"Do we not see," he says, "that the external worship follows necessarily the internal worship of love? Give me a society of men who, while on earth, would look upon each other as members of one and the same family, whose Father is in heaven; give me men whose life was sunk in this love for their heavenly Father, men who loved their fellow-men and themselves only through love for Him; who were but one heart, one soul: will not in so godly a society the mouth always speak from the abundance of the heart? They will sing the praises of the Most High, the Most Good spontaneously; they will bless Him for all His bounties. They will not be content to love Him merely, they will proclaim this love to all the nations of the world; they will wish to correct and admonish their brethren when they see them tempted through pride and low passions to forsake the Well-Beloved. They will lament the least cooling of that love. They will cross the seas, go to the uttermost parts of the earth, to teach the benighted nations who have forgotten His greatness the knowledge and love of their common Father. What do you call external worship if this be not it? God then would be _all in all_; He would be the universal king, father, friend; He would be the living law of all hearts. Truly, if a mortal king or head of a family wins by his wisdom the esteem and confidence of his children, if we see them at all times pay him the honors due him, need we ask wherein consists his service, or whether any is due him? All that is done in his honor, in obedience to him, in recognition of his bounties, is a continuous worship, obvious to all eyes. What would it be then if men were possessed with the love of God! Their society would be in a state of continuous worship, like that described to us of the blessed in heaven."[147] The great ancient moralist, Epictetus, has as superbly as Fénélon expressed the same sentiments: