"We are all conscious, however partially, that in human nature there is a Principle that delights in heroic virtue, that admires and reveres men illustrious for self-sacrificing devotedness, that feeds with joy on fictions wherein fellow-beings, amidst great trial and perils are faithful to duty, and act wth noble disinterestedness, at every cost. We all have experienced, in some degree, the workings of this Superior Nature, so as to rejoice with triumphant sympathy, when we read the memoirs of men and women, refined from self-love, pure in principle, consecrated to grand purposes, ascending by lives of ever enlarging love to the blessedness of a heavenly world. 

Now this high power of heart and will, that prompts us to aspire after Perfect Excellence, Jesus came to set free. His aim was to enlarge and invigorate it, to exalt it to supremacy, and by his own character, example and influence, to win and welcome it to that Divine Goodness, which it impels us to pursue.

Again, Jesus came not only to emancipate the Intellect and Moral Power, but to set free our imprisoned Energy of Love. Man was made for love; he lives by love; and the true measure of his life is the largeness and liberty of his love.

Man is born into the arms and nourished on the breast of love. And in domestic life we often see developed an almost miraculous force of disinterested affection. But the human Heart was not designed to be confined to home, however heavenly that home may be. It's emotions naturally flow outward, circle beyond circle, in ever widening waves of sympathy, embracing in their compass a constantly enlarging sphere, and blending at length with the commingling currents and tides of love for the whole race. 

But there are antagonistic elements also in human nature, which tend to immure the Individual within himself, and make him the slave of his selfishness. 

Now it is the glorious characteristic of Christ's salvation, that sets at liberty our Love, breaks down the prison walls of self, and carries us freely forth into this goodly universe -- as the Home of our Father and of His vast Family; that it instructs us how to find objects for our largest affections in all God's children; that it encourages us to identify our private welfare with the advancing good of humanity; that it quickens us to interlink ourselves with all mankind of all classes and conditions, -- by reverent admiration with the good, by reconciling mercy with the evil, by cheerful sympathy with the happy, by tender compassion with the suffering, by redeeming pity with the oppressed, by hope with all, -- and this to make our own lives entirely one with the life of our Race. There is an exulting joy in this enlargement of Personal Being; and this limitless expansion of love was an essential aim of our Savior."
William Ellery Channing