such unions nature begins what the will completes and perfects. In voluntary unions love comes first, and tends to bring people together, such union increasing love, inasmuch as love seeks intercourse, which intercourse fosters love. Thus love leads to the union of marriage, and that union maintains and increases love; so that from all points of view we may say that love tends to union. But here we must stop and ask, To what kind of union? Observe that the Bride of the Canticles craves union with the Bridegroom by a kiss, which represents that spiritual union which is contracted by an interchange of soul with soul. It is the man that loves, but he loves with his will, and thus the aim of his love depends upon the nature of that will. His will is spiritual, therefore the union to which his love aspires is spiritual, and that all the more because the heart, the seat and source of love, would not be perfected by union with temporal things, but rather degraded.

Truly there are certain passions which, like the mistletoe on trees, put forth an extraneous, superfluous growth, and mingle with love; yet they are not in any sense real love, but mere excrescences, liable greatly to damage, and if not cut off, altogether to destroy love; and for this reason:—the more separate acts the soul undertakes, so much the less well and vigorously it performs them, because as its active power is spread abroad there is less to concentrate on any given spot; just as men absorbed in many things are not specially earnest about any. You cannot fixedly consider the features of a face and at the same time closely follow the harmony of a musical performance, nor deeply study both form and colour at the same moment. He who would speak effectively cannot give his mind the while to anything else. I know that it is said of Caesar and of Origin that they could give heed to several things at once; but at best the more attention is divided the less there can be for each object. So then there is a difference between seeing, hearing, and knowing more, or better: he who sees less sees better; he who sees more sees not so well. As a rule men of very general acquirements have a less accurate knowledge than those whose mind is specially concentrated on one subject; and, in like manner, when the soul expends its affective powers in various directions its force is necessarily subdivided and enfeebled. There are three manner of affective actions,—those of spirit, reason, and sense. When love pours itself forth by all, it is certainly wider spread, but less deep; when confined to one, it is deeper, though not so wide. Fire is a symbol of love: observe what a loud report it makes through the cannon’s mouth; that report would be greatly lessened if it found several vents instead of one. Since then love is an act of the will, he who would not only love nobly and generously, but forcibly and actively, must limit his affection within spiritual bounds; for the moment it is devoted to the sensual and sensitive those intellectual processes which are of the very essence of love become weakened.

Philosophers of old have said that there are two kind of extasy, one which lifts us above ourselves, the other plunging us below; thereby admitting that man’s nature lies midway between the angel and the brute, on the one side by his intellectual, on the other by his sensual qualities. By continual effort he may rise from the lower state, and, exercising his intellectual side, he may attain closer likeness to the angel; while, if he yield to sensual: influences, he descends and comes nearer to the brute. And inasmuch as extasy means merely a going out of self, there may be extasy on either side, higher or lower. So, then, they whose hearts are ravished by Divine and spiritual delights are verily carried out of themselves, but after a blessed fashion which raises them in their noblest parts to the angels’ level, albeit men by nature, —human angels, so to call them. But, on the other hand, those who are seduced by sensual pleasures fall from their midway position to the level of the brute, going out of themselves only to take up a far lower position.

Now, accordingly as such extasy be more considerable in either direction, the more it restrains the soul and keeps it from returning to its own level. Thus holy men who are rapt in God and heavenly contemplation lose for the time all consciousness of their senses, all power of outward action, the soul absorbing every faculty; and, in like manner, the sensualist who is plunged in voluptuous enjoyment loses all power of mind and reason: in mystical illustration of which study the scriptural history of Elijah in the chariot of fire,’ and that of Nebuchadnezzar driven forth to become as the beasts of the field.”

If, then, the soul expends its love in sensual acts which lower it, it needs must be that the higher love wax feebler; and so far from real love being strengthened by that union to which sensual love tends, it fades and perishes thereby. “The oxen were ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them :”3 so, while the intellectual soul bestows a noble love on some worthy object, it often happens that the lower senses feed upon their own pasture, and destroy that union which can come only of true, solid love.

When Elisha had healed Naaman he refused the gold and valuables offered him, but his faithless servant Gehazi ran after Naaman, and took surreptitiously what his master had refused. Spiritual love, which ought to be master of the soul, refuses every sensual union, and is content with pure benevolence; but the senses, which are or ought to be as servants, go forth and seek that which it has refused, thus, Gehazi-like, dishonouring their master and his pure intention. In proportion as the soul turns to such material union, so does it lose hold of the finer spiritual union of the heart.

