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answers, but enthusiastically perceiving with delight the eX' cellence of the truth at which they point, recognising its appropriate task in their solution ; and so loving in its dis- tinctive way the nature out of which they spring.
"H It is possible to love God with the heart and not to love Him with the soul. It is possible to have a most tender sense of mercies and to have no craving for holiness. It is possible to bless God for His goodness and to have no fellowship with His perfections, no desires that find their rest in the rectitude of His Will, in the truth and order of His ways, in His purpose for every one of us, even our sanctification — nay, to find in these the inaccessible heights, the incommunicable properties, that remove Him from us, that make our God an awful Being, whom we know not as a Father. I do not say that in God's view goodness and holiness are inseparable in their nature, but that with men it is a possible thing to love with the heart Him who renews our mercies day by day, and yet with the soul to have no longings after the Holy One, no affections hungering and thirsting after spiritual perfection, to see no beauty in Him that we should desire Him. And this it is which explains many of those anomalies in piety which rash men, spirits of judgment, without the charity of wisdom, set down at once to hypocrisy and pretence. It is possible to have some of the elements of devotion in a state of quick sensibility, and to be nearly destitute of other and higher ones. It is possible to be tenderly alive to goodness, promptly moved by kindness and undeserved mercies, and to have a very defective sense of moral obligation and very feeble desires for spotlessness of soul.^
1. With all thy Heart.
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy heart " ; i.e. the love must be sincere. The words of our mouth, and the actions of our life, may seem to betoken love. A man may profess great things, and do great things, and others may account him a good Christian. Men may laud his deeds, and applaud his words; but great deeds and high-sounding words do not constitute love, and God requires a love that, whatever may be its manifestation and profession, has its true seat and centre in the heart. Every man lives two lives — an outer life, lived before men, and an inner life, lived in his own inmost nature, and known thoroughly only to himself and God. The inner
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life and the outer may correspond, the one being the reflex of the other ; and in that case the man is, so far, a true man. Or the one may belie the other, the conduct not truly indicating the motive, but making pretentious demonstration of motives that do not exist ; in which case the man is a hypocrite.
2. With all thy Soul.
While the word " heart," referring to man's inmost being, denotes a true will, a thorough devotion of principle and pur- pose, the word " soul," referring to man's emotional nature, implies the ardent co-operation of our feelings. Feeling alone cannot constitute love, but it will add greatly to its beauty, and augment its force. If there be first of aU sincere devotion, then the glow of fervent feeling is grateful to God, it helps, by reaction, to increase the strength of our devotion itself, and it contributes a spontaneity of eager impulse which makes the service of our love to be joyful, generous, and free.
^ The love of the soul, which is delight in God's holiness, adds to the love of the heart, which is delight in His goodness, the glow of a stronger spirit than its own, and sustains it in existence at times when, if left to itself, it could only feed upon its memories, which then would look inconsistent and perplexing, the present appearing to be all unblessed and dark.^
3. With all thy Mind.
There is a love of God with the mind, there is a love of truth, a thirst for knowledge, a craving for light, an intense and genuine desire, which in some high natures is a deep passion to see things as God sees them ; there is a realm of order and of intellectual glory, a starry world which men enter with a feeling of worship, knowing it is alike boundless and inviolable ; there is a child-like adoration for the god-like power that rules by reason, and makes all gross and outward things move in obedience to the law of the Eternal thought. The faculties that find their exercise in this sphere are among the mightiest we possess, unwearied by toil, insatiable in appetite ; and God opens to them Himself, invites to the contemplation of His wisdom, provides for them worlds of science more ideal than art, more real than matter ; and so, in addition to the gratitude of the ^ J. Hamilton Thom.
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heart and to the devotion of the soul, draws upon Himself the calm delight, or the rapt transport, of the intellectual being.