It may be of infinite use to establish in our minds a strong and habitual sense of that first and great commandment--"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength." This passion, operative and vigorous in its very nature, like a master spring, would put and maintain in action all the complicated movements of the human soul. Soon also would it terminate many practical questions concerning the allowableness of certain compliances; questions which, with other similar difficulties, are often only the cold offspring of a spirit of reluctant submission, and cannot stand the encounter of this trying principle. If, for example, it were disputed, whether or not the law of God were _so_ strict as had been stated, in condemning the slightest infraction of its precepts; yet, when, from the precise demands of justice, the appeal should be made to the more generous principle of love, there would be at once an end of the discussion. Fear will deter from acknowledged crimes, and self-interest will bribe to laborious services: but it is the peculiar glory, and the very characteristic, of this more generous passion, to shew itself in ten thousand little and undefinable acts of sedulous attention, which love alone can pay, and of which, when paid, love alone can estimate the value. Love outruns the deductions of reasoning; it scorns the refuge of casuistry; it requires not the slow process of laborious and undeniable proof that an action would be injurious and offensive, or another beneficial or gratifying, to the object of affection. The least hint, the slightest surmise, is sufficient to make it start from the former, and fly with eagerness to the latter.