July 23

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.--LUKE x. 27.

  O God, what offering shall I give
    To Thee, the Lord of earth and skies?
  My spirit, soul, and flesh receive,
    A holy, living sacrifice.
J. LANGE.

To love God "with all our heart," is to know the spiritual passion of
measureless gratitude for loving-kindness, and self-devotedness to
goodness; to love Him "with all our mind," is to know the passion for Truth
that is the enthusiasm of Science, the passion for Beauty that inspires
the poet and the artist, when all truth and beauty are regarded as the
self-revealings of God; to love Him "with all our soul," is to know the
saint's rapture of devotion and gaze of penitential awe into the face of
the All-holy, the saint's abhorrence of sin, and agony of desire to save
a sinner's soul; and to love Him "with all our strength," is the supreme
spiritual passion that tests the rest; the passion for reality, for worship
in spirit and in truth, for being what we adore, for doing what we know
to be God's word; the loyalty that exacts the living sacrifice, the whole
burnt-offering that is our reasonable service, and in our coldest hours
keeps steadfast to what seemed good when we were aglow.
J. H. THOM.