runs to welcome its father on his return home,—this is with us all the earliest exercise of love. This exercise of love is without deliberation, without reason; it wells up spontaneously from the hidden depths of Nature. It has no moral esteem in it; it would be felt as much towards a bad parent as a good (supposing him, that is, not to be altogether bad as a parent, which even the worst men seldom are). It has no gratitude in it; for it is experienced by children too young to appreciate the enormous debt which is due to a parent. And it has no benevolence in it; there is no desire in the child's mind of succouring the parents or rendering them assistance; nay, the idea that a parent can need any assistance is as far as possible from the minds of very young children, who usually conceive their parents to be omnipotent. In short this love is an instinct, seated in Nature, and arising in some mysterious way (of which we can give no account) from the relationship between parent and child. The same instinct is found in an incipient and crude state among animals. In virtue of it the chickens seek the shelter and warmth of their mother's outspread wings. But in man this instinct, being kneaded up with the spirit or reason, becomes developed and spiritualized, and endures long after the age of childhood has passed

away.

Now the question is whether this love of natural affection is capable of being exercised towards Almighty God,-is one of the forms in which we are

exhorted to love Him? And the answer is that it plainly is so. The Apostle to the Hebrews calls God "the Father of our spirits." And it was the peculiar mission of Our Blessed Lord to reveal and declare that most comfortable truth, the Paternity of God. Observe how the terms "your Father which is in heaven," "your Father," "thy Father which is in secret, which seeth in secret," "your heavenly Father," interpenetrate the Sermon on the Mount; how they are continually reappearing, as if they were the warp of the divine discourse.

Now this relationship to God is altogether peculiar to man, or at all events, if shared by him with other creatures, shared only with the Angels. The lower animals are God's creatures. And it cannot be denied that there is a tie of tenderness which, in virtue of this lower relationship, binds even them to their Creator, and gives them a place in His heart. Witness passages like these, which testify to such a tie :-" God remembered Noah and every living thing, and all the cattle which was with him in the ark;" "Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?" "He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry;" "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is forgotten before God." We find some echo of this sentiment of the Divine Mind in the tenderness of the artist or artisan to

his own productions? Could a poet endure to burn the poem, or a sculptor to shiver the statue, or a mechanic to break the machinery, on which he had bestowed much skill, labour, and time? But the sentiment towards a production is of a lower grade and less tender than that towards offspring; and, "we," says St. Paul to the Athenians, quoting and adopting the words of a heathen poet, "are His offspring." He is "the Father of our spirits;" the Father especially of that faculty in us which is capable of responding to His appeals and holding intercourse with Him,--the reason or spirit. The power of moral choice, the conscience, the capacity of conversing with God in prayer, these are all scintillations from God's own uncreated

essence.

Now the first love which God requires from us must flow from the recognition of this relationship between us and Himself, which, obscured as it had been by idolatry and the manifold corruptions of the human heart, it was one great object of the Gospel to bring to light and announce in the most explicit manner. Love indeed, the warmest love, is due to God from us on other grounds, on the ground of His mercy and loving kindness, and on the ground of the intrinsic excellence and perfection of His character. But none of the more rational and deliberate exercises of affection can dispense us from the instinct which arises from the simple relationship subsisting between Him and us. What would be thought of a son, whose entire feeling

to his father was expressed thus: "I love

you because

you have been so kind to me, and because you are so excellent a man." These are most rational grounds of love, but the parent would probably wish to hear alleged as well as these: "I love you because you are my father." The love which flows directly out of the connexion is the most spontaneous, the most natural, and the most fresh of all.

And who is there among us who may not this moment yield this love to Almighty God, if with simple, unsophisticated mind, like those listeners who clustered round the feet of Our Lord on the verdant lilyclad hill where He delivered His great Sermon, he will but open the ears of his heart to those great and glorious illustrations of God's Fatherhood, which Heaven's great Ambassador proposes: "Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?"... "Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (for after all these things do the Gentiles seek :) for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye need all these things."

"What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?”

2. The next form of love which is developed in the life of the individual man is the love of gratitude. This, too, is felt, in the first instance, towards parents. The infant becomes a child, and, together with natural affection for its parents, the child soon begins to feel a sense of their kindness to him. He feels that no one wishes him well with the same heartiness and devotion as they; and because it is in our nature to be won by kindness, he responds to their love; and this is his earliest exercise of gratitude. It is important to observe, that what he is attracted by,-what stirs in him the love of gratitude,-is not so much the benefits received from the parent, as the mind of kindness which those benefits evince. For conceive the case (yet it wants no conceiving, it is often realized) of a stranger, cold in his manners and patronizing in his deportment, approaching a child with presents. The presents may be acceptable-just what the child would wish to possess,-they may glitter with those baubles which are so attractive to the childish mind, and the recipient may enter upon the possession and enjoyment of them; but in vain does the stranger attempt to conciliate goodwill in this manner. The child is shy of him, does not trust him,—a sure sign that it does not love him. On the other hand, the parents of the child may be poor, and unable to make presents; but it matters not, as far as the gratitude felt for them is concerned. The child has such assurances of their deep and living interest in him, those assurances have been