But since this desire to love God is natural to one who knows what He is, it must be, therefore, an excellent and easy means to acquire a high degree of that love. It is like the oar in the hands of the rower. It is like the wing by which a bird mounts high in the air. Why, as soon as this desire acquires force enough to control the will (and any strong desire is sure to do so), we cannot separate the desire to love God from the love of God itself. { 279} God does not measure our love to Him by our feelings, for we may seem to ourselves to have little, while our will shows that we love Him dearly. The trouble then with us, and I may say our only trouble is, that we do not enough desire to love Him; that we do not keep that desire bright and lively in our souls. Surely we have abundant reason for it! Besides the loveliness of God attracting us, our eternal destiny depends upon it--heaven and hell. Only let us turn over in our minds the vast importance of loving God, and we must be compelled to cry out with intense desire: "Oh, that I did love God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind and strength!" I say, then, excite this desire; think, and think every day, on these simple things: Who am I? Who is God? What has God made me for? What is the world and all in it, compared to the love of God? Or, as the Gospel reads, "_What shall it profit me to gain the whole world, if I suffer the loss of my soul?_" Perhaps this fire of desire is almost out in your soul; but there is still fire there--there is one coal at least burning yet. { 280} Blow it into a flame! Keep on blowing, and that fire will be sure to spread, until the whole heap is in a blaze. You see, all that is required of you is to think, to reflect. Put your mind upon it with earnestness; and the desire of God must speedily gain the mastery of your soul. When it does so, it will regulate all its motions, and make every thing that was before so unnatural and difficult seem wonderfully easy.
Let us see how it would fare then with sin. Only keep that ardent desire to love God burning in your soul, and you will find it a very hard thing to commit any deliberate sin. It is a maxim in physical science that two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. One must displace the other. So, I say, two strong desires, that are opposed to each other, cannot stay together in one heart. Either one or the other must give way and yield possession. So our Lord said long ago under cover of this comparison: "_When a strong man armed keepeth his court, those things which he possesseth are in peace. But if one stronger than he cometh upon him and overcome him, he will take away all his armor wherein he trusted, and distribute his spoils_." [Footnote 118]