Love itself is secondary when it is generated or produced by possession.

From the desire of acquisition we come to love the thing acquired. Having acquired gold, we love gold; having acquired a friend, through love of society, or a fellow-sympathy, or social appetency, we come to love the friend.

From the love of simple qualities perceived or imagined in a person-truth, right, beauty, purity— we love the person.

This is the ground of true love between the young man and the maiden. It becomes "a good" when time and experience prove these virtues real and not imaginary.

Affections: The natural affections are those exercised in social and in family relations-as the love of a friend, companion, parent, child, and the love of home and one's country.

These affections become sentiments when they give rise to thoughts and theories, opinions and feelings as to what is economic, useful, honorable, proper, virtuous and right in relation to them.

25. LOVE; Love of God, of Country, of Gold. -Love, as moral, consists in love of the truth, of the right, of beauty, of purity, of modesty, of harmony; in general, of whatever is clear and simple, not mixed. These constitute the principle of the good.

The quality, good, is found in a harmonic fitness, as when God pronounced his work good, because it was in agreement or in harmony with constitutional law, and with his design in the creation.

Love may be under the guidance of the reason, and only in this sense can it be called rational love. It has within itself no element of thought or reason. Love is not a reasoning of the soul, it is a pure feeling; a pure longing for all that is beautiful, admirable, useful and good, whether in the reality or only in our imaginings.

Love, though innate, exists at first in an elementary inchoate state, which develops in the progressive life, with varied tendencies in accord with the kind of object toward which it is directed; among the noblest of these being the love of wisdom, or philosophy, love of country, of home, of friends, and highest of all, the love of things heavenly-the love of God. Law of Love: Unwritten constitutional law exists by nature in man. Written law is the exposition of law implanted in man's nature. The constitutional law of love is, that love seeks the loveable. But this love under the influence of the moral nature seeks out even the unloveable for their good. This now is love modified by a sense of duty; that is, when love becomes a virtue, it acts under the force of moral sensibility; so that love, instead of having in itself moral law, or instead of being a ground-principle in morals is by the moral law of right and duty seized upon and made use of, as a powerful auxiliary, in aid of virtuous ends.

Our "love of God" is right love when we see God as he is. Here the "law of love" is "to love with all the heart." This is the right expression of the law of our love as to God, because God is assumed to be entirely loveable.

love w, to love

law of our love to love as we

For companiinship, the law of lovable companions--not bad dispoved ones. Here we love for like reason that we love God: yet it would be absurd to apply the same law of love, to-wit, with all the soul and strength." This law of love rules, and can rule, only when God is the object; but cannot rule as to our love for a companion.

Love of country is akin to love of property, but on a higher plane. We hold our country as a peculiar possession, to which is attached the love of home.

The ethic law of this love is in a love that values one's country more than any material possession, but less than a moral possession; or less than the holding fast to the right, or to a good conscience. The pure love of country is not always silent, but is often accompanied with a lofty enthusiasm, which leads to noble action and self-sacrifice. The patriotic men who, July 4, 1776, signed the Declaration of American Independence, in the cause of the country, "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor."

In the love of gold the ethic law is, not to love gold, as the miser does, for its mere possession, but for the good use it can be put to. When this law does not prevail, this love becomes ignoble, sordid, base

There is, then, no virtue in the mere act of loving, but only in overcoming obstacles to a pure love.

Love as concrete, namely, as having a natural or a personal object, can be no ground of right, for right itself is ultimate; yet love imparts to the moral faculties an enthusiasm of the soul in right endeavor. Hence we need not be led astray by the unfounded notion that the abstract principle or ground of right is identical with the highest incentive to the practice of the right.

The principle of right, the abstract notion, the inborn desire, the appetency for the right, and the tendency to it, exists as a distinct moral faculty, or moral emotion, combining intelligence and feeling as to our relations with God and man.

Our intuitive moral judgments and our moral reasonings act through this faculty, which also in its. action is authoritative or imperative, not arbitrarily, but because clothed upon with truth and the right. This is the distinct view we must hold of the moral category, the imperative. But on the other hand, moral commandments, the decalogue; the two great commandments, love God; love man; all moral rules and laws are for the purpose of giving the concrete or objective meaning3 and application of this moral principle, as well as for the cultivation and strengthening of it by use and practice. To this end love is enjoined as the purest and strongest motive power to influence the soul for good.

The love of God with the whole heart, with all the love of which man is capable, cannot be attained to and applied to a discrimination and enforcement. of the right, through the moral sense, without suitable methods in the study and cognition of God, in

all those loveable qualities in which he reveals himself to the diligent and devout student in nature and in the word.

The emotional nature of man, then, in its love for the truth, and for the maintenance of the right, is not to be identified with his emotional nature as shown in the love contemplated in the first and great commandment, and which goes out toward him who is the embodiment of the truth and the right.

The former love, the first kind of love, the longing of the soul for whatever is true and right without a direct reference to any one object, is the groundprinciple in the moral nature.

The latter love, or the second kind of love, is love for an object, in which the qualities and characteristics of truth are seen to exist and dwell, and it has its origin in the first kind of love.

It would be impossible for us to love God if we did not first have within us a ground-principle of love for the true and the right:

"I could not love thee thus, [Lucasta]

Lov'd I not honor ́more."

Nor would it be possible to love our neighbor without this same ground-principle, which, when possessed as a living active principle, is, as the apostle has it, "the fulfillment of the law."

26. SELF-LOVE,

INSTINCTIVE.-We love our

selves naturally, but not from the moral nature.

Self-love is sui generis, arising from itself, not from any other kind of love. It is compatible with