Thus we see that all such union as is simply sensual and animal not merely does not create, but even weakens or destroys love. When Amnon had gratified his incestuous passion for Tamar he hated her more intensely than he had seemed to love her,’ so that he thrust her out. Take thyme, rosemary, cloves, and other scented ingredients together, and their joint odour is agreeable, but not nearly so much so as the essence distilled from the same, in which the sweetness of each several thing combines into an aroma far more powerful than that which the united substances gave forth. So love may be found in the union of sensual and intellectual powers, but never so excellent a love as when all spiritual emotions, purged from those which are corporeal, unite in a pure and spiritual love, —a love far stronger, truer, and deeper than the other.

Low-minded persons measure love as they do coin, by its weight, and hold sensual love to be strong because it is fierce and noisy, solid because it is rude and earthly; but love is like fire, the flame of which is brighter according as it is fed with a purer material, and which is more speedily extinguished by heaping earth upon it than in any other way. The nobler the object of love so much the livelier and more enduring its affections will be; and there is no surer way of destroying it than by descending to a low, earthly union. S. Gregory says that we find this difference between spiritual and sensual pleasures, that whereas men long for the latter before possessing them, and are disgusted with possession, on the contrary, they shrink from spiritual pleasures beforehand, and only value them when experienced. So mere animal love finds an end in union, and most brutes are heavy and dull after satisfying their appetites; whereas spiritual love finds even more than it looked for in union with its desired object, and greater satisfaction, so that delight continues even increasing with union, and union with delight.

We have one indivisible soul, but it contains divers degrees of perfection, for it is living, feeling, and reasonable, and subject to sundry dispositions and inclinations which move it to seek or avoid certain things. There are some plants whose neighbourhood the vine abhors, while it delights in the olive tree: there is a natural antipathy between man and the serpent, so that it is even said the latter is killed by the saliva of a fasting man; while he and the sheep are adapted and friendly to each other. Such inclinations are not founded on any experience of usefulness or harm, but spring from a hidden instinct which calls forth an unconscious sympathy or antipathy.

Secondly, we possess a sensuous appetite, which stimulates us to seek or avoid certain things, just as animals seek various kinds of food according to the characteristics of each; and in this appetite consists, or from it issues, the love we call sensual or brutish, but - which properly is not love at all, but merely appetite.

Thirdly, inasmuch as we are rational, we have a will, which moves us to seek that which is good, according as we know, or are persuaded, it to be such. And in this reasonable soul we find two kinds of perfection, which S. Augustine and, after him, all theologians have called ‘the inferior and superior parts of the soul: the inferior that which reasons and acts according to the arguments and experience of the senses; the superior that which reasons and acts according to the intellectual perceptions, and which is not actuated by the senses, but by spiritual causes. Accordingly, this superior part is called mind or spirit; and the inferior, sense, feeling, or human reason.

Again, this superior part of man may be ruled by two manner of lights,—one that natural light which has guided philosophers and men of science; the other a supernatural light, which guides Christians and theologians who found their arguments upon faith and revelation,—still more those who are led by even more directly heavenly inspiration. So S. Augustine says that it is by that superior part that we cleave to and obey the Eternal Law of God.

Jacob suffering Benjamin to go down into Egypt under extreme necessity," though against his wish, is an illustration of the two wills,—the inferior which grudged to let him go, and the superior which resolved to send him; the inferior will, which was founded on Jacob’s desire to avoid separation from his son, yielding to the superior, which sought to provision his family, It was the inferior man in Abraham which asked mistrustfully, “Shall a child be born unto him which is an hundred years old?”? and the superior which “believed in God; and He counted it to him for righteousness.”3 The inferior again shrank from sacrificing Isaac, when Abraham was called on so to do, but the superior will resolved to do so heartily.

