Read it from the Original.
Start at the Beginning.
Morning Prayers.
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I. The love of God, or absorption into His supreme life, is the last link of the great chain of being which was started at first by God, and which, after long evolution, returns to Him again. The Creation, the arrangement and development of the universe, life, instinct, and reason, the fall and restitution, the Incarnation, the discrimination of men by trial, the law, the Church, the Sacraments, the Resurrection end in this one thing, the return of all being in man to God. The propension of man towards the Supreme Life and his fruition of it are equally the operation of the same vital energy; in other words, Charity abides, it is the same thing in this world and in the next; it is the attainment of God, it is the exercise of our vital energy in the supernatural sphere, it is the accomplishment of the law of our being. Thus Charity, or the love of God, is of its own nature the first and the greatest of all laws; it will be the spontaneous action of life, the first and necessary form of that action, when, through our free choice here, we shall have arrived at the clear vision and full understanding of the Supreme Life in heaven. Regard the love of God as the great purpose of your existence. Let it be your habitual state. Let it be the guiding principle of all your actions, and the measure of all things. So let it be to you the fulfilment of the law.
II. Charity or the love of God does not by any means consist in the mere inward sentiment or cleaving of the affections to God and delight in Him. The craving after life and the realization of life involves the operation of all the forces and faculties of the being aspiring towards that which is their full satisfaction and perfection; it includes, therefore, besides the sentiment of love, all the intellectual, imaginative, moral and corporal activities. The (Page 191) propension towards the divine life leads us to do everything that gravitates towards God, that is in accordance with His nature and perfections, and that makes like unto God. Most of this is embodied in the positive statute law of God as given in the Old and New Testament. That law is the law of life as being the outward expression for man of the Supreme Life from which it proceeds, as being the condition of our participating in that life under every one of its forms. The observance of the commandments, then, is involved in adhesion to God as the Supreme Life, or again, in other words, "Love is the fulfilment of the law" (Rom. xiii. 10). Your love, if true, must be both affective and effective. You can love God whom you see not, because He is revealed in Jesus Christ, true God and true Man: you can learn the law of life from His word and example, and carry it out by the aid of His grace.
III. The attainment to the fulness and perfection of life is worked out by elevating ourselves here, under conditions of difficulty and partial obscurity, to the supernatural plane on which the future life lies. The perfect life of the here after is only the continuation and legitimate development of the present life. The same principles prevail in both. It is one and the same vital impulsion which actuates the supernatural action of man in the present and in the future kingdom of God. If, therefore, during this era we have not acquired the habitual communication in supernatural life as it is in God, we shall find ourselves after death incapable of understanding, enjoying, or even desiring the higher life of union with God in which the happiness of heaven consists. Without this propension of love or charity, all natural endowments, and virtues, and even the knowledge and belief in God are but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. We must have the infused facility and the acquired habits of divine love. Holy Communion is our chief means of participation in the divine life; it is the Sacrament of union, love and life.
