Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/133

 and supreme in the heart, constitute the essential nature of heaven. And hence we may know what is the internal and real nature of heaven, just so far as we know what the Divine Word means by love to the Lord and our neighbor.

But here a peculiar difficulty presents itself. No description that can possibly be given of these heavenly affections, will be really intelligible, except to those—a comparatively small number we fear—who have already made these affections in some measure, their own. Such will understand though others may not, that true love to the Lord, is not to love him simply as a person, without any right idea of his real character, but to love him as divine goodness and truth. It is true, the understanding must receive him as a Divine Person, but the affections must embrace him as goodness and truth. It is only in this way that the Lord can be really and truly loved, and heaven can be received. To attempt to worship him simply as a person, and without any right views of his true character, is very little more than idolatry. It is to worship a name without knowing what that name signifies. And it is still more absurd to attempt to worship him under the form of several persons, not more than one of whom can possibly be supreme; and even worse yet, when one of those persons is regarded as a partial sovereign and a vindictive judge. This is to have no right views or affections towards the true God, but to worship an imaginary deity formed to suit the selfish and malignant affections of the unregenerate heart. The love that can be delighted with such a God has in it much more of hell than of heaven.

The writer would not be understood however, to mean that all those who profess to believe a doctrine which thus perverts and misrepresents the true character of the Lord, are necessarily bad men. A man may hold a doctrine in his memory, and from the influence of early habits, of social relations or other external circumstances, he may even consent to bear the name of such doctrine, and yet in the internal affections of his spirit, he may have no love for it. Such