every man constantly acts with reference to a final end, and that that end is the same with his ruling love. To this ruling love, whether it be celestial or infernal, the love of self, or the love of the Lord, all other affections, thoughts and actions are secondary and subordinate. Around this one central principle all other things that belong to the affections and thoughts are arranged, and on it they are made to depend.
But man, in his best and most regenerate state, is an image and likeness of the Lord. The Lord, therefore, is a divine man; and hence, the principle just stated, must be equally true in regard to him. All that he does throughout the boundless universe, all the arrangements of his providence, the laws by which the spiritual world is upheld, as well as the more external form of the same laws sustaining the vast machinery of nature, all proceed from that one divine principle, the love of the Lord. But what is that final end towards which the divine love is directed, and for which all the arrangements of the divine providence exist? Why plainly, the giving of eternal happiness, the forming of intelligent creatures, and eternally perfecting them in goodness and consequent happiness, to the utmost extent that the unrestrained exercise of their own freedom will permit. And as truth teaches us that there is no real happiness except from goodness, and no goodness except from freedom, we may therefore safely say that the end of the divine love, as well as the design of the divine providence, is, to give the utmost amount and degree of happiness that can be given. Such is the love of the Lord. It is this love which gives to the spiritual world its power to produce the natural world as an ultimate effect. It will be seen, therefore, that the natural world exists because the divine love demands its existence, or, which means the same thing, because its existence is necessary in order that the end of the divine love, the giving of eternal happiness, may be attained. And for the same reason it must continue to exist, just so long as the
