no conclusion can be formed. If you should be asked, do you love God, beware and give no answer. For if you say I do not love him, (our refuge is in God), you would make yourself an infidel. And if you say in answer, "I love him," yet you have no signs or tokens of your loving Him.
Now know that there are seven signs of love to God. In whomsoever these marks are found, his pretensions to loving God are to be regarded as well founded.
The first sign of love to God is, not to be afraid of death, and to be always waiting for it. For death unites the friend to his friend,—the seeker to the object which he seeks. As long as attachment to and dependence upon the world cannot be broken off, the traces of love to God cannot be visible. If a person, however, is afraid of death and does not feel a readiness to go into the presence of God, and yet is making every provision for his journey into the other world, it does not follow that he does not possess the love of God. It is, on the contrary, an evidence that he does love God.
It is a second sign of love to God, when a man prefers the love of God to any worldly object, chooses whatsoever 'draws him near to God, and forsakes whatsoever has a tendency to turn him away from God. He desires always to act ill accordance with his will and with his approbation. But it is not an indication that a person is entirely destitute of love to God, because he is not in every circumstance submissive to the holy will of God. For, in some persons love may exist in perfection, while in others it may be in some measure defective. It is said, for example, that during the life of the apostle of God, one of his companions was a wine drinker, and he had oftentimes been punished for it. Another of his companions one day vexed at his conduct, cursed him. The prophet happened to hear him curse him, and knocked for him to come in. When he had come into his presence he said, "Why do you curse
