April 20, 2007Divine love and religious exercises

I acquired Henry Scougal's little volume The Life of God in the Soul of Man during my undergraduate years, but I have only recently taken the opportunity to read this work.

I should have read it much, much sooner.

The Life of God in the Soul of Man is a feast for the soul. Scougal describes the life of the man who exemplifies true religion; for any sensitive soul, this description will sharply expose the inconsistencies that haunt our deceitful hearts. The particular edition of the book that I have carries this endorsement from George Whitefield: "I never knew what true religion was until God sent me this excellent treatise."

Scougal spends much of his second chapter elaborating on the advantages of "divine love"; in Scougal's usage, divine love refers to our love for God. He contends that "the worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love," and his further argument is that God, in his infinite perfections, is the only worthy object for the soul's love. All other objects of love disappoint and fail, causing pain and sorrow. However, because of God's constant presence, his infinite worth, and his ceaseless delight in himself, the soul who sets his affection on God will never have cause to regret his decision.

He concludes his discussion of divine love with these paragraphs:

The exercises of religion, which to others are insipid and tedious, do yield the highest pleasures and delight to souls possessed with divine love. They rejoice when they are called "to go up to the house of the Lord," that they may "see his power and his glory, as they have formerly seen it in the sanctuary." They never think themselves so happy, as when, having retired from the world, and gotten free from the noise and hurry of affairs, and silenced all their clamorous passions (those troublesome guests within,) they have placed themselves in the presence of God, and entertain fellowship and communion with him: they delight to adore his perfections, and recount his favours,—and to protest their affection to him, and tell him a thousand times that they love him; to lay their troubles or wants before him, and disburden their hearts in his bosom. Repentance itself is a delightful exercise, when it floweth from the principle of love. There is a secret sweetness which accompanieth those tears of remorse, those meltings and relentings of a soul returning unto God, and lamenting its former unkindness.

The severities of a holy life, and that constant watch which we are obliged to keep over our hearts and ways, are very troublesome to those who are only ruled and acted by an external law, and have no law in their minds inclining them to the performance of their duty: but where divine love possesseth the soul, it stands as sentinel to keep out every thing that may offend the beloved, and doth disdainfully repulse those temptations which assault it: it complieth cheerfully, not only with explicit commands, but with the most secret notices of the beloved's pleasure, and is ingenious in discovering what will be most grateful and acceptable unto him: it makes mortification and self-denial change their harsh and dreadful names, and become easy, sweet, and delightful things.

To whatever degree my diligence in religious discipline is distasteful or burdensome to me, it is to that degree that I do not love God. Such is the harsh but necessarily true conclusion of Scougal.

The complete text of Scougal's work is available here in a wide variety of formats.

Michael Riley | two comments | Link