easy a prey to passions, vice and error; he was overpowered
by materialism, and fell into sin. Therefore, the idea revealed to him
of a holy God, who watches over his destinies, who punishes the guilty,
rewards the virtuous, and pardons the penitent, is the best balsam that
could be administered, the best truth that could be taught to him; it
saves him from error, removes him from sin, invites him to direct his
view to heaven, restores him within the Divine grace, and opens to him
the prospect of an interminable beatitude.

LXXIX. Among those attributes, however, one becomes prominent, from its
importance; it is that which establishes an immediate relation, or
communion, as subsisting between the Creator and the rational creature;
a fundamental point on which the whole religion hinges. The intimacy of
such a relation manifested itself at the very beginning of the world by
God having created man _in His image_, by which expression it is meant,
that the Divine Maker bestowed some part of His perfections on the
noblest creature on earth, endowing it with intelligence, free-will, and
immortality; these high prerogatives conferred upon man, to a certain
degree, a similitude with his Maker, and from this similitude was
naturally to follow a closer relation of mutual love, than exists
between God and the other created things. Such a relation assumed a more
definite form when God took man under His special guardianship, whilst
He left the government of inanimate nature to physical laws, unalterable
and compulsory, which He had established in the first instant of
creation. The stupendous connection was lastly completed, by God having
communicated His will to men, and traced out to them the course they had
to follow, in order to render themselves worthy of the great boon, and
to attain the end destined for them. From all these circumstances it
became evident that God is _immediate_ to man.

LXXX. As, in general, all the revelation, has for its object to benefit
humanity, so, in particular, when the divine word is directed to impart
to us the knowledge of God, it intends to teach us the duties we are
called upon to fulfil towards the Author of our existence; duties which
we could not well discharge if we were wanting in that knowledge. Now,
the first of these duties is to _love God_. Such a noble feeling, which,
as we have already stated, derives its origin from a relation of
similitude between him who loves and the object bel