Love and Righteousness

We think it of some consequence to mention here one rule, which may aid us in determining, whether our affections, those of the most benevolent kind as well as others, are properly regulated or not. When our affections to any persons, however near and dear they may be to us, are found to be so strong at any given time or on any occasion as to disturb the clearness and precision of the intellectual action, we may be assured, that such love has become inordinate, and has some vicious element in it. A number of considerations go to show this. 

We may argue, in confirmation of what has been said, from the nature and operations of that love, which we are required to exercise towards God. It is the tendency of the true love of God, which is the same as the pure love of God, always to accommodate itself to what is right. Rectitude is the ultimate and unchangeable law of its operation. At this, by a tendency inherent in its own nature, it always aims, viz., to love rightly, to love just as it ought to love, not only the right object, but in the right degree. The right and wrong of things, the ought and the ought not, is made known to us, in connection with, and by means of the action of an enlightened moral sense. The moral sense, by a well known law of our mental constitution, demands, as the condition of its own correct action, a clear intellectual perception. The action of the intellect must be undisturbed. The pure love of God, that is to say, the love which we exercise towards God, when it is unmixed with any merely human or selfish element, never causes disturbance in the intellectual action; but, on the contrary, is highly favorable to the opposite state. Where such pure affection exists, therefore, the right or rectitude of things may be expected to be clearly perceived, as well as strongly loved. But if the love of God, (that unmixed and pure love which alone can be acceptable to him,) does not disturb the perceptive or intellectual action, but on the contrary if its very nature requires a clear and calm perception of things, then it is very obvious, that the love of our earthly friends, the love of our neighbor, cannot safely be exercised on other principles, and cannot require less.

— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 7.

Do Right

[CHRIST  IN  THE SOUL, is an expression, embracing all the mental or spiritual elements, which constitute the Christian character. It includes, therefore, the sentiment of rectitude, the soul's law of right, as well as the strictly religious affections.]

Go boldly on. Do what is right;
Ask not for private ease or good;
Let one bright star direct thy sight,
The polar star of rectitude.

Go boldly on. And though the road
Thy weary, bleeding feet shall rend,
Angels shall help thee bear thy load,
And God Himself thy steps attend.

Do  RIGHT.  And thou hast nought to fear;
Right hath a power that makes thee strong;
The night is dark, but light is near;
The grief is short, the joy is long.

Know, in thy dark and troubled day,
To friends of truth and right are given,
When strifes and toils have pass'd away,
The sweet rewards and joys of heaven.

— Christ in the Soul (1872) XXVII.

True Rectitude

"And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men." Acts xxiv. 16.

What constitutes the true nobility?
Not wealth, nor name, nor outward pomp, nor power,
Fools have them all; and vicious men may be
The idols and the pageants of an hour.
But 'tis  to have a good and honest heart,
Above all meanness and above all crime,
And act the right and honorable part
In every circumstance of place and time.
He, who is thus, from God his patent takes,
His Maker formed him the true nobleman;
Whate'er is low and vicious he forsakes,
And acts on rectitude's unchanging plan.
Things change around him; changes touch not him,
The star, that guides his path, fails not, nor waxes dim.

— American Cottage Life (1850).

"Love, and Do What You Please"

 It is a saying of St. Augustine — "Love, and do what you please." In acting from the impulse of love, we are conscious of the highest freedom. But pure love, or right love, (that to which St. Augustine refers,) is, by the very terms used, a love which is conformed to law. It is a love which is pure from selfishness, a love which is right;  a love which does not, and cannot, while it remains pure, vary from the law of moral rectitude. He, who acts from such love, while he is conscious of the highest freedom, is safe in doing what he pleases, not only because his pleasure consists in benevolent feeling and action, but because his pleasure is always conformed to what is right. He is under law without feeling its pressure; because the pressure of law, or that which makes it felt as a compulsive and constraining power, never is and never can be felt, while the subject of it entirely harmonizes in feeling as well as in action with its requisitions. The man who, in perfect health, breathes the pure air of heaven, breathes freely; — but he does it in subjection to the laws of respiration, and yet without feeling any constraint, and perhaps without knowing that there are such laws. The man who walks the earth, in the perfect exercise of his muscles, is conscious of freedom, and of acting his own pleasure, while, at the same time, every movement is in subjection to the law of gravitation, and cannot be made without it. Indeed, it is the physical law in these cases, harmonizing with the purpose of the personal volition, which sustains both breathing and movement. And so it is the eternal law of right, indicating the channels in which it should flow, but without using compulsion, when compulsion is not needed, which sustains pure or holy love in a state of purity.

Angels have a conscience. They do always what is right, and never otherwise than what is right. But they do not do it under the compulsions of conscience, but from the excellent and just impulses of a purified and loving nature. Conscience is a law to them, as it is a law to all other holy beings. But law, we are told, "is made for the lawless." (1 Tim. 1: 9.) Those who are not lawless, but whose hearts and actions, of their own accord, harmonize with the law, are under the law without feeling the pressure of the law; rendering obedience to the law, almost without knowing what the law is. If they should attempt or desire to disobey, they would at once have knowledge as distinct as it would be painful. In other words, the operations of the conscience are anticipated and lost, as it were, in the antecedent operations of holy love. And these statements, which apply to angels and other unfallen beings, will apply essentially to men.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 4, Chapter 8.