Chapter 23: Love Is the Whole Of Religion guided and be governed by it, constantly, in all his actions, without any felt emotion of love towards its object at the time. Thus a husband and father may be engaged in laboring for the benefit of his family, and his very life controlled by affection for them while his thoughts are not so engaged upon them as to make him feel any sensible emotions of love to them at the time.
The things about which he is engaged may take up his mind so much, that he has scarcely a thought of them, and so he may have no felt emotion towards them, and yet he is all the time guided and governed by affection for them. Observe here, that I use the term, affection, in the sense of President Edwards, as explained by him in his celebrated Treatise on the Will. An affection in his treatise is an act of the will or a volition.
4. Love to our neighbor naturally implies the existence of love to God, and love to God naturally implies love to our neighbor.
The same is declared in the 8th verse, "Owe no man my thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery,
Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Here it is taken for granted that love to our neighbor implies the existence of love to God, otherwise it could not be said that "he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." The apostle James recognizes the same principle, when he says, "If ye fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well." Here love to our neighbor is spoken of as constituting obedience to the whole law. Benevolence, that is, good will to our neighbor, naturally implies love to God. It is love to the happiness of being. So the love of complacency towards holy beings naturally implies love to God, as a being of infinite holiness.
II. I am to show that love is the whole of religion.
In other words, all that is required of man by God consists in love, in various modifications and results. Love is the sum total of all.
1. The first proof I shall offer is, that the sentiment is taught in the text, and many other passages of scripture.
The scriptures fully teach, that love is the sum total of all the requirements, both of the law and gospel. Our Savior declares that the great command, Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum total of all the law and the prophets, or implies and includes all that the whole scriptures, the law and the gospel require.
2. God is love, and to love is to be like God, and to be perfect in love is to be perfect as God is perfect.
All God's moral attributes consist in love, acting under certain circumstances and for certain ends. God's justice in punishing the wicked, his anger at sin, and the like, are only