We daily experience these contrary wills. The father who sends his son to college or to court mourns at parting with him, though his higher will accepts what promotes his son’s interest; the mother weeps as she blesses her newly-married daughter, although her superior will rejoices in her child’s happiness. Yet there are not, as the Manichees affirmed, two souls or natures in man. Not so, S. Augustine says ;? but the will, when attracted by divers impulses, is divided and drawn hither and thither, until, following one or the other as it is free to do, the strongest will asserts its pre-eminence, only leaving behind the sense of struggle. Above all, our Saviour in His Humanity illustrates these superior and inferior wills; for, as all theologians know, He was wholly perfect from the moment He was conceived of the Blessed Virgin, nevertheless He was subject to sorrow and grief of heart; nor may we say that He suffered only in the body, or even in soul, in respect of the senses, for He Himself said, before any of His external sufferings, before even He was seized, “My Soul is sorrowful, even unto death.”? And then He prayed that the cup might pass from Him, thereby displaying the desire of the inferior part of His Soul, when contemplating the bitterness of His Passion, to escape it; which petition He made to His Father: whence we see plainly that the inferior part of the soul is not identical with its sensitive nature, nor the lower will with the sensual appetite; for these are incapable of making a prayer or petition—acts of the reasoning faculty,—still less can they speak to God, Whom the senses cannot reach. But the Saviour. having shown that He experienced the lower will, and that it sought to shun suffering, displayed the superior will, by which, accepting the Father’s decree, He voluntarily met death, and in spite of the lower will said, “Not My Will, but Thine be done.”

Different DEGREES OF REASON ¥ 7~

The Temple of Solomon had three courts,—the first for those Gentiles who came to worship God at Jerusalem; the second for the Israelites, male and female; the third for the Priests and Levites; and beyond all these was the Holy of Holies, into which the High Priest alone entered once in every year. Our reason, or soul, is the very temple of God, Who dwells therein. “I sought Thee without,” S. Augustine says, “and found Thee not, because Thou wert within me.” So in this mystic temple there are three courts, or different degrees of reason. The first leads us by the experience of sense, the second by human knowledge, the third by faith, and beyond all these there is an eminent, supreme point of spiritual perception, which is not led by the light of reason or argument, but by a simple act of the will, through which the mind yields and submits to God’s Truth and Will.

Now, this culminating point of the soul or mind is aptly symbolised by the Sanctuary or Holy of Holies; for I. The Sanctuary had no windows whereby to admit light, and that mind needs no enlightening of words. II, All light entered by the door, and so into that mind faith alone enters, kindling like rays, the beauty and brightness of God’s Good Pleasure. III. None entered save the High Priest, and this highest point of the soul is only approachable by a wide overpowering consciousness that the Divine Will must be loved and accepted, not here and there only, but in everything, general and special alike. IV. When the High Priest entered he darkened the doorway by the fumes of his censer, and even so the soul is sometimes clouded by the renunciations of the soul, which cares not so much to define the beauty and goodness set forth as to embrace and worship them, and through absolute acceptance of God’s Will to attain perfect union with Him. V. Lastly, the Ark of the Covenant was in the Sanctuary, and hard by the Tables of the Law, the manna in its golden pot, and Aaron’s rod which budded and blossomed in one night. So in this highest point of the soul we find, (1) the light of faith, symbolised by the manna hidden it its pot, by which we assent to the truth of mysteries we cannot understand; (2) the aid of hope, typified by Aaron’s rod, by which we accept the promises of good things beyond our sight; (3) the sweetness of holy charity, represented by God’s Commandments, by which we unite our minds to that of God, of Which we are scarce conscious.

For although faith, hope, and charity shed their heavenly influence over ail the soul’s powers, mental or bodily, subjecting these to their rightful authority; yet their special and natural abode is in this highest part of the soul, whence, like a fountain of living water, they flow through sundry channels into all faculties and parts. So then there are two departments in the superior part of the mind,—the one whence proceeds all that is of supernatural faith and light, the other the source of ordinary faith, hope, and charity. S. Paul was constrained by the two conflicting desires, to depart and be with Christ, and to abide in the flesh and win souls to Him.’ Both desires assuredly came of his higher nature, since both were of love; but his resolution to hold to the latter was not a matter of argument, but simply from seeing and feeling His Master's Will, and yielding to it in spite of all that argument might say to the contrary.

But if faith, hope, and charity are formed by this highest manner of acquiescence, whence is it that the lower mental faculty yet reasons and discusses their Phil. i. 23, 24. teaching? It is even as with lawyers, who having disputed a point, and Parliament having decided the question, they yet discuss its various bearings, and the character of the decision; so the mind being fixed by the power of God’s Grace, the understanding nevertheless is exercised upon the results of faith. And the pleadings of theology ‘are made before the bar of the highest part of the soul, and it is its loftiest point which submits to the final decision. It is because the recognition of these four different degrees of the reasoning faculties is so necessary to the understanding of spiritual matters that I have dwelt thus at length upon the subject.

