This is a great diagram of practicing the principles that we
speak of in our recovery. It does speak in Christian
terminology. Great for Christians or agnostics alike, if you can
see past any prejudice toward the some of the language and get
the message you will be glad you did.
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
by Henry Drummond
First Published c1880
THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men and
of angels, and have not love, I am become as a sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I
have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not
LOVE I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the
poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love,
it profiteth me nothing.
Love suffereth long, and is kind;
Love envieth not;
Love vaunteth not itself is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly,
Seeketh not her own,
Is not easily provoked,
Thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth
in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love never faileth: but whether there be
prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they
shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that
which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be
done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood
as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put
away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know
even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, Love,
these three; but the greatest of these is Love.--I COR xiii.
THE GREATEST
THING IN THE WORLD
EVERY one has asked himself the great
question of antiquity as of the modern world: What is the
summum bonum--the supreme good? You have life before you.
Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object of desire,
the supreme gift to covet?
We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing
in the religious world is Faith. That great word has been the
key-note for centuries of the popular religion; and we have
easily learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the
world. Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may
miss the mark. I have taken you, in the chapter which I have
just read, to Christianity at its source; and there we have
seen, "The greatest of these is love." It is not an oversight.
Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says, "If I
have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not
love, I am nothing. "So far from forgetting, he deliberately
contrasts them, "Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love," and without a
moment's hesitation, the decision falls, "The greatest of these
is Love."
And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to
others his own strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point.
The observing student can detect a beautiful tenderness growing
and ripening all through his character as Paul gets old; but the
hand that wrote, "The greatest of these is love," when we meet
it first, is stained with blood.
Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling
out love as the summum bonum. The masterpieces of
Christianity are agreed about it. Peter says, "Above all things
have fervent love among yourselves." Above all things.
And John goes farther, "God is love." And you remember the
profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love is the
fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what he meant by
that? In those days men were working their passage to Heaven by
keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other
commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ
said, I will show you a more simple way. If you do one thing,
you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking
about them. If you love, you will unconsciously fulfil the whole
law. And you can readily see for yourselves how that must be so.
Take any of the commandments. "Thou shalt have no other gods
before Me." If a man love God, you will not require to tell him
that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. "Take not His name in
vain." Would he ever dream of taking His name in vain if he
loved Him? "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Would he
not be too glad to have one day in seven to dedicate more
exclusively to the object of his affection? Love would fulfil
all these laws regarding God. And so, if he loved Man, you would
never think of telling him to honour his father and mother. He
could not do anything else. It would be preposterous to tell him
not to kill. You could only insult him if you suggested that he
should not steal -.how could he steal from those he loved? It
would be superfluous to beg him not to bear false witness
against his neighbour. If he loved him it would be the last
thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging him not
to covet what his neighbours had. He would rather they possessed
it than himself. In this way "Love is the fulfilling of the
law." It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new
commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one
secret of the Christian life.
Now Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has
given us the most wonderful and original account extant of the
summum bonum. We may divide it into three parts. In the
beginning of the short chapter, we have Love contrasted;
in the heart of it, we have Love analysed; towards the
end we have Love defended as the supreme gift.
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THE CONTRAST
PAUL begins by contrasting Love with other
things that men in those days thought much of. I shall not
attempt to go over those things in detail. Their inferiority is
already obvious.
He contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble gift it
is, the power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and
rousing them to lofty purposes and holy deeds. Paul says, "If I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love,
I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." And we all
know why. We have all felt the brazenness of words without
emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable unpersuasiveness, of
eloquence behind which lies no Love.
He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with
mysteries. He contrasts it with faith. He contrasts it with
charity. Why is Love greater than faith? Because the end is
greater than the means. And why is it greater than charity?
Because the whole is greater than the part. Love is greater than
faith, because the end is greater than the means. What is the
use of having faith? It is to connect the soul with God. And
what is the object of connecting man with God? That he may
become like God. But God is Love. Hence Faith, the means, is in
order to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater
than faith. It is greater than charity, again, because the whole
is greater than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love,
one of the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be,
and there is, a great deal of charity without Love. It is a very
easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is
generally an easier thing than not to do it. Yet Love is just as
often in the withholding. We purchase relief from the
sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at the
copper's cost. It is too cheap--too cheap for us, and often too
dear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would either do
more for him, or less.
Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I
beg the little band of would-be missionaries and I have the
honour to call some of you by this name for the first time--to
remember that though you give your bodies to be burned, and have
not Love, it profits nothing--nothing! You can take nothing
greater to the heathen world than the impress and reflection of
the Love of God upon your own character. That is the universal
language. It will take you years to speak in Chinese, or in the
dialects of India. From the day you land, that language of Love,
understood by all, will be pouring forth its unconscious
eloquence. It is the man who is the missionary, it is not his
words. His character is his message. In the heart of Africa,
among the great Lakes, I have come across black men and women
who remembered the only white man they ever saw before--David
Livingstone; and as you cross his footsteps in that dark
continent, men's faces light up as they speak of the kind Doctor
who passed there years ago. They could not understand him; but
they felt the Love that beat in his heart. Take into your new
sphere of labour, where you also mean to lay down your life,
that simple charm, and your lifework must succeed. You can take
nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It is-not worth
while going if you take anything less. You may take every
accomplishment; you may be braced for every sacrifice; but if
you give your body to be burned, and have not Love, it will
profit you and the cause of Christ nothing.
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THE ANALYSIS
AFTER contrasting Love with these things,
Paul, in three verses, very short, gives us an amazing analysis
of what this supreme thing is. I ask you to look at it. It is a
compound thing, he tells us. It is like light. As you have seen
a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a
crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of
the prism broken up into its component colours--red, and blue,
and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colours of the
rainbow--so Paul passes this thing, Love, through the
magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on
the other side broken up into its elements. And in these few
words we have what one might call the Spectrum of Love, the
analysis of Love. Will you observe what its elements are? Will
you notice that they have common names; that they are virtues
which we hear about every day; that they are things which can be
practised by every man in every place in life; and how, by a
multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme
thing, the summum bonum, is made up?
The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients:--
Patience . . . . . . "Love suffereth long."
Kindness . . . . . . "And is kind."
Generosity . . . . "Love envieth not."
Humility . . . . . . "Love vaunteth not itself, is not
puffed up."
Courtesy . . . . . . "Doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness . . "Seeketh not her own."
Good Temper . . "Is not easily provoked."
Guilelessness . . "Thinketh no evil."
Sincerity . . . . . . "Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but
rejoiceth in the truth."
Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy;
unselfishness; good temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make
up the supreme gift, the stature of the perfect man. You will
observe that all are in relation to men, in relation to life, in
relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to
the unknown eternity. We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke
much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven;
Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or
added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the
breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The
supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving
of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which
make up the sum of every common day.
There is no time to do more than make a passing note upon
each of these ingredients. Love is Patience. This is the
normal attitude of Love; Love passive, Love waiting to begin;
not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons
comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet
spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth all
things; hopeth all things. For Love understands, and therefore
waits.
Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how
much of Christ's life was spent in doing kind things--in
merely doing kind things? Run over it with that in view and
you will find that He spent a great proportion of His time
simply in making people happy, in doing good turns to people.
There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and
that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what God
has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and
that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.
"The greatest thing," says some one, "a man can do for his
Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children." I
wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are? How
much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How
instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How
superabundantly it pays itself back--for there is no debtor in
the world so honourable, so superbly honourable, as Love. "Love
never faileth". Love is success, Love is happiness, Love is
life. "Love, I say, "with Browning, "is energy of Life."
"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."
Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in
God. God is love. Therefore love. Without distinction,
without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it
upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich,
who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is
very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all.
There is a difference between trying to please and
giving pleasure Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving
pleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a
truly loving spirit.
"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing
therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any
human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect
it, for I shall not pass this way again."
Generosity. "Love envieth not" This is Love in
competition with others. Whenever you attempt a good work you
will find other men doing the same kind of work, and probably
doing it better. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to
those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of
covetousness and detraction. How little Christian work even is a
protection against un-Christian feeling. That most despicable of
all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly
waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are
fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly
need the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which "envieth
not."
And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn
this further thing, Humility-- to put a seal upon your
lips and forget what you have done. After you have been kind,
after Love has stolen forth into the world and done its
beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing
about it Love hides even from itself. Love waives even
self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."
The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in
this summum bonum: Courtesy. This is Love in
society, Love in relation to etiquette. "Love doth not behave
itself unseemly." Politeness has been defined as love in
trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the
one secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot behave itself
unseemly. You can put the most untutored person into the highest
society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their heart,
they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do
it. Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer
gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was because he
loved everything--the mouse, and the daisy, and all the things,
great and small, that God had made. So with this simple passport
he could mingle with any society, and enter courts and palaces
from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. You know the
meaning of the word "gentleman." It means a gentle man--a man
who does things gently, with love. And that is the whole art and
mystery of it. The gentleman cannot in the nature of things do
an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The un-gentle soul, the
inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature cannot do anything else.
