giving her any displeasure; he inquires into her taste and inclinations, in order to comply with and gratify them; he likes to hear her commended; talks of her with fatisfaction, and careffes every thing that renews the agreeable idea.

IT is a mistake to think that there is an effential difference between this and divine love. We have but one way of loving Men love God and their friends in the fame manner; and these affections differ only in the diverfity of their objects and ends. Thus a pious man filled with fentiments towards God, like thofe of a virtuous lover, would be glad to behold him, and to be united to him; he thinks of him with delight, and fpeaks of him with reverence; he rejoices to fee him honored, and is happy to hear him praised; he meditates on his laws with pleasure, and obeys them with alacrity.

THAT

THAT this love by which a pious mind is united to its Creator, is a fource of the pureft pleasures, we now proceed to fhew, not folely on the authorities of fcripture, but by the force of reafon and common sense.

THE man who loves God, enjoys that first of felicities, the confciousness of having placed his affections on the only object in the universe that truly deserves them. Our love is the most precious thing we poffefs; it is indeed the only thing we can properly call our own, and therefore to bestow it unworthily, is the greatest fhame and forest mistake that we can ever commit. A man must needs be infinitely mortified and troub led, when he finds that the object of his love poffeffes not that excellence which he fondly expected would, fatisfy his wishes and make him completely happy. Alas! What is a little skin deep beauty, a few flafhes of wit, or

fome

some small degrees of goodnefs? We foon fee to the bottom of fuch fhallow goods, and confequently muft experience a decay of that admiration and affection which conftitutes happiness in the first degree. But to no fuch mortifying disappointment is he liable, who directs his love to God. In him the enlightened eye of true philofophy difcovers fo much of all that is great and good, as to keep the happy mind in an eternal extacy of admiration and love.

DIVINE love advances the happiness of man, because it tends, above all other attachments, to refine and ennoble his nature. The most inattentive must have obferved, that love has a furprizing force to give our manners a resemblance to those of the perfon we love. Seen through the eyes of a tender affection, even blemishes appear like beauties, and heaven born virtue puts on charms more than human. No wonder then that we

fo

To eafily adopt the fentiments, and imitate the manners of those we love.

This

is a conduct fo natural and common, that to tell the character of any man, we need but be told that of the perfon's he loves.

HENCE, the anxious parent rejoices to fee his child fond of the fociety of the virtuous and wife: he knows that fuch an attachment indicates a relish for virtue, and promises an honourable and happy event: while, on the other hand, he deplores his attachment to the vain and vicious, as a fad, but certain prefage of folly and depravity.

CERTAINLY then, in order to be happy, it most nearly concern's us to direct our love to the proper object. But who, or what is that object? The creatures all have their imperfections. They are all utterly unworthy, and beneath the fupreme love of an immortal mind. And to love thefe in the extreme, is infinitely

infinitely to demean ourselves, to dif grace our understandings, to contract low earthly paffions, and confequently to make ourselves miferable. Would we do honour to our reason, would we dignify our affections, ennoble our nature, and rise to true happiness, let us give our hearts to God. The man who loves God is animated with an ambition becoming the dignity of his birth; he is inspired with a greatness of foul that spurns all grovelling paffions and bafe defigns. The love which he has for God impells him, by a fweet and powerful influence, to imitate his all lovely and adorable perfections, and confequently renders him every day a more divine and heavenly creature.

GOD is the only worthy object of our love, because he is the only one who will certainly and generously reward it. Love, as we have obferved, was defigned to be the spring of joy, but, alas!

when