Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/38

32 is love of all things good and true, because these constitute his very Self. He taught us this kind of life in a thousand precepts, and commanded us to keep them. If we love the Lord's teachings, we love Him. If we love his commandments and practice them in our daily lives, we love Him. If we love his character and example, we love Him. If we love to have, his spirit in the heart as a prompting motive in all we speak and do, we love Him.

Love to the Lord is good as a sentimental emotion; but if it is nothing more, it is comparatively worthless. In truth it is a very practical thing. It is something that lives in the life, gives tone to the character, buys and sells, works in the hands, renders the muscles vigorous, energizes the faculties, imparts truthfulness to prayer and sincerity to worship. When love to the Lord is the principle from which we live and work, then life is genuine. "We live righteously because from the love of right, and do good works from the love of good. God is righteousness itself—goodness itself; and he who loves the right and the good for their own sake, loves God—loves Him who infills the soul with their spirit. If all men had this spirit, the world would again be an Eden, and all would be living on the fruit of the tree of life. For Eden, as we have learned, is this state of love; but the tree of life is that love as