"Love doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness. "Love seeketh not her own." Observe:
Seeketh not even that which is her own. In Britain the
Englishman is devoted, and rightly, to his rights. But there
come times when a man may exercise even the higher right of
giving up his rights. Yet Paul does not summon us to give up our
rights. Love strikes much deeper. It would have us not seek them
at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal element altogether
from our calculations. It is not hard to give up our rights.
They are often external. The difficult thing is to give up
ourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things
for ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them,
won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for
ourselves already. Little cross then, perhaps, to give them up.
But not to seek them, to look every man not on his own things,
but on the things of others--id opus est. "Seekest thou
great things for thyself? "said the prophet; "seek them not."
Why? Because there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be
great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in
itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a great purpose or
a mightier love can justify the waste. It is more difficult, I
have said, not to seek our own at all, than, having sought it,
to give it up. I must take that back. It is only true of a
partly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to Love, and nothing
is hard. I believe that Christ's yoke is easy. Christ's "yoke"
is just His way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier
way than any other. I believe it is a happier way than any
other. The most obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that
there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only
in giving. I repeat, there is no happiness in having or in
getting, but only in giving. And half the world is on the
wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists
in having and getting, and in being served by others. It
consists in giving, and in serving others. He that would be
great among you, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be
happy, let him remember that there is but one way--it is more
blessed, it is more happy, to give than to receive.
The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: Good
Temper. "Love is not easily provoked." Nothing could be more
striking than to find this here. We are inclined to look upon
bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere
infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament,
not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a
man's character. And yet here, right in the heart of this
analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and
again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive
elements in human nature.
The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the
virtuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble
character. You know men who are all but perfect, and women who
would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled,
quick-tempered, or "touchy" disposition. This compatibility of
ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and
saddest problems of ethics. The truth is there are two great
classes of sins--sins of the Body, and sins of the
Disposition. The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the
first, the Elder Brother of the second. Now society has no doubt
whatever as to which of these is the worse. Its brand falls,
without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. But are we right? We
have no balance to weigh one another's sins, and coarser and
finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may
be less venial than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him
who is Love, a sin against Love may seem a hundred times more
base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not
drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianise society than
evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities,
for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating
homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off
childhood; in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing
power, this influence stands alone. Look at the Elder Brother,
moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful--let him get all credit
for his virtues--look at this man, this baby, sulking outside
his own father's door. "He was angry," we read, "and would not
go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon the servants,
upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect upon the
Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the Kingdom of
God by the unlovely characters of those who profess to be
inside? Analyse, as a study in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself
as it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of?
Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness,
touchiness, doggedness, sullenness--these are the ingredients of
this dark and loveless soul. In varying proportions, also, these
are the ingredients of all ill temper. Judge if such sins of the
disposition are not worse to live in, and for others to live
with, than sins of the body. Did Christ indeed not answer the
question Himself when He said, "I say unto you, that the
publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven before
you." There is really no place in Heaven for a disposition like
this. A man with such a mood could only make Heaven miserable
for all the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be born
again, he cannot, he simply cannot, enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
For it is perfectly certain-- and you will not misunderstand
me--that to enter Heaven a man must take it with him.
You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not in
what it is alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I take the
liberty now of speaking of it with such unusual plainness. It is
a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature
at bottom. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks
unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to
the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath; a sample
of the most hidden products of the soul dropped involuntarily
when off one's guard; in a word, the lightning form of a hundred
hideous and un-Christian sins. For a want of patience, a want of
kindness, a want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want of
unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolised in one flash
of Temper.
Hence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go
to the source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry
humours will die away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by
taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in--a great
Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of
Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms
all. This only can eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical
change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner man.
Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ
does. Therefore "Let that mind be in you which was also in
Christ Jesus." Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember,
once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I cannot help
speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves. "Whoso shall
offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were
better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and
that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." That is to say,
it is the deliberate verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better
not to live than not to love. It is better not to live than
not to love.
Guilelessness and Sincerity may be
dismissed almost with a word. Guilelessness is the grace for
suspicious people. And the possession of it is the great secret
of personal influence. You will find, if you think for a moment,
that the people who influence you are people who believe in you.
