We Love Our Enemies Because God Loves Them

On the principles which have been laid down, we see how we may fulfill the command of our Savior to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to do good to them that hate and persecute us. Instead of being a very difficult thing, as is commonly supposed, and as it would undoubtedly be on natural principles, it becomes easy, because, in the language of Francis De Sales, "We cannot love God as we ought, without adopting his sentiments and LOVING WHAT HE LOVES." Now we know  that God loves those who do not love Him. He loved us, even when we were his enemies.  He so loved a rebellious and disobedient world, as to give his Son to die for it. And if we are in the same spirit, loving only what He loves and hating what He hates, we shall find no difficulty in loving our enemies, and in praying for those who "despitefully entreat us." No matter how unlovely they may be in themselves, no matter how cruel and unjust their treatment be to us, the consideration, that our heavenly Father loves them and requires us to love them, lays all things even, and opens the full channels of the heart, as if there were no obstacles existing.

When we love our fellow-men in this way, we love with a perseverance and constancy, which could not be realized under other circumstances. Our love is not subject to those breaks and variations, which characterize it when it is based upon the uncertainties of the creature, instead of the immutability of the divine will. On the contrary, it continually flows on and flows on, whether it meets with any favorable return or not, partaking, in no small measure, of the unchangeableness of the divine nature.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 13.

Self Love Is Subordinate to Love for God

We love ourselves, only as we love God. In other words, if we love God with perfect love, the love of ourselves will be subordinated and restricted by the controlling desire, THAT GOD MAY BE GLORIFIED IN  US. We can seek nothing, desire nothing, love nothing for ourselves, but what is subordinate to and has a tendency to God's glory. So that the love of self, whatever it may be, is merged and purified in the encircling and absorbing love of God. The love of our neighbor is properly measured, on the principles of the Scriptures, by the love of ourselves. And as we can love ourselves only in subordination to God's will and glory; so we can love our neighbor only in the same manner and the same degree. In other words both the love of ourselves and of our neighbor are only rills and drops from the mighty waters of love to God. And on the supposition, that we are filled with the love of God, the love of our neighbor flows out from the great fountain of divine love, in the various channels and in the degree which God chooses, as easily and as naturally, as a stream flows from its lake in the mountains over the meadows and valleys below. There is no need of effort. Only let God in his providence furnish the occasion; and in a moment the heart will open, and the streams will gush out. Hence the remarks, which are found in various places of the writings of Augustine, Thauler, and Fenelon to this effect, (and some eminent theologians of this country appear decidedly to favor this view,) that the love of God is capable of animating and regulating all those affections, which we owe to his creatures, that the true manner of loving our neighbor, is to love him in and for God; and that we never love him so purely and so much, as when we love him in this way.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 13.

Self Love

Under the great law of supreme love to God, we may not only love, as we ought to, our friends, our relatives, and our fellow men universally; but, under the same law and in the same manner, we may love ourselves, and may love and seek our own happiness. God is willing that we should. He has made us so that we cannot do otherwise. He requires us to do it. But what is our happiness? It is to love God with all our heart, and to hold all other love in subordination; or what seems to be the same thing, to love God supremely, to exercise and measure all other love with a reference to that supreme and perfect standard of measurement. It is to feel the full power of that divine attraction, which silently draws us from the circumference to the center; it is to experience the restoration of the broken bond of union with the Divine Mind; to be lost, as it were, in the great ocean of the infinite fulness. In other words, our happiness is to renounce ourselves entirely, in order that God, in whom alone is all goodness, may resume that throne in the heart, from which He has been banished. And accordingly we love ourselves and our own happiness, even our frail bodies as well as our immortal souls, because God made us; because He takes care of us and desires our happiness, and recognizes the propriety of our exercising the same desire; because He has designed us, under the operations of his grace, to be mirrors of his own image and the temples of the Holy Ghost; and not because we have a desire, or could for a moment have a desire, a purpose, or a love adverse to, or even not coincident with his. So that all subordinate love of his creatures, whether it have relation to ourselves or others may truly and properly resolve itself into the love of God.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 13.

Love to our Neighbor and to All Beings

We proceed now to the consideration ... of love to our neighbor, and of created and inferior beings in general. And the first proposition, which we lay down is this. If our love to God be disinterested and pure, and at the same time exist in a degree suitable to the object, viz. in the highest degree, then all other love, and the love of all other creatures will be entirely subordinate to this, and will exist only in relation to it. If we possess pure and perfect love to God, we shall perfectly sympathize with Him in his love towards whatever He has made; and shall, according to our capacity, love just as He does. Our love will naturally, and perhaps we may say of necessity, flow in the same channel. And whatever things He takes an interest in, whether material or immaterial, whether of greater or less consequence, will possess precisely the same interest for us, so far as we possess an equal knowledge of their nature and an equal capacity of love. The devout recollection of the great Architect will impart a degree of sacredness and value to whatever is the work of his hands. In his woods, his rivers, his mountains, his burnished sky and his boundless ocean, we shall see the indistinct reflection of himself, and join to our perception of beauty in the object a still higher admiration of the wisdom and goodness of its Maker. We shall recognize in the birds of the air, in the cattle of the verdant hills, and even in the heedless insect that hums around our path, the agency of Him, who doeth all things well. And we shall feel here, as in other things, that we can never be indifferent to any thing, which our Heavenly Father has made and takes an interest in.

