In this conception, God is placed, not alongside of creatures, but
behind them, as the light which shines through a crystal and lends it
whatever it has of lustre. In recognizing whatever true brilliancy or
beauty creatures possess as due to His inbiding presence, the love which
they excite in us passes on to Him, through them. As He is the primary
Agent and Mover in all our action and movement, the primary Lover in all
our pure and well-ordered love; and we, but instruments of His action,
movement, and love; so, in whatever we love rightly and divinely for its
true merit and divinity, it is He who is ultimately loved. Thus in all
pure and well-ordered affection it is, ultimately, God who loves and God
who is loved; it is God returning to Himself, the One to the One.
According to this imagery, God is viewed as the First Efficient and the
ultimate Final Cause in a circular chain of causes and effects of which
He is at once the first link and the last--a conception which, in so far
as it brings God inside the system of nature as part thereof, is, like
the last, only analogously true, and may not be pressed too far in its
consequences.

In this view, to love God supremely and exclusively means practically,
to love only the best things in the best way, recognizing God both in
the affection and in its object. God is not loved apart from creatures,
or beside them; but through them and in them. Hence if only the
affection be of the right kind as to mode and object, the more the
better; nor can there be any question of crowding other affections into
a corner in order to make more room for the love of God in our hearts.
The love of Him is the "form," the principle of order and harmony; our
natural affections are the "matter," harmonized and set in order; it is
the soul, they are the body, of that one Divine Love whose adequate
object is God in, and not apart from, His creatures.