at we in
that case understand it best, both in its operation and its effects.

The active principles of religion are all moulded upon this familiar and
sensible relation of father and child: and to understand whet the human
heart is capable to conceive on this subject, we have only to refer to
the many eloquent and glowing treatises that have been written upon the
love of God to his creatures, and the love that the creature in return
owes to his God. I am not now considering religion in a speculative
point of view, or enquiring among the different sects and systems of
religion what it is that is true; but merely producing religion as
an example of what have been the conceptions of the human mind in
successive ages of the world on the subject of love.

This All that we behold, the immensity of the universe, the admirable
harmony and subtlety of its structure, as they appear in the vastest and
the minutest bodies, is considered by religion, as the emanation of pure
love, a mighty impulse and ardour in its great author to realise the
idea existing in his mind, and to produce happiness. The Providence
that watches over us, so that not a sparrow dies unmarked, and that "the
great Sensorium of the world vibrates, if a hair of our head but
falls to the ground in the remotest desert of his creation," is
still unremitted, never-satiated love. And, to go from this to the
peculiarities of the Christian doctrine, "Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends: God so loved the
world, that he gave his only-begotten Son to suffer, to be treated
contumeliously, and to die with ignominy, that we might live."

If on the other hand we consider the love which the creature must
naturally pay to his creator, we shall find that the affection we can
suppose the most ingenuous child to bear to the worthiest parent, is
a very faint image of the passion which may be expected to grow out of
this relation. In God, as he is represented to us in the books of the
worthiest divines, is every thing that can command love; wisdom to
conceive, power to execute, and beneficence actually to carry
into effect, whatever is excellent and admirable. We are lost in
contemplating the depth and immensity of his perfections. "Every good
and every perfect gift is from the universal Father, with whom is
no variableness, neither shadow of turning." The most soothing and
gratifying of all sentiments, is that of entire confidence in