The religious sanction varies, of course, with the different religious creeds, and, in the more imperfect forms of religion, by no means always operates in favour of morality.  But it will be sufficient here to consider the religious sanction solely in relation to Christianity.  As enforced by the Bible and the Church, the religious sanctions of conduct are two, which I shall call the higher and the lower sanctions.  By the latter I mean the hope of the divine reward or the fear of the divine punishment, either in this world or the next; by the former, the love of God and that veneration for His nature which irresistibly inspires the effort to imitate His perfections.  The lower religious sanction is plainly the same in kind with the legal sanction.  If a man is induced to do or to refrain from doing a certain action from fear of punishment, the motive is the same, whether the punishment be for a long time or a short one, whether it is to take immediate effect or to be deferred for a term of years.  And, similarly, the same is the case with rewards.  No peculiar merit, as it appears to me, can be claimed by a man because he acts from fear of divine punishment rather than of human punishment, or from hope of divine rewards rather than of human rewards.  The only differences between the two sanctions are (1) that the hopes and fears inspired by the religious sanction are, to one who believes in their reality, far more intense than those inspired by the legal sanction, the two being related as the temporal to the eternal, and (2) that, inasmuch as God is regarded as omnipresent and omniscient, the religious sanction is immeasurably more far-reaching than the legal sanction or even than the legal and the social sanctions combined.  Thus the lower religious sanction is, to those who really believe in it, far more effective than the legal sanction, though it is the same in kind.  But the higher religious sanction appeals to a totally different class of motives, the motives of love and reverence rather than of hope and fear.  In this higher frame of mind, we keep God’s commandments, because we love Him, not because we hope for His rewards or fear His punishments.  We reverence God, and, therefore, we strive to be like Him, to be perfect even as He is perfect.  We have attained to that state of mind in which perfect love has cast out fear, and, hence, we simply do good and act righteously because God, who is the supreme object of our love and the supreme ideal of conduct, is good and righteous.  There can be no question that, in this case, the motives are far loftier and purer than in the case of the legal and the lower religious sanctions.  But there are few men, probably, capable of these exalted feelings, and, therefore, for the great mass of mankind the external inducements to right conduct must, probably, continue to be sought in the coarser motives.  It may be mentioned, before concluding this notice of the religious sanctions, that there is a close affinity between the higher religious sanction and that form of the social sanction which operates through respect for the good opinions of those of our fellow-men whom we love, reverence, or admire.