Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/134

 we believe to be the position which the better portion of the religious world, in the present day, sustain towards the doctrines called orthodox. They retain in their memories a general idea of what those doctrines are; for occasionally, when they cannot conveniently avoid it, they listen to a doctrinal sermon; but their lives are formed upon better principles than such sermons inculcate. And yet there are some no doubt, perhaps many, who love the false views of a perverted theology; they love them because they correspond to the selfish affections of their hearts. Such we are compelled to regard as internally bad men. Externally they may appear fair and beautiful, like the whited sepulchres, to which the Lord compares the pharisees, while their internal form is also, like the internal of the same sepulchres, full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

But let us direct our attention to the nature of heavenly love or charity, towards our neighbor. This does not consist in loving him simply as a person, one in whom we have discovered some qualities that are agreeable to us; much less in loving him for the sake of self, but it consists in loving him for the sake of his good as an end, or, in other words, in loving to be useful to him; and this too, not in order to please him, or to afford him temporary gratification, but for the sake of his permanent and eternal welfare. And we might even add to this, that the greatest good ought to be regarded as our neighbor, in the highest sense, and hence that we ought to seek to promote the welfare of the individual neighbor, not so much with a view to his own happiness, as our end, but rather that he may become a means of eternal usefulness in the kingdom of the Lord. To love our neighbor simply because he loves us, or because we have discovered in him something that is gratifying to our natural feelings, is only a selfish affection, in which there is nothing of heaven. "If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?"