1 Corinthians 13

Other gifts specially mentioned as charisms are the gift of government and the gift of ministration. By the former, certain persons were specially fitted to preside over the Church and regulate its internal order; by the latter, its possessors were enabled to minister to the wants of their brethren, to manage the distribution of relief among the poorer members of the Church, to tend the sick, and carry out other practical works of piety. C.

31. Covet the best gifts.** The same apostle who so earnestly urged contentment with the gifts we have, and forbade contemptuous scorn of others with feeble gifts, bids us yet to aspire. Be contented, yet aspire; that should be the faith of all, and the two are quite compatible. And there arises from such a belief the possibility of generous admiration; all the miserable shutting-up of ourselves in superciliousness is done away. Desirous of reaching something higher, we recognize love and what is above ourselves; and this is the condition of excellence, for we become that which we admire. All gifts are to be cultivated; let no Christian despise them. Every accomplishment, every intellectual faculty that can adorn and grace human nature, should be cultivated and polished to its highest capability. Yet these are not the things that bring us nearer God. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” You may have strong, eagle-eyed faith; well, you will probably be enabled to do great things in life, to work wonders, to trample on impossibilities. You may have sanguine hope; well, your life will pass brightly, not gloomily. But the vision of God as he is, to see the King in his beauty, is vouchsafed not to science nor to talent, but only to purity and love. F. W. R.

1. THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as 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 charity, 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 charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity 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. Charity 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, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

CHARITY involves the highest affection of the soul, and directs that affection with a proportionate ardor, and an absolute continuance toward all moral beings. It is piety toward God. It is a constraining philanthropy toward man. It reaches to all that lives around us. It loves ourselves, and we ought to be loved. And this is the ultimate glory of character. It is the parent of all other virtues, containing them within it. It is the sum of all other virtues, for “the greatest is charity.” Humility, truthfulness, patience, magnanimity, the chasteness of temper that makes the soul white, the spirit of forgiveness that makes the soul Godlike, every excellence that exalts, every trait that adorns, is the child of benevolence. And yet this is simple as light, as air! R. S. S.

Hold fast charity, on which all the secrets of Scripture depend; so will you hold fast what you have learned, and also what you have not yet learned. For if you know charity, you know something on which that also depends which perhaps you know not; and in what you understand in Scripture charity is patent, in what you do not understand charity is latent. Accordingly he who holds fast charity in his conduct holds both what is patent and what is latent in the divine discourses. Wherefore follow after charity, the sweet and salutary bond of souls, without which the rich man is poor, with which the poor man is rich. Charity is patient in adversities, temperate in prosperity, strong in grievous sufferings, cheerful in good works; most secure in temptation, most expansive in hospitality; most joyous among true brethren, most patient among false ones. In Abel it is acceptable through sacrifice, in Noah fearless amid the deluge, in Abraham’s wanderings most faithful, in Moses most forbearing amid injuries, in David’s tribulations most gentle. It is free-spoken in Paul for rebuke, humble in Peter for submission; human in Christians for confessing, divine in Christ for pardoning. But what can I say of charity that is greater or richer than those praises of it which the Lord utters by the mouth of the apostle when he points to the “far-surpassing way”? How great is charity! The power of prophecy, the basis of knowledge, the fruit of faith, the riches of the poor, the life of the dying. Aug.

THE previous chapter discusses the gifts of the Spirit, this contrasts them with the grace of charity or love; but the last verse of the former is the link between both chapters: “Covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet show I unto you a more excellent way.” Now the more excellent way is charity. He who treads the brilliant road of the highest accomplishments is, as a man, inferior to him who treads the path of love. To the apostle’s mind there was emptiness in eloquence, nothingness in knowledge and even in faith, uselessness in liberality and sacrifice where love was not. And none could be better qualified than he to speak. None taught like him the philosophy of Christianity. None had so strong a faith or so deep a spirit of self-sacrifice. In no other writings are we so refined and exalted by “the thoughts which breathe and words that burn.” And yet, in solitary preëminence above all these gifts, he puts the grace of love. F. W. R.

