TO GOD. To serve and obey God on the conviction that it is right to serve and obey him, is in Christianity joined with that love to God which gives life and animation to service, and renders it the means of exalting our pleasures, at the same time that it accords with our convictions. The supreme love of God is the chief, therefore, of what have sometimes been called our theopathetic affections. It is the sum and the end of the law; and though it has been lost by us in Adam, it is restored to us by Christ. When it regards God absolutely, and in himself, as a Being of infinite and harmonious perfections and moral beauties, it is that movement of the soul toward him which is produced by admiration, approval, and delight. When it regards him relatively, it fixes upon the ceaseless emanations of his goodness to us all in the continuance of the existence which he at first bestowed; the circumstances which render that existence felicitous; and, above all, upon that great love wherewith he loved us,” manifested in the gift of his Son for our redemption, and in saving us by his grace; or, in the forcible language of St. Paul, upon the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness to us through Christ Jesus.” Under all these views an unbounded gratitude overflows the heart which is influenced by this spiritual affection. But the love of God is more than a sentiment of gratitude: it rejoices in his perfections and glories, and devoutly contemplates them as the highest and most interesting subjects of thought; it keeps the idea of this supremely beloved object constantly present to the mind; it turns to it with adoring ardour from the business and distractions of life; it connects it with every scene of majesty and beauty in nature, and with every event of general and ...

LOVE-BIRD, a name somewhat indefinitely bestowed, chiefly by dealers in live animals and their customers, on some of the smaller short-tailed Parrots, from the remarkable affection which examples of opposite sexes exhibit towards each other, an affection popularly believed to be so great that of a pair that have been kept together in captivity neither can long survive the loss of its partner. By many systematic ornithologists the little birds thus named, brought almost entirely from Africa and South America, have been retained in a single genus, Psittacula, though those belonging to the former country were by others separated as Agapornis. This separation, however, was by no means generally approved, and indeed it was not easily justified, until Garrod (Froc. Zool. Society, 1874, p. 593) assigned good anatomical ground, afforded by the structure of the carotid artery, for regarding the two groups as distinct, and thus removed what had seemed to be the almost unintelligible puzzle presented by the geographical distribution of the species of Ρsittacula in a large sense, though Professor Huxley (οp. cit., 1868, p. 319) had indeed already suggested one way of meeting the difficulty. As the genus is now restricted, only one of the six species of Psittacula enumerated in the Nomenclator Avium of Messrs Sclater and Salvin is known to be found outside of the Neotropical Region, the exceptional instance being the Mexican Ρ. cyanopygia, and not one of the seven recognized by the same authors as forming the very nearly allied genus Urochroma. On the other hand, of Agapornis, from which the so-called genus Poliopsitta can scarcely be separated, five if not six species are known, all belonging to the Ethiopian Region, and all but one, A. cana (which is indigenous to Madagascar, ...