love is reciprocal; parental love corresponds to filial; and fraternal love is reciprocal. The charm of domestic life is derived from the domestic affections, which are a source of unbounded happiness within family circles, and of immense public benefit.

The social affections relate to our fellow-men, considered as fellow-men, fellow-citizens, members of the same smaller communities, either civil or religious, and as personal friends. All men are appropriate objects of love as men; members of the same states and smaller communities, as fellow-citizens and associates; and personal friends, as friends. All these affections are designed to be perfectly reciprocal. Different persons exercise them with different degrees of frequency and intensity, but few, if any, are entirely destitute of them. Of the several varieties of the social affections, friendship is one of the most interesting and important. Like the domestic and other social affections, it is designed to be reciprocal, and must be reciprocated, in order to be fully developed. The essential element of friendship is delight in persons of our acquaintance, as friends. This affection relates to them as possessing all the qualities which render them agreeable and useful. It is nearly allied to the domestic affections; relates, like them, to comparatively few objects; and is exercised, in many cases, with great frequency and intensity. The love of mankind generally as human beings, is similar to the other varieties of the social affections, but is less intense than others, in proportion as it is more extended.

We sustain interesting and important relations to animals and inanimate objects generally, and to individuals of these classes, in particular, and are directly or indirectly dependent on them, for a large amount of happiness. Gardens, favorite plants and flowers, favorite domestic animals, and favorite productions of art, are often objects of intense love. To be without these affections, in circumstances favorable to their development, is a great misfortune and a sin.

Love of God.

§ 446. The last and highest order of the affections are those which relate to God. God is as real and immediate an object of human love, as men and other terrestrial beings. Our knowledge of him is of the same nature as that of

human minds. We know him as the subject of thoughts, emotions, affections, and external actions, terminating on ourselves and others. Other beings which elicit our affections, are but types of God. Parents represent him as our parent; friends, as our friend; and kind benefactors and masters, as our benefactor and master. But no other beings can afford a full and adequate representation of him, considered either in respect to his essential attributes, or his relations to creatures. Ideas of God as the ultimate exclusive cause of all good, are as really adapted to excite our love to him, as similar ideas of parents and friends are adapted to excite our love to them. Such ideas are among the most legitimate and certain deductions of reason; and are attainable by processes perfectly similar to those by which we attain love-producing ideas of our fellow-men, or of terrestrial objects. The same course of reasoning which leads us to ideas of our parents, friends, and benefactors, as sustaining these relations, prosecuted a few steps farther, leads us, with equal certainty, to ideas of God as infinitely more to us than all earthly friends and relations.

The Scriptures require us to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our minds. Matt. xxii. 37. This involves the highest and most vigorous exercise of all our faculties, both of reason and affection; of reason, in ascertaining his character and works, and in attaining love-producing ideas of him; and of affection, in loving him as the object of those ideas. No language can be more beautiful, or appropriate, or more accordant with the principles of sound philosophy. In requiring us to love him, God requires us to obtain rational ideas of him. The attainment of these ideas requires the exercise of reason, and of all the subordinate mental faculties. In requiring. us to love him with all our minds, God requires us to pursue the attainment of rational ideas of him, to the greatest possible extent, as a means of exciting our highest love. The character and relations of God are a subject of un-. bounded extent and interest. They are appropriate objects of human knowledge, and admit of being studied with increasing pleasure and profit, not only while this life endures, but forever. But having ideas of God, is not loving him. Such ideas are essential conditions of love; but they do not produce it necessarily. They may be exercised, and love not attend them, or not attend them with proper degrees of

intensity. Hence there is occasion for the other part of the command; "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart."

§ 447. The capacity of loving objects, considered as possessing certain properties, is common, in some degree, to all human beings; and like other mental faculties, it is capable of being greatly modified, by the manner in which it is occasionally and habitually exercised. Occasional aberrations lead to habitual ones, and habitual ones to incurable impotency.

The affections agree with other mental actions in being right or wrong, according to the purposes which they are designed to answer. The human faculties of affection are similar to those of sensations and ideas. We have capacities to exercise all the sensations and ideas which we are morally obligated to exercise; and all the emotions and affections which are similarly enforced: The sphere of moral action is only co-extensive with that of the moral powers. The best affections possible at any time, are the best which are required; and the requirements of every hour vary with the capacities and opportunities which every hour affords.

