In suggesting various marks by which you may ascertain whether you love God or not, I would mention the general bent and turn of your thoughts, when not under the immediate control of circumstances; for these, you are aware, give a new and peculiar bias to our thoughts, and stamp them with an impress of their own.  There is an infinite variety of thoughts continually passing through the mind of every individual:  of these, some are thrown up by occasions; but others, and often the greater part, follow the habitual train of our associations.  It is not to thoughts of the former kind that I refer; it is to those of the latter class—­those involuntary thoughts which spring up of themselves in the mind of every person:  it is these, not the former, that afford clear indication of the general temper and disposition.  The question I would propose to you is, What is the bent of your thoughts when, disengaged from the influence of any particular occurrence, you are left to yourselves, in the intervals of retirement and tranquillity, in the silence of the midnight watches, and, in short, whenever your mind is left free to its own spontaneous musings?  Are the thoughts most familiar to your mind, at such times, thoughts of God and the things of God—­or are they thoughts that turn upon the present world and its transient concerns?  Are they confined, for the most part, within the narrow circle of time and sense; or do they make frequent and large excursions into the spiritual and eternal world?  The answer to this question will go far to decide whether you have, or have not, the love of God.  It is impossible that such an object as the divine Being should be absent long from your thoughts; impossible that His remembrance should long remain merged in the stream of other imaginations; unless you are supposed chargeable with a decided indifference to divine things!  Unless you are destitute of love to God you can never be so utterly uncongenial in sentiment and feeling with the psalmist, when he says, “My mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips, while I meditate upon thee in the night watches.”  “How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God!” When that man of God gazed upon the starry heavens, his mind was not merely wrought into astonishment at the physical energy there displayed; he was still more deeply lost in grateful admiration of the mercy of Providence as manifested to man—­a sinful child of dust, and yet visited by God in the midst of so magnificent a universe!  But when day passes after day, and night after night, without any serious thoughts of God, it is plain that He is not the home of your mind, not your portion, center, and resting-place:  and if this is the case, it is equally plain that you are not in a state of acceptance with Him; since nothing can be more certain than that, as our thoughts are, such must be our character.  I do not ask what are your thoughts at particular times, or under the influence of some particular event:  there may