wishes you to do? Very well. Have you never tried to do anything God
wishes you to do?" "Oh yes; often. But not so often as I ought."

"Of course not. No one does that. But come now, why do you try to do
what you think will please Him? Because it is easy? Because you like
to do what He likes rather than what you like yourself?"

I tried to think, and got puzzled.

"Never mind," said Dr. Cabot, " I have come now to the point I was
aiming at. You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by
examining your feelings towards Him. They are indefinite and they
fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon
it, you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful human
beings to prefer His pleasure to our own, or to follow His way
instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love to Him can or
does make us obedient to Him."

"Couldn't we obey Him from fear ?"Amelia now asked. She had been
listening all this time in silence.

"Yes; and so you might obey your mother from fear, but only for a
season. If you had no real love for her you would gradually cease to
dread her displeasure, whereas it is in the very nature of love to
grow stronger and more influential every hour."

"You mean, then, that if we want to know whether we love God, we must
find out whether we are obeying Him?" Amelia asked.

"I mean exactly that. 'He that keepeth my commandments he it is that