Now the difficulty you find in attaining this spirit of love, is because you seek for it, in the way of reasoning: you would be possessed of it only from a _rational_ conviction of the fitness and amiableness of it. And as this clear idea does not put you into the possession of it, your reason begins to waver; and suggests to you, that it may be only a _fine notion_, that has no ground but in the power of imagination. But this, Sir, is all your own error; as if you would have your eyes do that, which only your hands or feet can do for you. The _spirit of love_ is a spirit of _nature_ and _life_; and therefore can only be produced in you, by that Almighty power which produced all nature, and gave life to every living thing. Life can only arise in its _own_ time and place from its proper cause, and as the genuine effect of it. Nature and life do nothing by chance, or accidentally, but every thing in one uniform way. _Fire_, _air_, and _light_, do not proceed sometimes from one thing, and sometimes from another: but wherever they are, they are always born in the same manner, and from the same working in the properties of nature. So in like manner, love is an _immutable birth_, always proceeding from the same cause, and cannot be in existence till its own true parents have brought it forth.
*How unreasonable would it be to doubt whether _strength_ and _health_ of body were real things, or possible to be had, because you could not by the power of your reason take possession of them? Yet this is as well as to suspect the purity and perfection of love to be only a _notion_, because your reason cannot bring it forth in your soul. For reason has no more power of altering the _life_ and _properties_ of the soul, than of altering the life and properties of the body. That, and that only, can cast devils, and evil spirits, out of the soul, that can say to the storm, Be still; and to the leper, Be thou clean.
And now, Sir, you see the absolute necessity of the gospel-doctrine of the cross; viz. of _dying to ourselves_, as the only way to life in God. This is the _one morality_ that does man any good. Fancy as many rules as you will, of modelling the moral behaviour of man, they all do nothing, because they leave nature still alive; and therefore can only help a man to an art of concealing his own inward evil. But still nature can no more change from evil to good, than darkness can work itself into light. The one work therefore is to resist and deny nature, that a _supernatural power_ may take possession of it.
There is no standing still, life goes on, and is always bringing forth its _realities_, which way soever it goeth. You see the _true state_ of every natural man, whether he be _Cæsar_ or _Cato_, whether he gloriously murders others, or only stabs himself; blind nature does all the work, and must be the doer of it, till the light of God has helped them to _one common good_, in which they all willingly _unite_, _rest_, and _rejoice_. In a word, goodness is only a _sound_, and virtue a mere strife of _natural passions_, till the _spirit of love_ is the breath of every thing that lives, and moves in the heart. For love is the one only blessing, and goodness, and God of nature; and you have no true religion, are no worshipper of the one true God, but in and by that Spirit of love, which is God himself living and working in you.
An Extract from Mr. LAW’s Spirit of LOVE.