A beast with a man's head!

(Thomas Watson, "A Divine Cordial" 1663)  LISTEN to Audio!  Download Audio

Love to God is an expansion of soul, or the inflaming of the affections, by which a Christian breathes after God as the supreme and sovereign good. "There is nothing on earth that I desire beside You." Psalm 73:25

The Christian loves God above all other objects. God is the quintessence of all good things—He is superlatively good. The soul admiring in Him that constellation of all excellencies, is carried out in love to Him in the highest degree. God, who is the chief of our happiness, must have the chief of our affections.

The creature may have the milk of our love—but God must have the cream! Though some drops of love may run to our kindred and friends—yet the full torrent must run out after Christ. Relations may lie on the bosom—but Christ must lie in the heart!

We set a high value upon God as being the most sublime and infinite good. We so esteem God, as that if we have Him, we do not care though we lack all other things. The stars vanish, when the sun appears. All creatures vanish in our thoughts, when the Sun of righteousness shines in His full splendor. The soul that loves God, rejoices in Him as in his treasure, and rests in Him as his center. The heart is so set upon God—that it desires no more!

We must love God more for what He is (His intrinsic excellencies), than for what He bestows. True love is not mercenary. You need not hire a mother to love her child. Just so, a soul deeply in love with God needs not be hired by rewards. It cannot but love Him, for that luster of beauty which sparkles forth in Him!

Despisers and haters of God, have no lot or part in this privilege. It is children's bread—it belongs only to those who love God. "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God," Romans 8:28

This is a sharp reproof to those who do not love God—to such as have not a grain of love to God in their hearts; and are there such reprobates alive? He who does not love God, is a beast with a man's head!

Oh wretch! Do you live upon God's bounty every day—yet not love Him! These are monsters in nature—devils in the shape of men!

Let them read their doom: "If anyone does not love the Lord, that person is cursed!" 1 Corinthians 16:22

How can he expect love from God, who shows no love to Him?

Will God ever lay such a viper in His bosom, as casts forth the poison of malice and enmity against Him?