vanitatum_. Then indeed we go back to them, not for their own sakes, but
for His; not attracted by our love of them, but impelled by our love of
Him.

This mode of imagining the truth, so as to explain the divine jealousy
implied in the precept of loving God exclusively and supremely, is, for
all its patent limitations, the most generally serviceable. Treated as a
strict equation of thought to fact, and pushed accordingly to its utmost
logical consequences, it becomes a source of danger; but in fact it is
not and will not be so treated by the majority of good Christians who
serve God faithfully but without enthusiasm; whose devotion is mainly
rational and but slightly affective; who do not conceive themselves
called to the way of the saints, or to offer God that all-absorbing
affection which would necessitate the weakening or severing of natural
ties. In the event, however, of such a call to perfect love, the logical
and practical outcome of this mode of imagining the relation of God to
creatures is a steady subtraction of the natural love bestowed upon
friends and relations, that the energy thus economized may be
transferred to God. This concentration may indeed be justified on other
and independent grounds; but the implied supposition that, the highest
sanctity is incompatible with any pure and well-ordered natural
affection, however intense, is certainly ill-sounding, and hardly
reconcilable with the divinest examples and precepts.

The limitations of this simpler and more practical mode of imagining the
matter are to some extent supplemented by that other mode for which
Patmore found so much authority in St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Teresa,
and many another, and which he perhaps too readily regarded as
exhaustively satisfactory.