II. 9. Love, cutting off both the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life -- engaging the whole person, body, soul, and spirit, in the ardent pursuit of that one object -- is so essential to a child of God, that without it, whoever lives is counted dead before God. 'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing.' Nay, 'though I give all my goods to feed the poor, and my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.'

10. Here, then, is the sum of the perfect law; this is the true circumcision of the heart. Let the spirit return to God that gave it, with the whole train of affections. 'Unto the place from whence all the rivers came,' thither let them flow again. Other sacrifices from us He would not; but the living sacrifice of the heart God has chosen. Let it be continually offered up to God through Christ in flames of holy love. And let no creature be suffered to share with God: for God is a jealous God. God's throne will not divide with another; God will reign without rival. Be no design, no desire admitted there, but what has God for its ultimately object. This is the way wherein those children of God once walked, who, being dead, still speak to us: 'Desire not to live but to praise His name: let all your thoughts, words, and works tend to God's glory. Set your heart firm on God and on other things only as they are in and from God. Let your soul be filled with so entire a love of God that you may love nothing but for God's sake.' 'Have a pure intention of heart, a steadfast regard to God's glory in all your actions.' 'Fix your eye upon the blessed hope of your calling, and make all the things of the world minister unto it.' For then, and not till then, is that 'mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus'; when in every motion of our heart, in every word of our tongue, in every work of our hands, we 'pursue nothing but in relation to God and in subordination to God's pleasure'; when we, too, neither think, nor speak, nor act, to fulfill our 'own will, but the will of Him that sent us'; when whether we 'eat, or drink, or whatever we do, we do all to the glory of God.'"