this rank, God and self. Where can you find a third? Is it the world? But all love of the world is comprehended in self-love, as has been already shown.Where then can you find the third? If there were a third it must be some fellow creature or community of creatures. But no man ever loved his fellow creatures supremely. The social affections may restrain selfishness but cannot dethrone self. Wherever one's essential interest in both worlds, comes in competition with that of others, self-love and not the social affections will prevail. For the proof of this I confidently appeal to every man's conciousness, and am willing to rest my cause there without further argument.

It may then be adopted as an incontrovertible maxim, that every man makes either God or himself his supreme object.*

* There are some who disown the distinction between selfish and disinterested affections: and others, who while they admit the distinction, maintain that all men love themselves supremely, (that is, desire their own happiness more than any thing else,) and that the only difference between a good and a bad man is, that one places his happiness in right things the other in wrong. In answer to the first class, I freely concede that in two things all beings agree,-in following their inclinations, and in finding their happiness, so far as they find it at all, in the gratification of their inclinations. But the great difference lies in their objects. The object of the selfish man is the gratification of himself, the object of the disinterested man the happiness of others. One follows his inclinations for the mere satisfaction which he is thence to derive, the other for the happiness which he hopes to impart to others. When you spring to catch a falling child, is it from the reflection that you must suffer with it, or from direct regard to the comfort of the child? Do you wish that your dying friend may be happy, or merely that you may think he is happy? In laying out a course of benevolent conduct, where the mind has leisure to contemplate all the good resulting from its plans, self-love will doubtless take into account the personal satisfaction of doing good. But if self-love stood alone, whence the satisfaction of imparting happiness? If I love only myself, why is it a pleasure to relieve another? Whence comes the inclination? That must be in complete existence before I have any chance to draw personal comfort from its indulgence. It could not be created by the reflection that if I possessed and indulged it I should be happy. But can it be necessary to employ arguments to prove that we are capable of really loving another, and of being gratified by his happiness in itself considered? And this is all that any one means by disinterested love.

In reply to the other class, I as freely concede that the difference between a good and a bad man consists in their placing their happiness, the

III. Supreme self-love necessarily produces enmity to God.

The simple reason is that God is opposed to this idolatry, and requires upon pain of eternal death that universal love which will fix the heart supremely on himself. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself:"* thyself then only as thy neighbour. If supreme love to your neighbour is not allowed, neither is supreme love to yourself. But is your neighbour to be loved with all the heart and soul and mind? That love is reserved for God. And it is supreme, unless one, at the same moment that he thus loves God, can love another object with more than all the heart and soul and mind. Thus speaks the law, and sanctions the precept with all its curses. And what says the Gospel? "If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."+ By the consent then of both law and Gospel, all are consigned to eternal death who do not love God supremely.

one in right things, the other in wrong. But is it the right things, or his own happiness which the good man makes his supreme object? This is the question. While the wicked place their whole happiness in gratifying affections which terminate in themselves or a limited circle, the "right things" in which the good place their highest happiness, (I suppose will not be denied,) are the glory of God and the prosperity of his kingdom. Now I ask, is the satisfaction which they hope to derive to themselves from that good, or the good itself, their supreme object? Do they rejoice more in the reflection that they, (rather than others,) shall enjoy the sight of God's glory, than that God will be glorified? If so they no longer place their supreme happiness in his glory but in their own gratification, a gratification more refined indeed than the grosser pleasures of sense, but still personal and private. To say that they place their supreme happiness in the glory of God and yet make their own happiness the highest object, is a plain contradiction. For to place their supreme happiness in the glory of God, necessarily implies that they love and value his glory more than any other object. I love that most in which I place my highest delight. How comes it to pass that the glory of God gives me the greatest satisfaction, unless I love it most? And if I love it most, I seek it most. And if I love and seek it most, I make it my supreme object.

* Mat. xxii. 37-39.

t Luke xiv. 26.

