The Duty to Love God

ALL that has been said proves most clearly the duty of loving God, and His claim upon our love. How is it with the infidel? As he knows not God the Son, so is he also ignorant of the Father and the Holy Spirit ; and as he gives no glory to the Son, neither does he glorify the Father who sent Him, nor the Holy Spirit, the gift of both. He knows less of God than we do, therefore it is no wonder he should love Him less. One thing, however, he does know ; that to Him who created him, he owes him self entirely. But how will it be with me ? for I can plead no ignorance. I know that God made me without any desert of mine, that He satisfies all my wants, comforts me with pity, and governs me with anxious care ; and not only so, but I know, besides, that He is my Redeemer, the Author of my eternal salvation, my treasure and my glory. As it is written : “ With Him is plentiful redemption ;” “ By His own blood He entered once into the Holy of Holies, having obtained eternal redemption.” He keeps us safe, as it is written : “ The Lord knoweth the days of the undefiled, and their in heritance shall be for ever.” He enriches us, as He has said : “ Good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over, shall they give into your bosom;” and elsewhere: “The eye hath not seen, O God, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee.” He fulfils us with glory, as saith the Apostle: “We wait for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our body, now vile and abject, and make it like unto His own, which is full of glory.” And again : “ The sufferings of this present time are not to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us ;” and this present time of this world's affliction (so short, so fugitive) produces to us (if only despising the visible we fix our eyes upon things invisible) “an eternal and incomparable weight of glory.”

For all of this, what shall I render to the Lord ? Both reason and the law of Nature bind me fast to give myself undividedly to Him from whom I hold all that I have, and to devote my entire being to the love of Him. And faith reveals to me that I am constrained to love Him more than myself, the more I understand how I owe to His munificence not only all I am, but moreover the gift of Himself.

But let us consider that, ere yet the day of Christian faith had come, before God had put on our flesh and died upon a cross, gone down into hell and ascended to the Father, that is, before the fulness of His love for us had shone forth, long before, man had been commanded to love the Lord his God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength, that is, with his whole being, with all the love of which he is capable, as a creature endowed with intelligence and will. Could it be unjust of God to claim for Himself His own work and His gifts ? Why should not the work love God who made it, having also received the power to love ; and why not love Him with all its powers, if it be only by God that it possesses any ? Consider, too, that man has not only been called into being out of nothing, without any anterior claim, but also that he has been so called to be raised to high dignity. We shall thus see more clearly our obligation to love Him wholly, and His right to our love. More over, when man had sunk to the level of the beasts that perish, did God not intervene to reinstate and save him ? Is not this the marvel of His goodness and His mercy ? For by sin we had fallen from the dignity of our creation, to become imbruted like the ox that eateth grass and hath not the light of reason. If I owe my whole self to my Creator, what do I not owe to my Redeemer, and to such a Redeemer ! It was a far less work to create, than to redeem ; for God had but to speak the word and all things were made ; but to repair the fall of that, which one word had created, what wonders had He not to perform, what cruelties, nay, what humilia tions, had He not to suffer !

What, therefore, shall I render to the Lord for all that He hath done for me ! By creating, He gave me to myself ; but He restored me to myself when He gave Himself to me : first given and then restored, I doubly owe myself to Him. But, what do I owe to God for the gift of Himself? If I gave Him my whole being a thousand times over, what would that be in comparison of God ?