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.
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.
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.
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.
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.