'This it is which rouses the war. Supreme selfishness cannot but be the eternal enemy of a God who makes such demands and enforces them with such penalties, because the demands and sanctions crush and destroy all its dearest interests. Here lies the main ground of hostility. "The carnal, mind is enmity against God, FOR [because] it is not subject to the LAW of God neither indeed can be."* A moral governour, who has never been revealed but in the attitude of standing with a drawn sword between the sinner and his idols, and saying, Touch that idol and you die, cannot but be hated by a supremely selfish heart. Since the world began was it ever known that one stood full in the way of the supreme object of a selfish man and was not hated? The man that idolizes himself and the instruments of his own gratification, cannot but hate the divine holiness, because the whole strength of that perfection acts directly against him. The whole exhibition of that perfection consists in the prohibition and punishment of this idolatry,—in the voice that sounds through heaven and earth, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me;" "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart-and thy neighbour as thyself," or suffer eternal pain. Remove that prohibition and punishment, and you cover from creatures every trace of the divine holiness. Against the man then who supremely loves himself, the whole strength of the divine holiness exclusively acts; against all the holiness of God, (indeed against his whole authority) acts the man whose heart centres in himself. What but enmity and eternal war can exist in such a case?

But you say, I certainly can love another object while I love myself supremely. You can, where that object does not interfere with self-love by essentially opposing your own interest. But you ask,

* Rom. viii. 7.

can I not love an earthly parent some while I love myself more? No,—if that parent unchangeably declares, I will treat you as an enemy forever unless you love me supremely; do this or die;-if he follows you wherever you go, and fills your ears with this sound from morning to night, and from month to month, if every gift which he puts into your hand is accompanied with this declaration,—and especially if his character is all of a piece. Your deaf and forgetful brother, who is unconscious of his father's law and character, may love his gifts, and feel some gratitude to the giver; but you, as certainly as you love yourself supremely, can never love such a parent, but must feel the strongest enmity against him. But you say, I could exercise some love towards him if I was convinced that his law was just. What, love justice against yourself, and yet be supremely selfish! If your own interest is paramount in your affections to all other considerations, what can induce you to love that justice which destroys your interest? That you might love the justice if it were not against you, I do not deny. I have admitted that sinners would not hate God if his law were not against them. It of course happens that they who have expunged from their creed all intimations of punishment, find no difficulty in loving the god which their fancies have formed. The enmity of sinners is not disinterested but selfish, as it must be if it arises from inordinate self-love. But did you ever know a selfish man who loved the law that condemned him? or loved the law-giver, whose whole character was transfused into the law, and who was himself the executioner?

Love the justice which condemns you! Do you consider where you stand? You have now taken the ground of disinterested and holy love. And what, I pray, can prevent that affection from fixing supremely on God? There is more in him to please

and gratify such an affection than in the universe besides. Do you say, that affection will indeed love God more than the same affection will love any thing else, (because it will love him solely,) but it is weak, and self-love is strong and has predominating influence? The question then comes to this, whether an affection which delights in God alone, can exist in a soul that is under the governing influence of selfishness, and of course under the governing influence of enmity to him. Now did you ever find a mind balanced after this sort? Did you ever find a mind governed by enmity against a man of a uniform and consistent character, and at the same time possessed of an affection which loved his whole character? Such a phenomenon has never appeared in the moral or social world, and the fancy which created it is only a dream. It is apparent then that there cannot be a particle of disinterested and holy love which does not fix supremely on God, (whenever the mind has a distinct view of him,) nor a particle of love to God which, (under the same circumstances,) does not govern the soul; and that where selflove predominates, (in a fair view of all the objects which solicit regard,) enmity to God must exist, must prevail, and exclude every better affection towards him. No affection but that of universal love will truly fix on God; but how can universal love exist in a heart that would sacrifice the universe to serve a private end?

I have one more question on this subject. If supreme selfishness is not sufficient to produce enmity to God, pray what ever did produce it in any mind? What greater cause ever produced it in wicked men or devils? Nothing worse existed in Cain or Judas, nothing worse can be found in hell.

IV. It follows from these principles that all men by nature are the enemies of God.