In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; but in that
atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement and educative
fellowship. It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this
hard, uncharitable world there should still be left a few rare
souls who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness. Love "thinketh
no evil," imputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best
construction on every action. What a delightful state of mind to
live in! What a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it
for a day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to
influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is
in proportion to their belief of our belief in them. For the
respect of another is the first restoration of the self-respect
a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope
and pattern of what he may become.
"Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the
truth." I have called this Sincerity from the words
rendered in the Authorised Version by "rejoiceth in the truth."
And, certainly, were this the real translation, nothing could be
more just. For he who loves will love Truth not less than men.
He will rejoice in the Truth--rejoice not in what he has been
taught to believe; not in this Church's doctrine or in that; not
in this ism or in that ism; but "in the Truth." He will
accept only what is real; he will strive to get at facts; he
will search for Truth with a humble and unbiased mind, and
cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But the more literal
translation of the Revised Version calls for just such a
sacrifice for truth's sake here. For what Paul really meant is,
as we there read, "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but
rejoiceth with the truth," a quality which probably no one
English word--and certainly not Sincerity--adequately
defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly, the self-restraint
which refuses to make capital out of others' faults; the charity
which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but "covereth
all things"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavours to see
things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than
suspicion feared or calumny denounced.
So much for the analysis of Love. Now the business of our
lives is to have these things fitted into our characters. That
is the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in
this world, to learn Love. Is life not full of opportunities for
learning Love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of
them. The world is not a play-ground; it is a schoolroom. Life
is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson
for us all is how better we can love What makes a man a
good cricketer? Practice. What makes a man a good artist, a good
sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a man a good
linguist, a good stenographer? Practice. What makes a man a good
man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about
religion. We do not get the soul in different ways, under
different laws, from those in which we get the body and the
mind. If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no biceps
muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no
muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigour of moral
fibre, nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of
enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous
expression of the whole round Christian character--the
Christlike nature in its fullest development. And the
constituents of this great character are only to be built up by
ceaseless practice.
What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising.
Though perfect, we read that He learned obedience, He
increased in wisdom and in favour with God and man. Do not
quarrel therefore with your lot in life. Do not complain of its
never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you
have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and
work with. Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be
perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more,
and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is
the practice which God appoints you; and it is having its work
in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish,
and kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is moulding
the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more
beautiful though you see it not, and every touch of temptation
may add to its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life.
Do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and
among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. You remember
Goethe's words: Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Doch
ein Character in dem Strom der Welt. "Talent develops itself
in solitude; character in the stream of life." Talent develops
itself in solitude--the talent of prayer, of faith, of
meditation, of seeing the unseen; Character grows in the stream
of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn
love.
How? Now, how? To make it easier, I have named a few of the
elements of love. But these are only elements. Love itself can
never be defined. Light is a something more than the sum of its
ingredients--a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is
something more than all its elements-- a palpitating, quivering,
sensitive, living thing. By synthesis of all the colours, men
can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By synthesis of all
the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love. How
then are we to have this transcendent living whole conveyed into
our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to copy those
who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray. But
these things alone will not bring Love into our nature. Love is
an effect. And only as we fulfil the right condition can
we have the effect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause
is?
If you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of
John you will find these words: "We love, because He first loved
us." "We love," not "We love Him" That is the way the old
Version has it, and it is quite wrong. "We love--because
He first loved us." Look at that word "because." It is the cause
of which I have spoken. "Because He first loved us," the effect
follows that we love, we love Him, we love all men. We cannot
help it. Because He loved us, we love, we love everybody. Our
heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of Christ, and you
will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ's character,
and you will be changed into the same image from tenderness to
tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot love to order. You
can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it,
and grow into likeness to it And so look at this Perfect
Character, this Perfect Life. Look at the great Sacrifice as He
laid down Himself, all through life, and upon the Cross of
Calvary; and you must love Him. And loving Him, you must become
like Him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction. Put a
piece of iron in the presence of a magnetised body, and that
piece of iron for a time becomes magnetised. It is charged with
an attractive force in the mere presence of the original force,
and as long as you leave the two side by side, they are both
magnets alike. Remain side by side with Him who loved us, and
gave Himself for us, and you too will become a centre of power,
a permanently attractive force; and like Him you will draw all
men unto you, like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is
the inevitable effect of Love. Any man who fulfils that cause
must have that effect produced in him. Try to give up the idea
that religion comes to us by chance, or by mystery, or by
caprice. It comes to us by natural law, or by supernatural law,
for all law is Divine. Edward Irving went to see a dying boy
once, and when he entered the room he just put his hand on the
sufferer's head, and said, "My boy, God loves you," and went
away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out to the
people in the house, "God loves me! God loves me!" It changed
that boy. The sense that God loved him overpowered him, melted
him down, and began the creating of a new heart in him. And that
is how the love of God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and
begets in him the new creature, who is patient and humble and
gentle and unselfish. And there is no other way to get it. There
is no mystery about it We love others, we love everybody, we
love our enemies, because He first loved us.