As we rise in the scale of beings to those, which have a rational and moral nature, to those, who are kindred in race and are perhaps kindred by the nearer relationship of family ties, we shall experience the exercise of love on the same principle. We do not deny, that we shall be susceptible of a natural love. We know that we shall be. But what we mean to say is, that our love, whether purely natural and founded on the relations we sustain to the object, or whether an acquired love and resting wholly upon the deliberate perception of its amiable qualities, will be perfectly subordinate to the love of God and will be regulated by it. It  would perhaps be a concise expression of the fact to say, whatever specific modifications our love may assume under the operation of natural causes, that we shall love all things IN AND FOR GOD. And if we are required in the first instance to love God with ALL our heart, it does not clearly appear when we fulfill the divine requisition, how we can love our neighbor or anything else in any other way than this.

— edited from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 13.

The Danger of Seeking Signs Before Faith

The views, which have been taken of the life of faith, will aid us in forming a proper estimate of a tendency, which is often noted among the followers of Christ, to seek for signs, tokens, and manifestations, as the basis, in part at least, of their full reconciliation with God, and of a holy life. We are aware, that this tendency arises, in some cases from ignorance; but there can be no doubt, that it has its origin chiefly in that dreadful malady of our nature, the sin of UNBELIEF. But considered in any point of view, and as originating in any cause whatever, we cannot regard it as otherwise than wrong in principle, and as exceedingly injurious in its consequences. 

The life of specific signs, testimonies, and manifestations, is not only evil by being a deviation from the way of faith; but is evil also by keeping alive and cherishing the selfish principle, instead of destroying it. He, who seeks to live in this manner, instead of living by simple faith and who thus shows a secret preference of specific experiences, modeled after his own imaginations of things, to that pearl of great price, which is found in leaving all things with God, necessarily seeks to have things in his own way. The way of faith is the way of self-renunciation; the humbling and despised way of our personal nothingness. The way of signs, testimonies, and manifestations, is the way of one's own will; and, therefore, naturally tends to keep alive and nourish the destructive principle of selfishness. The lives of those who attempt to live in this way, with some variations in particular cases, may be regarded as an evidence of the general correctness of these remarks. They seem like children brought up in an unwisely indulgent manner; not unfrequently full of themselves, when they are gratified in the possession of their particular object, and full of discouragement, peevishness, and even of hostility, which are the natural results of the workings of self, when they are disappointed.

— edited from The Interior of Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 11.

Do Not Depend Upon Signs

God does not design, that men in the present life should live by means of specific signs, testimonies, or manifestations, but by simple faith alone. The great design of the Gospel, in its practical and final result on man, seems to be to restore and firmly establish the lost principle of faith, as the true and only available basis of the religious life. And there seems to be a necessity that it should be so. From the nature of the case there never can be any true reconciliation and harmony between God and his creatures, until they can so far have confidence in him as to receive his declarations, and to draw their life, as it were, from the words, which have proceeded out of his mouth. In any other way of living, whatever may be the nature of their inward or outward experiences, they live at variance with the order and the plans of God; out of the line of his precepts, and of course in the same degree out of the range of his blessings. And hence it is, that we find the remarkable expressions of the Savior to the doubting disciple. "Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have NOT seen, and yet have believed."

And we desire here, as a matter of some importance, to lay down a practical test or rule on this subject. It is this. Whenever we desire a specific experience, whether inward or outward, whether of the intellect or the affections, [prior] to the exercise of faith, we are necessarily in so doing seeking a sign, or testimony, or something, whatever we may choose to call it, additional to the mere declaration and word of God. There is obviously a lingering distrust in the mind, which jostles us out of the line of God's order; which is not satisfied with his way of bringing the world into reconciliation with himself; and under the influence of which we are looking round for some new and additional witness for our faith to rest upon. In other words, although we may not be fully conscious of it, we desire a sign. In the language of the experienced Mr. Fletcher of Madely, "we want to see our own faith," a state of mind, which, as it requires sight to see our faith with, in other words a basis of faith additional to that which God has already given, is necessarily inconsistent with and destructive of faith. This simple test will aid very much, in revealing to us the true state of our hearts.

— The Interior of Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 11.

Leave Things in the Hands of God

When in the instruction and admonition of others, we have faithfully done our duty, we shall be willing, if we are in a right state of heart, to leave the event, with entire calmness of mind, in the hands of God. We know not what shall profit, whether this or that; but we may be assured, to say the least, that God will do his part, as well as we have done ours, although perhaps in a different way from what we expected. "I have observed, says Bunyan, "that a word cast in by the bye, hath done more execution in a sermon, than all that was spoken besides. Sometimes also, when I have thought I did no good, then I did the most of all; and at other times, when I thought I should catch them, I have fished for nothing."

— Religious Maxims (1846) LXXXVI.