In the exercise of those benevolent
affections, which our heavenly Father has implanted within us, we love
wrongly, when we place our love on wrong objects. We love wrongly also,
when we love in an inordinate degree. The love, which is inordinate in
degree, arises chiefly from the fact of our regarding the objects of it,
such as parents, children, and other near relatives and friends, out of
their due relation to God. Faith in God, especially assured or perfect
faith, reestablishes the relation; and requires us to love them in God’s
will, and according to God’s law; with an affection, which is neither
wrong by its weakness nor wrong by its inordinate strength. As God, in
the perceptions and estimate of an assured faith, is the sum of all
beings, inasmuch as all are from him and in him; so we are naturally and
rightly required to love him with the sum, the wholeness or entireness,
if we may so speak, of all our powers. And so long as we love God in
this manner, God will help us to love all beings subordinate to him, at
the right time and in the right degree. But we ought not to forget, that
it is faith, which places God in the right relative position; and it is
faith, which opens the strong fountain of love such as his infinite
nature claims; and it is faith, therefore, indirectly at least, which
distributes this fountain to all subordinate beings from God downward to
the lowest insect.
— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 7.
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