The latter is excited by the hope of pleasure to be acquired from the object loved; the former by our desire to promote the welfare of that object, rather than selfish gratification.

II. If the person loved already possesses all that is good, and we rejoice in his possession, then our love becomes the love of complaisance, which is really an act of the will, uniting itself to the pleasure or welfare of another. But if he whom we love does not yet possess such good, we desire it for him, and then our love becomes the love of desire.

III. When benevolent love is exercised without any response from the object loved, it is simply called the love of benevolence; when there is mutual correspondence, the love of friendship. Now, for mutual correspondence it is necessary that friends should love each other, know that they do so, and keep up intercourse and familiarity.

IV. If we merely love a friend, without preferring him to others, that is simple friendship; if we prefer him, our friendship becomes one of choice or selection.

V. If such selection be ordinary, it is called simple preference; but if we specially and greatly prefer one friend out of many others, then it is called a special preference.

VI. If our esteem and preference, however great, yet will bear any comparison with that which we feel for others, it may be called a special preference; but if it be immeasurably above all else, bearing no comparison with any other, then it becomes a sovereign, supreme preference, or, in a word, it is that love which we owe to the One God. In familiar language the words dear, dearly, to become dear, indicate a certain price or value; and just as in common parlance the word man (strictly speaking indicative of human beings generally) has been appropriated to the male sex as the superior, and adoration is almost limited in its application to God as its worthiest object, so the word CHARITY is reserved for the Love of God, as our supreme, sovereign affection.

Risen says somewhere that for fear the word love should excite evil thoughts in the weak, as signifying rather a carnal than a spiritual affection, therefore Holy Scripture employs the words charity and dilection as purer. S. Augustine, on the contrary, with a riper knowledge of God’s Word, clearly shows that the word LOVE is no less pure than dilection; and that both alike are used to signify a holy affection as well as at times a depraved passion, to which end he cites various passages of Scripture. But S. Denys speaks more favourably of the word love, saying that the apostles and first disciples (the only theologians he wot of) preferred it to dilection, in order to correct those who used it in a profane or carnal sense; and although they held both words to mean the same thing, some looked upon LOVE as more appropriate to God than dilection: thus, e.g., the holy Ignatius wrote, “My love is crucified.” And as these earliest theologians used the word love in things divine, to cleanse it from a shadow of impurity in the world’s imagination, so they used the word dilection (or delight) to express human affections, as being free from all question of sensuality: S. Denys quotes some one as saying, “Thy delight has pierced my soul, as the delight of women.” The word LOVE represents more fervour, warmth, and energy than dilection, and in Latin dilection conveys much less than love. A great orator says, “Clodius bears to me a great dilection, or, to speak more truly, he loves me.” And thus the title of LOVE as chiefest is rightly given to charity, as to the chiefest and highest of loves; and therefore it is that I have called this little book a treatise OF THE LOVE OF GOD.

As soon as man dwells with any attention on the thought of the Divinity, he experiences a tender emotion which testifies that God is the God of the heart of man; nor does the understanding ever find such satisfaction as in this thought, the merest shadow of which (says the prince of philosophers) is more precious than whatever else is greatest, as the faintest ray of sunshine is brighter than moon and stars together. If man’s heart be overcome with fear, it instinctively turns to God, thus acknowledging that when all else is adverse He is Good, and that He Alone can save us in peril.

This satisfaction and reliance can only spring from the adaptation between God’s Goodness and the soul, a mighty but hidden adaptation, which all know to exist but few comprehend, which cannot be denied nor yet penetrated. We are created in the Image and Likeness of God: what is that to say but that we are adapted to His Divine Majesty? The soul is spiritual, invisible, immortal; it understands, wills, is able freely to judge, argue, know, and be virtuous; in all which it is like to God. It dwells in the whole body and in every separate part thereof, even as God is in the whole world and its every part. Man knows and cherishes himself by the acts of his understanding and will, which, separate as they are in their source, are inseparably combined in the soul. Even so the Son proceeds from the Father, as His Word; and the Holy Ghost, as Love proceeding; each Person distinct in Himself, and from the Father, yet all Three inseparable and united, One Only, Indivisible Godhead, Their Glory Equal, Their Majesty Co-eternal.

