science; it is a love to a subjective, personal God, and is therefore
a subjective, personal love. It is an essential attribute of this love
that it is an exclusive, jealous love, for its object is a personal
and at the same time the highest being, to whom no other can be
compared. "Keep close to Jesus [Jesus Christ is the Christian's God],
in life and in death; trust his faithfulness: he alone can help thee,
when all else leaves thee. Thy beloved has this quality, that he will
suffer no rival; he alone will have thy heart, will rule alone in
thy soul as a king on his throne."--"What can the world profit thee
without Jesus? To be without Christ is the pain of hell; to be with
Christ, heavenly sweetness."--"Thou canst not live without a friend:
but if the friendship of Christ is not more than all else to thee,
thou wilt be beyond measure sad and disconsolate."--"Love everything
for Jesus' sake, but Jesus for his own sake. Jesus Christ alone is
worthy to be loved."--"My God, my love [my heart]: thou art wholly
mine, and I am wholly thine."--"Love hopes and trusts ever in God,
even when God is not gracious to it [or tastes bitter, non sapit];
for we cannot live in love without sorrow.... For the sake of the
beloved, the loving one must accept all things, even the hard and
bitter."--"My God and my all, ... in thy presence everything is
sweet to me, in thy absence everything is distasteful.... Without
thee nothing can please me."--"Oh, when at last will that blessed,
longed-for hour appear, when thou wilt satisfy me wholly, and be
all in all to me? So long as this is not granted me, my joy is only
fragmentary."--"When was it well with me without thee? or when was
it ill with me in thy presence? I will rather be poor for thy sake,
than rich without thee. I will rather be a pilgrim on earth with thee,
than the possessor of heaven without thee. Where thou art is heaven;
death and hell where thou art not. I long only for thee."--"Thou
canst not serve God and at the same time have thy joys in earthly
things: thou must wean thyself from all acquaintances and friends,
and sever thy soul from all temporal consolation. Believers in
Christ should regard themselves, according to the admonition of the
Apostle Peter, only as strangers and pilgrims on the earth." [136]
Thus love to God as a personal being is a literal, strict, personal,
exclusive love. How then can I at once love God and a mortal wife? Do
I not thereby place God on the same footing with my wife? No! to a
soul which truly loves God, the love of woman is an impossibility,
is adultery. "He that is unmarried," says the Apostle Paul, "careth
for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord;
but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world,
how he may please his wife."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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