The Greatest Thing in the World
by Henry Drummond, (1851-1897)
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.- 1st Corinthians 13 (KJV)
LOVE: THE
GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
THE CONTRAST
THE ANALYSIS
THE DEFENSE
LOVE: 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.
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.
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 someone, "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.
The Defense
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.
* This public domain book was originally published in 1880.