But beyond this resemblance there is a marvellous correspondence between God and man to the perfecting of both. Not that God can receive anything of man, but because just as man can only be perfected by Divine Goodness, so It can in nowise employ Its perfection so fitly as with respect to our humanity. The one has an infinite need and capacity, the other an infinite power and readiness to give. Nothing is so welcome to poverty as ample liberality; nothing more welcome to the rich and liberal heart than want to be relieved; and while the greater the riches of a benevolent person the more he longs to overflow upon others, so the more urgent a man’s needs the more he craves for the void to be filled. Thus riches and poverty blend happily, and it were hard to say to which with most satisfaction, if our Lord had not told us that it is more blessed to give than to receive; whence we may infer that God’s Goodness rejoices even more in bestowing His graces on us than we in receiving them.

The Bride cried out, “Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His Mouth.”¹ But is there sufficient correspondence between Bride and Bridegroom for such union? “Thy Love is better than wine,” she goes on to say. New wine ferments and cannot be contained, but the Bridegroom’s Love is yet stronger in its fervour; it is “sweeter than all spices.” We need the outpouring of Divine abundance in our barrenness and want; but He only needs us through the very excess of His Goodness and Abundance, even as the mother needs that her infant’s lips should draw forth the milk which in its abundance oppresses her breasts. Surely then, seeing that nothing in this world can fully satisfy the soul, that the mind always craves to know more, and the will to attain some greater good, it may well cry out that it is not made for this world; that there is a Sovereign Power on Which it hangs, a Supreme Maker Who has imparted this boundless desire to know, this insatiable craving; and that therefore it can only tend and strive ceaselessly to be united to Him Whose it is wholly! This is our true adaptation to God.

Tie babe a Disposition to love Gor above all Things. [*IF there were a man existing in that original uprightness in which Adam was first created, he would, without any further aid than that which God imparts to all His creatures, incline to love Him above all else, and readily succeed in doing so. For just as the Great Creator has given fire the impulse to rise heavenwards, and water to flow to the sea, even so He has implanted in man’s heart a special natural tendency not merely to love that which is generally good, but specially His Heavenly Goodness, the best of all good things; and were there a man on earth so blessed as I have imagined, God would of His Sovereign Goodness inevitably give him all such aid as was needful to carry out his inclination. Such aid would be on the one hand natural, inasmuch as God is Sovereign Master of nature; and on the other supernatural, inasmuch as it would correspond, not to man’s ordinary nature, but to a nature enriched with original righteousness, a supernatural quality issuing forth from God’s special Grace. Meanwhile the love which such a man would expend upon ordinary objects would be natural, and his higher love of which we speak would tend to God Alone, according as He is the recognised Lord and Final End of all creation, even of human perceptions, and consequently to be loved above all things, even according to natural tendency or inclination.

Now, although our human nature has fallen from the original righteousness in which man was created, and is grievously wounded by sin, nevertheless that holy inclination to love God above all things abides, as also that natural light by which we recognise His Sovereign Goodness as to be loved beyond all things; and no man can think stedfastly upon God, even by his natural light, without feeling some drawings of love excited in his innermost heart by the hidden tendencies of nature, which stimulate the mind to find rest in Him as its First and Ruling Cause.

The partridge is apt to steal its neighbours’ eggs, whether from stupidity or a craving to hatch a larger brood I know not; but anyhow it is a fact, that when the young bird hears the call of his real mother, it invariably leaves the foster-bird and follows her: led by a hidden sympathy, dormant until, on meeting its object, it is suddenly called forth, and the bird returns to its first claim. Even so with our heart: it may be brought up amid low, transitory things, beneath the wings of nature, so to say; but the first glance it turns upon God, the first token from Him it receives, will rouse its first natural tendency towards Him, and the spark, bursting forth as from ashes, will touch the will and kindle a flame of that supreme love which is due to the First Cause and Lord of All.

The eagle is noble in heart and mighty on the wing; but its vision is far more powerful than even its flight, and reaches farther. Even so our minds, though kindled with a natural tendency towards God, have more power to see how greatly He deserves love than strength of will to love Him, and that because sin has more terribly weakened our will than it has clouded our understanding: and while that rebellion of the sensual appetite which we call concupiscence molests the intellect more or less, it chiefly excites the will to revolt; and thus the infirm will, continually assaulted by concupiscence, cannot advance in Divine Love as reason and natural inclination would dispose it to do.

