earth that I desire beside you" (Psalm 73:25). God is the essence of all good
rooted in love, endures. True love never ends, but with the life.
5. The degree of love. We must love God above all else. " There is nothing on earth that I desire beside you" (Psalm 73:25). God is the essence of all good things, He is superlatively good. The soul seeing infinite worth in God, and admiring in Him that constellation of all excellencies, is carried out in love to Him in the highest degree. The measure of our love to God, says Bernard, must be to love Him without measure. God, who is the chief of our happiness, must have the chief of our affections. The creature may have the milk of our love, but God must have the cream. Love to God must be above all other things, as the oil swims above the water.
We must love God more than relations. As in the case of Abraham's offering up Isaac; Isaac being the son of his old age, no question he loved him entirely, and doted on him; but when God said, "Abraham, offer up your son" (Gen. 22:2), though it were a thing which might seem, not only to oppose his reason, but his faith, for the Messiah was to come of Isaac, and if he were cut off, where shall the world have a Mediator! Yet such was the strength of Abraham's faith and ardency of his love to God, that he will take the sacrificing knife, and let out Isaac's blood. Our blessed Saviour speaks of hating father and mother (Luke 14:26). Christ would not have us be unnatural; but if our dearest relations stand in our way, and would keep us from Christ, either we must step over them, or know them not (Deut. 33:9). Though some drops of love may run beside to our kindred and alliance, yet the full torrent must run out after Christ. Relations may lie on the bosom, but Christ must lie in the heart.
We must love God more than our belongings. "You took joyfully the spoiling of your goods" (Heb. 10:34). They were glad they had anything to lose for Christ. If the world were laid in one scale, and Christ in the other, He must weigh heaviest. And is it thus? Has God the highest room in our affections? Plutarch says, "When a dictator was created in Rome, all other authority was for the time suspended": so when the love of God bears sway in the heart, all other love is suspended, and is as nothing in comparison of this love.
Use. A sharp reproof to those who do not love God. This may serve for a sharp reproof to such as have not a dram of love to God in their hearts - and are there such wretches alive? He who does not love God is a beast with a man's head. Oh wretch! Do you live upon God every day, yet not love Him? If someone had a friend who supplied him continually with money, and gave him all his allowance, would he not be worse than a barbarian, who did not respect and