of our actual relation to
God, is "to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding,
and all the soul, and all the strength."

*Reverence* is the sentiment inspired by advanced superiority in such
traits of mind and character as we regard with complacency in ourselves,
or with esteem in our equals. Qualities which we do not esteem we may
behold with _admiration_ (that is, wonder), but not with reverence. Our
reverence for age is not for advanced years alone, but for the valuable
experience which they are supposed to have given, and especially for the
maturity of excellence which belongs to the old age of good men, of which
their features generally bear the impress, and which, in the absence of
knowledge, we are prone to ascribe to a venerable mien and aspect. A
foolish or wicked old man commands no reverence by his years.

God, as possessing in infinite fulness all the properties which we revere
in man, must ever be the worthy object of supreme reverence.

Gratitude, though it can hardly be disjoined from love, is seldom
cherished for the same person in the same degree with love. We love our
beneficiaries more than our benefactors. We love those dependent upon us
more than those on whom we depend. The mother's love for her child is the
strongest of human affections, and undoubtedly exceeds that even of the
child for the mother to whom he owes every benefit and blessing under
heaven. We may be fervently grateful to persons whom we have never seen;
but there cannot be much vividness in our love for them. Love to God, whom
we have not seen, needs to be kindled, renewed, and sustained by gratitude
for the incessant flow of benefits from Him, and by the promise--contingent
on character--of blessings immeasurable and everlasting.

*Kindness* is benevolence for one's _kind_,--a delight in their happiness
and well-being, a readiness to perform friendly offices whenever and
however they may be needed. In its lower forms it is designated as _good
nature_; when intense and universal, it is termed _philanthropy_. It
befits the individual man as a member of a race of kindred, and is deemed
so essential an attribute of the human character, that he who utterly
lacks it is branded as _inhuman_, while its active exercise in the relief
of want and suffering is emphatically termed _humanity_.

Pity is the emotion occasioned by the sight or knowledge of distress or
pain. While without it there can be no genuine kindness, i