Ah! what glorious witness, not only to a deep knowledge of God, but to a powerful drawing towards Him, many great heathen philosophers have borne: Socrates, Plato, Trismegistus, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Seneca, Epictetus! Socrates, above all, clearly perceived the Unity of God, and was so disposed to love Him, that S. Augustine says many believed him to teach moral philosophy solely with a view to purify men’s minds, and enable them the better to contemplate the One Sovereign Good, the Only God; while as to Plato, he stamps himself plainly by his celebrated definition of philosophy, i.e., that it is neither more nor less than loving God, and that the true philosopher is he who loves God. And what need is there to enlarge upon Aristotle’s profound assertions of the Unity of God and His Greatness?

But, nevertheless, these great minds, with all their knowledge of God and disposition to love Him, yet failed in strength and courage fitly to do so. “The invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His Eternal Power and Godhead,” says S. Paul; “so that they are without excuse, because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful.”¹ They glorified Him after a fashion, but not as He ought to be glorified, for they had not courage to overthrow idolatry, but in S. Paul’s words they “held the truth in unrighteousness,”? and preferring their own ease to God’s honour, “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”3 One can but mourn over Plato’s account of the death of Socrates, and how he spoke of the gods, as though there were many, when he knew so well there was One Only; or over Plato himself sacrificing to the gods, or over Mercurius Trismegistus in his cowardly lament over the abolition of idolatry, he who had spoken so fittingly of the True God. And above all I grieve to note Epictetus, who at times speaks of God with such force and feeling that you might take him for a Christian meditating deeply, at another time calling upon the heathen gods!

Verily our feeble, sin-laden nature is like a palm tree grown in this country, which bears a mere semblance of fruit, the real ripe date being only the produce of warmer lands. Even so the human heart produces some attempts at love, but full love springs up only in those hearts which are inspired and fostered by heavenly grace and perfect charity; and that imperfect, barren, human effort is, so to say, an “impotent” will, which perceives the pool of healing but has not strength to enter, devoid as it is of the generous vigour which is needed to prefer God above all else. S. Paul describes this mental attitude, saying, “To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.”

If then we cannot by nature prefer God to all else, why are we naturally inclined so to do? Is it not purposeless to incite us to a love to which we cannot attain? Why should we thirst for this precious water of life, since we cannot quench that thirst?

God is very Good. Our treacherous disobedience deserved the loss of all that favour He testified towards human nature when He lifted up the light of His Countenance upon it, and disposed it to be the recipient of His Infinite Goodness. But He could not deal harshly with the work of His Own Hands; “He considered that we were but flesh, and even as a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again," and thus in His Mercy He would not altogether cast us away, nor

x John v. 2, 3. ? Rom. vii. 18.

7 deprive us of all token of His Grace; leaving us this inclination to love Him, so that none might be tempted to say, “Who will show us any good?”³ For although a mere natural inclination is not enough to attain the blessing of a due love of God, yet if that be faithfully used, God’s Grace will enable us to go on further; and as we act up to what is given His Fatherly Mercy will supply more and more, till we attain that Sovereign Love to which we are called, since nothing is surer than that God’s Goodness never fails those who are faithful in such small matters as they can control.

So then our natural inclination to love God above all things is not profitless. God uses it to draw us nearer to Himself, and to hold us like birds in a net, and it is a token and remembrance to us of our First Cause and our Creator, and of our duty to Him. Of old, when a stag was taken by some monarch and let loose again in the forest, it was the custom to put a collar on it, bearing the royal arms, or legend, in token that it was his for ever :—thus we read of a stag which was found three hundred years after Caesar’s death bearing a collar with the inscription, “Caesar loosed me.”

Even so, the tending to God which He has implanted in our souls, sets forth to friend and foe, not merely that we originally were His, but also that, while giving us the use of free-will, we yet belong to Him, and that He retains the right to recall us to our own salvation, as His Holy and Gracious Providence sees fit. And so David not only speaks of the “light” of His Countenance, but says, “Thou hast put gladness in my heart ;”* because we may fairly hope and believe that He Who has thus stamped us with the token of our origin desires and purposes to reclaim us from amid all our wanderings, if we will but yield ourselves up to His Heavenly Goodness.