The World's Great Sermons, Volume 02: Hooker to South
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 02: Hooker to South
Sermons
And first for the grand leading affection of all, which is love. This
is the great instrument and engine of nature, the bond and cement
of society, the spring and spirit of the universe. Love is such an
affection as can not so properly be said to be in the soul as the soul
to be in that. It is the whole man wrapt up into one desire; all
the powers, vigor, and faculties of the soul abridged into one
inclination. And it is of that active, restless nature that it must
of necessity exert itself; and, like the fire to which it is so often
compared, it is not a free agent, to choose whether it will heat
or no, but it streams forth by natural results and unavoidable
emanations. So that it will fasten upon any inferior, unsuitable
object, rather than none at all. The soul may sooner leave off to
subsist than to love; and, like the vine, it withers and dies if it
has nothing to embrace. Now this affection, in the state of innocence,
was happily pitched upon its right object; it flamed up in direct
fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to
its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name
for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and
deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much
from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat
from the burning of a fever.
Then for the contrary passion of hatred. This we know is the passion
of defiance, and there is a kind of aversation and hostility included
in its very essence and being. But then (if there could have been
hatred in the world when there was scarce anything odious) it would
have acted within the compass of its proper object; like aloes, bitter
indeed, but wholesome. There would have been no rancor, no hatred of
our brother: an innocent nature could hate nothing that was innocent.
In a word, so great is the commutation that the soul then hated only
that which now only it loves, that is, sin.
And if we may bring anger under this head, as being, according to
some, a transient hatred, or at least very like it, this also, as
unruly as now it is, yet then it vented itself by the measures of
reason. There was no such thing as the transports of malice or the
violences of revenge, no rendering evil for evil, when evil was truly
a nonentity and nowhere to be found. Anger, then, was like the sword
of justice, keen, but innocent and righteous: it did not act like
fury, then call itself zeal. It always espoused God's honor, and never
kindled upon anything but in order to a sacrifice. It sparkled like
the coal upon the altar with the fervors of piety, the heats of
devotion, the sallies and vibrations of a harmless activity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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