520 THE LOVE OF GOD. making them for ever happy ; who value their corn, and their amine, and their oil, their business, their riches, or their diversions more than God and his love ! How senseless and absurd is the pretence to love God above all things,if we do not resolve to live upon him as our hope and happiness ; if we do not abuse hire to be our God, and our All, our chief and all-sufficient portion in this world, and that to come ! Where the idea of God as a being of supreme excellenceBoth not reign in the mind, where the will is not determined and fixed 'on God, as our supreme good, men are strangers to this sacred and divine affection of love. Till this be done, we cannot be said to love God with all the heart, II. How necessary and useful a practice it is for a christian to meditate often on the transcendent perfection and worth of the blessed God, to survey his attributes, and his "race in Christ Je- sus, to keep up in the mind a constant idea of supreme excel- lence, and 'frequently to repeat and confirm the choice of him, as our highest hope, our portion, and Our everlasting good ! Tliis, will keep the love of God warm at the heart, and maintain the di- -vine affection in its primitive life and vigour. But ifour idea of the adorable and supreme excellency of God grow faint and feeble, and sink lower in the mind ; if we lose the sight of his amiable glories, the sense of his amazing love in the gospel, the rich pro- mises and his alluring grace, if our will cleave not to him as our chief good, and live not on him daily as our spring of happiness, we shall abate the fervency of this sacred passion, our love to God will grow cold by degrees, and suffer great and guilty decays: III. Howgreatly and eternally are we indebted to Jesus the Son Of God, who has revealed the Father unto us in all his most amiable characters and glories, andbroughthim, as it were, with- the reach of our love ! The three great springs of love to God are these A clear discovery of what God'is in himself ; a lively senCe of what he has done for us; and a'well-grounded hope of what he will bestow upon us. All these are owing chiefly to our blessed Jesus. Let us consider them distinctly ; 1. It is he even the beloved Son of God, who lay in the bosom of the Father, who has'made a fuller and brighter dis- covery to us what God is, what an admirable and transcendent being, a spirit glorious in all perfections. It,is true, the light of nature dictates some of these things to us, and the ancient pro- phets have given further manifestations, ßet none knows the Father so as the Sondoes, and those whom the Sonwill reveal him; }flat. xi. 27. 'Y'hät blessed person, who is one with the' Father, must know him best, That illustrious in in who is so intimately United to God, and in whom dwells all thefulness of the godhead bodily ; Col. ii. 9. He whose naine is Emanuel, Godwith us ; }tat. i. 23. God manifest in the flesh; 1 Thu. iii. 16. he must
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