An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Thus we have gained these definitions:

Involuntary love toward God and toward men consists [pg 153] in agreeable emotions in view of admirable qualities.

Voluntary love toward God and toward men consists in good willing, or the voluntary effort to please and make happy.

To “love our neighbor as ourselves” must refer solely to voluntary love, for we have no regard to our own agreeable qualities in the love of self. Self-love is simply the desire and will to please and gratify self. This then is the kind of love that can properly be demanded of all. Each one can justly be required to will or choose to please and gratify others the same as we do ourselves. Each can be required to estimate the happiness of every other mind as of the same value as his own, and to exercise good willing for others as we do for our own enjoyment. From this primary principle necessarily results the law demanding that the good of the commonwealth shall always take precedence of any individual concern. If we are bound to value the happiness of each mind as equal in value to our own, the inevitable result is that we are to estimate the happiness of many minds as of more value than our own, so as always to make our own enjoyment and wishes subordinate and secondary to the general good.

Still more are we to regard the feelings and wishes of our Creator and Supreme Lord. He has infinite susceptibilities of enjoyment and suffering, and thus whatever retards or promotes his wishes and plans must be of as much more value as his powers of enjoyment and suffering are greater than ours. The love of good willing then should have first reference to God as the one whose will and wishes are of more [pg 154] value than any other being in this relation alone. Still more are we bound to regard his will and wishes as first in value, because his chief end and aim is the most possible happiness to all the creatures he has made. To will to please God as the chief end of our existence is the same as to choose to make the most possible happiness, not only to him, but to all his creatures.

Involuntary love is valuable as rendering it easier and more agreeable to labor for the welfare of others. Those whose interesting traits please us; those who, as children or friends, contribute to our enjoyment, and those who in any way give us pleasure, it is far easier to will for their enjoyment than it is to do so for those who do nothing to please us, and perhaps only give us discomfort, anxiety or disgust.

This exhibits an indirect way of securing the love of good will toward those who neither please us by their agreeable qualities, nor are causes of enjoyment to us in any way. Involuntary affection may be so strongly excited toward one whose qualities or conduct cause delight to self, that the desire to please that friend may become more animating than the desire for any personal gratification. Should such a friend be deeply interested in the happiness of his children, or of any other persons, whose character and conduct may in no way please us, still the desire to gratify such a friend may lead to good willing to those whom he loves, for his sake, in order to please and gratify him.

Thus it is that love to parents tends to produce “peace and good will” among children, who, in their [pg 155] little broils, are restrained by the desire to please their parents, when love to each other fails.

Here we have a view of the importance of right conceptions of God's character, in order to secure the perfect action of finite minds, especially in the first stage of existence.

It has been shown that the rules of right action are to be gained, in many cases, only by long experience and by a course of reasoning. Often, too, general rules (such, for example, as that we are never to lie, even to save life, or for any reason,) must be obeyed when a person can see immediate evil, and no good to self or to any one by obedience. Now it is impossible for a rational mind to choose pure evil. There must be some good in an object to excite desire, or it is impossible to choose it. But pleasurable emotions toward an all-wise Creator, whose benevolence and wisdom excite love, delight, and confidence, may be such that to please him gives abundant motive to obey the rules of right he enjoins when no other good can be perceived except that obedience will please him. And the more we perceive in him that excites admiration, love, and gratitude, the more strength of motive is gained.