The beautiful superstructure of philanthropy, which the apostle has raised in this chapter, has for its foundation a supreme regard for the great and blessed God. The utmost kindness and sympathy, the most tender compassion united with the most munificent liberality, if it do not rest on the love of God, is not the temper here set forth—is not the grace which has the principle of immortality in its nature, and which will live and flourish in eternity when faith and hope shall cease. For want of this vital and essential principle of all true religion, how much of kindly feeling and active benevolence is daily expended, which, while it yields its amiable though unrenewed professor much honor and delight, has not the weight of a feather in the scales of his eternal destiny.

1. Sounding brass.** Should a man be invested with these stupendous endowments, and employ them in the service of the gospel; still, if his heart were not a partaker of love, he would be no more acceptable to God than was the clangor of the brazen instruments employed in the idolatrous worship of the Egyptian Isis, or the noise of the tinkling cymbals which accompanied the orgies of the Grecian Cybele.

2,3. Though one were gifted with prophecy so as to explain the deepest mysteries of the Jewish or the Christian systems, and, in addition, possessed that miraculous faith by which the most difficult and astonishing changes would have been effected, he was nothing, and less than nothing, without love. “And though I give my body to be burned,” i. e., as a martyr for religion. Whether such a case as this ever existed we know not; it is not impossible; but if it did, not the tortures of an agonizing death, nor the courage that endured them, nor the seeming zeal for religion which led to them, would be accepted in lieu of love. J. A. J.—I relieve no man upon the rhetoric of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an act that oweeth more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon the bare suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake as for his own; for by compassion we make others’ misery our own, and so by relieving them we relieve ourselves also. Browne.

4. Suffereth long.** The word signifies “to have a long mind,” to the end of whose patience provocations can not easily reach. It does not mean patience in reference to the afflictions which come from God, but to the injuries and provocations which come from man, a disposition which under long-continued offenses holds back anger, and is not hasty to punish or to revenge. Its kindred property is nearly allied to it, “is not easily provoked,” or “is not exasperated.” Kind. Kindness is anxious not to give offense; it is delicately tender in reference to the feelings of its object, and would not unnecessarily crush the wing of an insect, much less inflict a wound upon a rational mind. It is active in conferring benefits—watches for an opportunity to afford assistance, and is not satisfied unless it can do something to increase the general stock of comfort. Envieth not. Envy causes us to feel uneasiness at the sight of another’s possessions or happiness, and makes us dislike him on that account. Of all base passions, this is the basest. It is unmingled malignity; the most direct contrariety of love. Envy can not even offer the excuses which many vices sometimes bring forward: anger pleads the provocation it has received, but envy has received no offense; lust and intemperance plead the gratification which their objects yield, and robbery holds up its gain, but envy gains nothing but misery, and converts the happiness of which it is the witness into wormwood and gall for its own cup, and transvenoms the honey of another man’s comfort into the poison of asps for its own bosom. It is a source of eternal vexation—an instrument of self-torment—a rottenness in the bones—a burning ulceration of the soul—a crime which, partaking of the guilt, partakes as largely of the misery of hell. J. A. J.

4, 5. “Charity is not puffed up.” This seems rather an attribute of humility than of charity. Again: “Charity doth not behave itself unseemly”; i. e., shows taste and tact in finer points of conduct. This sounds rather like courtesy than like charity. But the inspired apostle is not wandering from his point. Love has the closest connection with humility and courtesy, so that perfect love can never exist without either. Every breach of love in the world is due more or less to pride. Whence come all wranglings, jars, and discords, but from a secret feeling that a certain precedence and certain rights are our due, and a determination always to stand upon those rights, and never to waive that precedence? Strike at the root of this feeling in the heart, and you strike at the root of every quarrel; or, in other words, secure humility in any mind of man, and you secure love, at least on its negative side. The case is the same with courtesy. Perfect love would involve perfect courtesy, that is to say, a nice sense of propriety in our intercourse with others, and a delicacy of feeling toward them. So far as any one is defective in this perfect courtesy, he wants one of the finer features of love. E. M. G.

