"I seldom jest," answered the preacher; "life was not lent to us to be
expended in that idle mirth which resembles the crackling of thorns
under the pot. I would only have you derive, if it so please you, this
lesson from what I have said, that the best of our feelings, when
indulged to excess, may give pain to others. There is but one in which
we may indulge to the utmost limit of vehemence of which our bosom is
capable, secure that excess cannot exist in the greatest intensity to
which it can be excited--I mean the love of our Maker."

"Surely," said the Lady of Avenel, "we are commanded by the same
authority to love our neighbour?"

"Ay, madam," said Warden, "but our love to God is to be unbounded--we
are to love him with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole
strength. The love which the precept commands us to bear to our
neighbour, has affixed to it a direct limit and qualification--we are
to love our neighbour as ourself; as it is elsewhere explained by the
great commandment, that we must do unto him as we would that he should
do unto us. Here there is a limit, and a bound, even to the most
praiseworthy of our affections, so far as they are turned upon
sublunary and terrestrial objects. We are to render to our neighbour,
whatever be his rank or degree, that corresponding portion of
affection with which we could rationally expect we should ourselves be
regarded by those standing in the same relation to us. Hence, neither
husband nor wife, neither son nor daughter, neither friend nor
relation, are lawfully to be made the objects of our idolatry. The
Lord our God is a jealous God, and will not endure that we bestow on
the creature that extremity of devotion which He who made us demands
as his own share. I say to you, Lady, that even in the fairest, and
purest, and most honourable feelings of our nature, there is that