(1) There are multitudes who are utterly careless about God, in whose minds He exists as the object neither of one feeling nor another, who never think of Him so as either to love Him or be displeased with Him. (2) There are those who think much about God, but, instead of loving Him, are full of terror of Him. (3) There are not a few who, instead of loving God, hateHim, verily hate Him.
I. Notice some other species of love with the manifestations of which those of Divine love are liable to be confounded by the undiscriminating. (1) The saints' love of God has nothing in it of the nature of that affection of appetite by which so much of the love of earthly objects is characterised. (2) The love of God has nothing in it of the nature of that affection of instinct which is characteristic of the love of a mother for her infant child. (3) The saints' love of God has nothing in it of the nature of the love of compassion. (4) The saints' love of God is not of that character or degree which is produced by sensible intercourse.
II. In what does the saints' love of God positively consist? (1) In its purest form, it consists in an admiration and esteem of His excellence the love of moral approbation. All God's moral perfections make Him an object of love: (a) His justice; (b) His benevolence. (2) All love of God must commence at least with the love of gratitude, with loving Him because He has loved us, each one discerning for himself that God has been bountiful to him, is bountiful to him now, and will continue bountiful in all time to come. (a) Neither any consideration of God's bounty in creation nor any review of His bounty in providence will beget love for Him in the bosom of a man who is conscious of guilt, for the obvious reason that neither of these two works of nature contains any assurance for him of that which above all things else he needs: mercy, to pardon his iniquities. (b) No man can attain to the love of God who does not appropriate the tidings of the Gospel to himself.
W. Anderson, Discourses,p. 170.