5. Seeketh not her own.** The essence of man’s sin, the sum of his moral depravity, is to love himself supremely, to seek himself finally and exclusively, to make self, in one shape or another, the center to which all his busy thoughts, anxious cares, and diligent pursuits constantly tend. Self is the great idol which mankind are naturally disposed to worship, and selfishness the grand interest to which they are devotedly attached. But the grace of God so subdues this disposition that it is no longer the ascendant of the mind, and plants in the heart the principle of benevolence—a principle which, as it leads us to love God supremely, and our neighbor as ourselves, is the direct contrary of selfishness.

Thinketh no evil. Like a good spirit, it is ever opposing the advice and counteracting the influence of envy, revenge, or avarice. It would make the miserable happy and the happy still haphappier. It retires into the closet to project schemes for blessing mankind, and then goes out into the crowded regions of want and wretchedness to execute them; it deviseth good on its bed, and riseth in the morning to fulfill the plans of mercy with which it had sunk to rest.

7. Charity is not fickle, unsteady, and easily discouraged; not soon disheartened, or induced to relinquish its object; but is persevering, patient, and self-denying in the pursuance of its design to relieve the wants, assuage the sorrows, reform the vices, and allay the animosities of those whose good it seeks. J. A. J.—We ought not to drive when we find we can not lead, nor wax fretful and impatient of delays which are inevitable, nor lose temper over great things or over trifles, for that will show that we ourselves are growing weaker, nor impute malign motives to others, nor even to think ungenerous or uncharitable thoughts concerning them or their action, but rather seek to settle our strength in this—in the universal charity which “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,” and then, as the result, achieveth all things. A. R.

8. Charity never faileth.** Yes, see its eternity, its immortal vigor and freshness. For the door of heaven itself is thrown open, and lo! charity is there, as she was for ever, in the bosom of God—now in the hearts of his redeemed people. All personal accomplishments, intellectual masteries, miraculous exploits, prophecies, tongues, earthly knowledge, are passing away; the brightest lights go out, the finest brain is broken, the most eloquent voice is still. They “fail,” they “cease,” they “vanish away.” They are all “in part,” and are “done away,” “when that which is perfect is come.” Half blind, and groping, we see “as through a glass darkly.” How true that is! The skies are clouded. Our very eyes are weak, and ache with straining to see. But all that lovely air is clear; and when the purer eyes of the spiritual body are opened, without dimness, doubt, or uncertainty, in the wondering fullness of open vision, the children of Christian charity shall see face to face, and in the “love that passeth knowledge” know as they are known. F. D. H.

9. Prophecy gives us light, that the Church may not lose its hope in the dark hours of its discipline. But the light reveals neither the length of the way nor the severity of the trials nor the exact nature or extent of the final triumph, for such full knowledge would prevent those influences with which the present state of things acts on character, and which are better than knowledge. He who gains character out of the uncertainties of life gains everything. He has learned in the dark not only those qualities of character which make him a good actor in these earthly scenes and which generally insure success, but he has learned also how to depend on God, to trust in his providence, to act with him in his plans, and to secure his coöperation. He is thus fitted for eternal life, for its employment, for its revelations. He has gained from his condition here what God meant he should. Soon this earthly darkness shall pass away; soon a boundless field of knowledge be open to him; soon perfect certainty be within his reach. He now knows as he is known. Is not this gain? T. D. W.