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THE DEFENCE
Now I have a closing sentence or two to add
about Paul's reason for singling out love as the supreme
possession. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word it
is this: it lasts. "Love," urges Paul, "never faileth."
Then he begins again one of his marvellous lists of the great
things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over the
things that men thought were going to last, and shows that they
are all fleeting, temporary, passing away.
"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail" It was the
mother's ambition for her boy in those days that he should
become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by
means of any prophet, and at that time the prophet was greater
than the king. Men waited wistfully for another messenger to
come, and hung upon his lips when he appeared as upon the very
voice of God. Paul says, "Whether there be prophecies, they
shall fail" This Book is full of prophecies. One by one they
have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their work is
finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except
to feed a devout man's faith.
Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that
was greatly coveted. "Whether there be tongues, they shall
cease." As we all know, many, many centuries have passed since
tongues have been known in this world. They have ceased. Take it
in any sense you like. Take it, for illustration merely, as
languages in general--a sense which was not in Paul's mind at
all, and which though it cannot give us the specific lesson will
point the general truth. Consider the words in which these
chapters were written--Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin--the
other great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at
the Indian language. It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of
Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The
most popular book in the English tongue at the present time,
except the Bible, is one of Dickens's works, his Pickwick
Papers. It is largely written in the language of London
streetlife; and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be
unintelligible to the average English reader.
Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness
adds, "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." The
wisdom of the ancients, where is it? It is wholly gone. A
schoolboy to-day knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew. His
knowledge has vanished away. You put yesterday's newspaper in
the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away. You buy the old
editions of the great encyclopaedias for a few pence. Their
knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been
superseded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has
superseded that, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into
oblivion. One of the greatest living authorities, Sir William
Thomson, said the other day, "The steam-engine is passing away."
"Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." At every
workshop you will see, in the back yard, a heap of old iron, a
few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with
rust. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city Men
flocked in from the country to see the great invention; now it
is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted science and
philosophy of this day will soon be old. But yesterday, in the
University of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was
Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day
his successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the
librarian of the University to go to the library and pick out
the books on his subject that were no longer needed. And his
reply to the librarian was this: "Take every text-book that is
more than ten years old, and put it down in the cellar."Sir
James Simpson was a great authority only a few years ago: men
came from all parts of the earth to consult him; and almost the
whole teaching of that time is consigned by the science of
to-day to oblivion. And in every branch of science it is the
same. "Now we know in part. We see through a glass darkly."
Can you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things
Paul did not condescend to name. He did not mention money,
fortune, fame; but he picked out the great things of his time,
the things the best men thought had something in them, and
brushed them peremptorily aside. Paul had no charge against
these things in themselves. All he said about them was that they
would not last They were great things, but not supreme things.
There were things beyond them. What we are stretches past what
we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that men denounce as
sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is a
favourite argument of the New Testament. John says of the world,
not that it is wrong, but simply that it "passeth away." There
is a great deal in the world that is delightful and beautiful;
there is a great deal in it that is great and engrossing; but it
will not last. All that is in the world, the lust of the eye,
the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a
little while. Love not the world therefore. Nothing that it
contains is worth the life and consecration of an immortal soul.
The immortal soul must give itself to something that is
immortal. And the only immortal things are these: "Now abideth
faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love."
Some think the time may come when two of these three things
will also pass away --faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul
does not say so. We know but little now about the conditions of
the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must
last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet therefore that
everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to
stand, that one coinage which will be current in the Universe
when all the other coinages of all the nations of the world
shall be useless and unhonoured. You will give yourselves to
many things, give yourselves first to Love. Hold things in their
proportion. Hold things in their proportion. Let at least
the first great object of our lives be to achieve the character
defended in these words, the character,--and it is the character
of Christ--which is built around Love.