The capacities and opportunities of men to love each other, are adequate to enable them to perform this class of duties; and their capacities and opportunities to love God are equally adequate to enable them to love him. These affections would not be duties, either without capacities, or opportunities and means for exercising them. The Holy Spirit is a concurring agent in the production of all right human affections, embracing the love of God and man, and both equally. His agency, however, does not supersede that of the mind as the sole subjective cause of all its exercises. The love of God bears the same relation to the human faculties of loving him, which the love of men does to the corresponding faculties of loving them.

Men are as really created for the exercise of right affections, as they are for the attainment of rational ideas. Irrational ideas are possible; and wrong affections are also possible; but both are violations of the laws of God, and are alike unnecessary and injurious.

Hope and Fear.

§ 448. Hope relates to the objects of future possible happiness, and fear to those of future possible misery. These two affections, therefore, are similar to love and hatred in relating to pleasurable and painful objects. Hope and fear are often confounded with desires which relate to the objects of hope and fear. Like love and hatred, they are the concurring causes of desires, but are clearly distinguishable from their effects. We contemplate some future possible events with hope, and desire them; and others with fear and desire that they may not happen. Other things being equal, the desires which accompany the affections, are proportionable to the intensity of the affections which produce them. This is the case with the accompanying desires of hope and fear.

Hopes are pleasurable, and fears painful. When exercised by moral agents, they are the subjects of moral oligation, and are either right or wrong. Those hopes which relate to future possible good, which is good on the whole, are right; and those of an opposite character, are wrong. The same is true of fears.

Some modifications of hope and fear, and of love and hatred, are exercised by animals. Most animals love their associates and their young. Many of them evince attachments of great strength, and retain them for considerable periods of time. The manifestations of animal hope and fear, are analogous to those of animal love. Man, however, is vastly superior to animals in this respect. His objects of pleasing and painful emotions, are far more numerous and diversified than those of animals; and his superiority, considered as a being of affections, is proportionable to his superiority in other respects. The objects of human love are infinite in number, and infinitely diversified; those of the love of animals are few, and of but little diversity. The same is true of human and animal hopes and fears.

§ 449. The pleasures of hope are analogous to those of love, and the pains of fear to those of hatred. They constitute a large and important part of the pleasures and pains of this life; and will, doubtless, attend us in every future state of conscious existence. "Prisoners of hope," is an epithet applied to men, in the beautiful and poetic language

of the Scriptures.-Zech. ix. 12. No language can be more truly descriptive of human nature, in every age and country, and in every stage of development. Those events which are the objects of hope, are in many cases uncertain. We form ideas of them as possible, and hope for them; and form other accompanying ideas of their non-occurrence as possible, and fear it.

Hopes and fears depend immediately on ideas of the objects of these affections, as their concurring causes; remotely on the primary emotions and affections; and still more remotely on the objective exciting causes of previous emotions. Men and other created beings are subordinate objects of human hope and fear, as they are of love and hatred; but the only ultimate object of these affections, is God.

God sustains similar relations to the human capacities, both of knowledge and of the affections. He is the ultimate object of all human knowledge. All other beings reveal him as their Creator; and all the phenomena, both of matter and mind, relate to him as their single and exclusive ultimate cause. God is as really the exclusive ultimate cause of all things, as man is the exclusive subjective cause of his ideas and actions, or matter the exclusive subjective cause of its attractions and repulsions. God is as really the only ultimate object of all right human affections, as he is the only ultimate object of all rational human ideas. In being the ultimate cause of all things, he is the ultimate cause of all possible happiness and misery, and is as legitimate an object of love, considered in the relation of an ultimate cause of happiness, as men are, considered as immediate causes of happiness. The same is true of God, considered as an ultimate object of hope and fear. All rational hopes and fears terminate on him as their ultimate object. The love of God is as necessary to serve as a regulating principle of the other affections, as the knowledge of him is, to serve as a determining principle of other ideas. Without a knowledge of God, we cannot understand anything perfectly; and without a love of him, we cannot have duly regulated love for subordinate objects. The hopes and fears which terminate on God, have the same relations to those which terminate on subordinate objects, which the love of God has to subordinate similar affections; and are of the greatest necessity, as regulating principles of all subordinate hopes and fears.