Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/66

Rh with it, so as to return to the Father love for love. Hence, in knowing this relation, one has the highest sanction for all good acts. The ultimate motive that Jesus gives to men for doing right is therefore the wish to be in harmony with God’s love. So the Father in his holiness wills for each of us, and so each son, conscious of the love of the Father, also desires, as soon as he is aware of the Father’s will. One cannot know of this infinite love without wishing to be in union with it. Even without knowing of the love, the very consciousness of the wretchedness of the lonely, separate life of selfish wickedness must lead one to want to forsake the husks and find the Father, even if he should be but the angry Father. Much more then if one has found the Father, has found him caring for the sparrows, and for the lilies, and for the least and the worst of his children, must one, thus knowing the Father, desire to submit to him. One is lost in the ocean of divine love. Separate existence there is no more. One is anxious to lose his life, to hate all selfish joys, to sell all that one has, to be despised and rejected of all the world, if so be that thereby one can come into accord with the universal life of God’s love, in which everything of lesser worth disappears.

Duty to one’s neighbor is but a corollary to all this. In the first place one’s neighbor is no longer a mere fact of experience, a rival, a helper, an enemy; but he is, instead of all this, a child of God. Every other aspect of his life is lost in this one. As child then he represents the Father. The highest