If, then, we look into the character of the young ruler, we perceive that there was in it no supreme affection for God.  On the contrary, he loved himself with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength.  Even his religious anxiety, which led him to our Lord for His opinion concerning his good estate, proved to be a merely selfish feeling.  He desired immortal felicity beyond the tomb,—­and the most irreligious man upon earth desires this,—­but he did not possess such an affection for God as inclined, and enabled, him to obey His explicit command to make a sacrifice of his worldly possessions for His glory.  And this lack of supreme love to God was sin.  It was a deviation from the line of eternal rectitude and righteousness, as really and truly as murder, adultery, or theft, or any outward breach of any of those commandments which he affirmed he had kept from his youth up.  This coming short of the Divine honor and glory was as much contrary to the Divine law, as any overt transgression of it could be.

For love is the fulfilling of the law.  The whole law, according to Christ, is summed up and contained, in these words:  “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.”  To be destitute of this heavenly affection is, therefore, to break the law at the very centre and in the very substance of it.  Men tell us, like this young ruler, that they do not murder, lie, or steal,—­that they observe all the commandments of the second table pertaining to man and their relations to man,—­and ask, “What lack we yet?” Alexander Pope, in the most brilliant and polished poetry yet composed by human art, sums up the whole of human duty in the observance of the rules and requirements of civil morality, and affirms that “an honest man is the noblest work of God.”  But is this so?  Has religion reached its last term, and ultimate limit, when man respects the rights of property?  Is a person who keeps his hands off the goods and chattels of his fellow-creature really qualified for the heavenly state, by reason of this fact and virtue of honesty?  Has he attained the chief end of man?[2] Even if we could suppose a perfect obedience of all the statutes of the second table, while those of the first table were disobeyed; even if one could fulfil all his obligations to his neighbor, while failing in all his obligations to his Maker; even if we should concede a perfect morality, without any religion; would it be true that this morality, or obedience of only one of the two tables that cover the whole field of human duty, is sufficient to prepare man for the everlasting future, and the immediate presence of God?  Who has informed man that the first table of the law is of no consequence; and that if he only loves his neighbor as himself, he need not love his Maker supremely?