10. Perfect is come.** Looking at man we seem to see a vast collection of little beginnings, attempts, failures; like a plantation on a bleak and blasted heath. And the progress in whatever is valuable and noble, whether in individuals or communities, is so miserably difficult and slow. So that “the perfectibility of man,” in the sense in which that phrase has been employed, stands justly ridiculed as one of the follies of philosophic romance. Then how delightful it is to see revelation itself pronouncing as possible, and predicting as to come, something “perfect” in the condition of man! That which is in part shall be done away. Imagine the emerging from this dark world into light! what a dismissal from our spirits, what a vanishing away of the whole systems of our little notions, our childish conceptions! And yet there will not be an entire contempt thrown upon the retrospect, for it will be understood how those little notions, that feeble light, that partial revelation, were the right training for the infancy and childhood of the human soul. Let us, then, be thankful that we do know, though but in part, and earnestly apply and improve what we are permitted to know. Let us be thankful, too, that one point of that very knowledge is, that its imperfection will at length be left behind. J. F.

11. It is easier to be always childish than to be always childlike. The immaturity and heedlessness of youth bear carriage better than the more precious vintages of that sunny land—its freshness of eye and heart, its openness of mind, its energy of hand. Even when these are in any measure retained—beautiful as they are in old age—they are but too apt to be associated with an absence of the excellences more proper to the later stages of life, and to involve a want of patient judgment, of sagacious discrimination, of rooted affections, of prudent persistent action. Beautiful indeed it is when the grace of the children and the strength of the young men live on in the fathers, and the last of life incloses all that was good in all that went before. But miserable it is, and quite as frequent a case, when gray hairs cover a childish brain, and an aged heart throbs with the feverish passion of youthful blood. A. M.

12. Paul was fully conscious that, when he should be raised to the full vision of the life above, that which he knew of divine things in this life must be cast aside by him, as the mature man casts aside the conceptions of childhood. The twilight of the earthly life of faith did not satisfy the aspirations of his soul, which thirsted after knowledge; and he longed to pass into that pure day of heavenly clearness, where our knowledge of God and divine things will be inward, immediate, a direct perception of that which is present, a knowing as we are known. N.

What an idea does it give us of the infinitude of knowledge yet to be obtained, when we are informed that the Bible itself, even the New Testament—that book of books, of which it is said it has God for its author, truth without any mixture of error for its contents, and salvation for its end—is but a book for children, a work for saints in their infancy, a mere elementary treatise on the subject of eternal truth, written by the finger of God for his family during their education and novitiate on earth. Our minds could no more bear to look upon the unmitigated glory of divine truth than the eye of an infant could sustain the unsoftened effulgence of the midday sun. The study, the discovery, the enjoyment of truth will form one of the chief felicities of the heavenly state; but what must that knowledge be which is to afford something new and interesting through eternity? how can this be obtained by man in the infancy of his existence upon earth? No wonder, then, that we walk at present amid shades and glimmerings! J. A. J.

Face to face we shall know. Adoration is the gate of knowledge. And when this gate of the soul is fully opened, as it will be when the adoring grace is complete in our deliverance from all impurity, what a revelation of knowledge must follow. Having now a desire of knowledge perfected in us that is clear of all conceit, ambition, haste, impatience, the clouds under which we lived in our sin are for ever rolled away, and our adoring nature, transparent to God as a window to the sun, is filled with his eternal light. No mysteries remain but such as comfort us in the promise of a glorious employment. Every object of knowledge, irradiated by the brightness of God, shines with a new celestial clearness and an inconceivable beauty. The resurrection morning is a true sun-rising, the inbursting of a cloudless day on all the righteous dead. They wake transfigured at their Master’s call, with the fashion of their countenance altered and shining like his own. H. B.—The veil that hides from us the all-glorious Father of spirits shall one day be withdrawn. The spiritual eye shall be quickened to look into the heart and life of the universe. The intercepting medium of sense shall be

swept away, and the soul of the redeemed laid bare to the ineffable brightness and beauty of God streaming full-orbed around it. Caird.