I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how
continually John associates love and faith with eternal life? I
was not told when I was a boy that "God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him
should have everlasting life." What I was told, I remember, was,
that God so loved the world that, if I trusted in Him, I was to
have a thing called peace, or I was to have rest, or I was to
have joy, or I was to have safety. But I had to find out for
myself that whosoever trusteth in Him--that is, whosoever loveth
Him, for trust is only the avenue to Love--hath everlasting
life The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer men a
thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely
peace, or merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ
came to give men a more abundant life than they have, a life
abundant in love, and therefore abundant in salvation for
themselves, and large in enterprise for the alleviation and
redemption of the world. Then only can the Gospel take hold of
the whole of a man, body, soul, and spirit, and give to each
part of his nature its exercise and reward. Many of the current
Gospels are addressed only to a part of man's nature. They offer
peace, not life; faith, not Love; justification, not
regeneration. And men slip back again from such religion because
it has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it.
It offered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that
was lived before. Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller
love can compete with the love of the world.
To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love for
ever is to live for ever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably
bound up with love We want to live for ever for the same reason
that we want to live tomorrow. Why do you want to live tomorrow?
It is because there is some one who loves you, and whom you want
to see tomorrow, and be with, and love back. There is no other
reason why we should live on than that we love and are beloved.
It is when a man has no one to love him that he commits suicide.
So long as he has friends, those who love him and whom he loves,
he will live; because to live is to love. Be it but the love of
a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and he has no
contact with life, no reason to live. The "energy of life" has
failed. Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This
is Christ's own definition. Ponder it. "This is life eternal,
that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom Thou hast sent." Love must be eternal. It is what God is.
On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love never faileth,
and life never faileth, so long as there is love. That is the
philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason why in the
nature of things Love should be the supreme thing--because it is
going to last; because in the nature of things it is an Eternal
Life. That Life is a thing that we are living now, not that we
get when we die; that we shall have a poor chance of getting
when we die unless we are living now. No worse fate can befall a
man in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving, and
unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition,
loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; and he that
dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is love.
Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me
in reading this chapter once a week for the next three months? A
man did that once and it changed his whole life. Will you do it?
It is for the greatest thing in the world. You might begin by
reading it every day, especially the verses which describe the
perfect character. "Love suffereth long, and is kind; love
envieth not; love vaunteth not itself." Get these ingredients
into your life. Then everything that you do is eternal. It is
worth doing. It is worth giving time to. No man can become a
saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the condition required demands
a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time, just as
improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires
preparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at
any cost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours.
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments
that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the
moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. As memory
scans the past, above and beyond all the transitory pleasures of
life, there leap forward those supreme hours when you have been
enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those round about you,
things too trifling to speak about, but which you feel have
entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost all the
beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every
pleasure that He has planned for man; and yet as I look back I
see standing out above all the life that has gone four or five
short experiences when the love of God reflected itself in some
poor imitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem
to be the things which alone of all one's life abide. Everything
else in all our lives is transitory. Every other good is
visionary. But the acts of love which no man knows about, or can
ever know about--they never fail.
In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is depicted
for us in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing
the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then is not, "How
have I believed?" but "How have I loved?" The test of religion,
the final test of religion, is not religiousness, but Love. I
say the final test of religion at that great Day is not
religiousness, but Love; not what I have done, not what I have
believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged
the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that awful
indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done,
by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be
otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the
spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for us
He lived in vain. It means that He suggested nothing in all our
thoughts, that He inspired nothing in all our lives, that we
were not once near enough to Him to be seized with the spell of
His compassion for the world. It means that:--
"I lived for myself, I thought for
myself,
For myself, and none beside--
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if He had never died."
It is the Son of Man before whom the
nations of the world shall be gathered. It is in the presence of
Humanity that we shall be charged. And the spectacle
itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge each one.
Those will be there whom we have met and helped: or there, the
unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised. No other
Witness need be summoned. No other charge than lovelessness
shall be preferred. Be not deceived. The words which all of us
shall one Day hear, sound not of theology but of life, not of
churches and saints but of the hungry and the poor, not of
creeds and doctrines but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles
and prayer-books but of cups of cold water in the name of
Christ. Thank God the Christianity of to-day is coming nearer
the world's need. Live to help that on. Thank God men know
better, by a hairsbreadth, what religion is, what God is, who
Christ is, where Christ is. Who is Christ? He who fed the
hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick. And where is
Christ? Where?--whoso shall receive a little child in My name
receiveth Me. And who are Christ's? Every one that loveth is
born of God.
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