The Greatest Thing in the World and Other Addresses

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD

THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not

love, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And

though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and

all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove

mountains, and have not LOVE I am nothing. And though I bestow all my

goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and

have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind;

Love envieth not;

Love vaunteth not itself is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly,

Seeketh not her own,

Is not easily provoked,

Thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth

all things.

Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;

whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be

knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy

in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in

part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I

understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man,

I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly;

but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even

as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three;

but the greatest of these is Love.--I Cor. xiii.

_________________________________________________________________

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD

EVERY one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the

modern world: What is the summum bonum--the supreme good? You have

life before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object

of desire, the supreme gift to covet?

We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the

religious world is Faith. That great word has been the key-note for

centuries of the popular religion; and we have easily learned to look

upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we

have been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in the

chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source; and

there we have seen, "The greatest of these is love." It is not an

oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says,

"If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not

love, I am nothing. "So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts

them, "Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love," and without a moment's

hesitation, the decision falls, "The greatest of these is Love."

And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own

strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing student

can detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all through his

character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote, "The greatest of

these is love," when we meet it first, is stained with blood.

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love as

the summum bonum. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about

it. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love among yourselves."

Above all things. And John goes farther, "God is love." And you

remember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love is the

fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what he meant by that? In

those days men were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten

Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they

had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more

simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten

things, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will

unconsciously fulfil the whole law. And you can readily see for

yourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. "Thou

shalt have no other gods before Me." If a man love God, you will not

require to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. "Take

not His name in vain." Would he ever dream of taking His name in vain

if he loved Him? "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Would he

not be too glad to have one day in seven to dedicate more exclusively

to the object of his affection? Love would fulfil all these laws

regarding God. And so, if he loved Man, you would never think of

telling him to honour his father and mother. He could not do anything

else. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only

insult him if you suggested that he should not steal -.how could he

steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not to

bear false witness against his neighbour. If he loved him it would be

the last thing he would do. And you would never dream of urging him

not to covet what his neighbours had. He would rather they possessed

it than himself. In this way "Love is the fulfilling of the law." It

is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping

all the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life.

Now Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given us

the most wonderful and original account extant of the summum bonum. We

may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of the short chapter,

we have Love contrasted; in the heart of it, we have Love analysed;

towards the end we have Love defended as the supreme gift.

_________________________________________________________________

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 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.

_________________________________________________________________

THE DEFENCE

Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for

singling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkable

reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. "Love," urges Paul,

"never faileth." Then he begins again one of his marvellous lists of

the great things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over

the things that men thought were going to last, and shows that they

are all fleeting, temporary, passing away.

"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail" It was the mother's

ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet.

For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet,

and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited

wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when

he appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, "Whether there

be prophecies, they shall fail" This Book is full of prophecies. One

by one they have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their work

is finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to

feed a devout man's faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly

coveted. "Whether there be tongues, they shall cease." As we all know,

many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this

world. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for

illustration merely, as languages in general--a sense which was not in

Paul's mind at all, and which though it cannot give us the specific

lesson will point the general truth. Consider the words in which these

chapters were written--Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin--the other

great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian

language. It is ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the

Scottish Highlands is dying before our eyes. The most popular book in

the English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of

Dickens's works, his Pickwick Papers. It is largely written in the

language of London streetlife; and experts assure us that in fifty

years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader.

Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness adds, "Whether

there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." The wisdom of the ancients,

where is it? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy to-day knows more than Sir

Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You put

yesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away.

You buy the old editions of the great encyclopaedias for a few pence.

Their knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been

superseded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has superseded

that, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion. One of

the greatest living authorities, Sir William Thomson, said the other

day, "The steam-engine is passing away." "Whether there be knowledge,

it shall vanish away." At every workshop you will see, in the back

yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks,

broken and eaten with rust. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the

city Men flocked in from the country to see the great invention; now

it is superseded, its day is done. And all the boasted science and

philosophy of this day will soon be old. But yesterday, in the

University of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir

James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day his

successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian of

the University to go to the library and pick out the books on his

subject that were no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian was

this: "Take every text-book that is more than ten years old, and put

it down in the cellar."Sir James Simpson was a great authority only a

few years ago: men came from all parts of the earth to consult him;

and almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by the science

of to-day to oblivion. And in every branch of science it is the same.

"Now we know in part. We see through a glass darkly."

Can you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things Paul did

not condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but

he picked out the great things of his time, the things the best men

thought had something in them, and brushed them peremptorily aside.

Paul had no charge against these things in themselves. All he said

about them was that they would not last They were great things, but

not supreme things. There were things beyond them. What we are

stretches past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that

men denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is

a favourite argument of the New Testament. John says of the world, not

that it is wrong, but simply that it "passeth away." There is a great

deal in the world that is delightful and beautiful; there is a great

deal in it that is great and engrossing; but it will not last. All

that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and

the pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the world

therefore. Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration

of an immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something

that is immortal. And the only immortal things are these: "Now abideth

faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love."

Some think the time may come when two of these three things will also

pass away --faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say

so. We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to

come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal

God, is Love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing

which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be

current in the Universe when all the other coinages of all the nations

of the world shall be useless and unhonoured. You will give yourselves

to many things, give yourselves first to Love. Hold things in their

proportion. Hold things in their proportion. Let at least the first

great object of our lives be to achieve the character defended in

these words, the character,--and it is the character of Christ--which

is built around Love.

I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how continually

John associates love and faith with eternal life? I was not told when

I was a boy that "God so loved the world that He gave His only

begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting

life." What I was told, I remember, was, that God so loved the world

that, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I

was to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But I

had to find out for myself that whosoever trusteth in Him--that is,

whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only the avenue to Love--hath

everlasting life The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer men a

thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace,

or merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give

men a more abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and

therefore abundant in salvation for themselves, and large in

enterprise for the alleviation and redemption of the world. Then only

can the Gospel take hold of the whole of a man, body, soul, and

spirit, and give to each part of his nature its exercise and reward.

Many of the current Gospels are addressed only to a part of man's

nature. They offer peace, not life; faith, not Love; justification,

not regeneration. And men slip back again from such religion because

it has never really held them. Their nature was not all in it. It

offered no deeper and gladder life-current than the life that was

lived before. Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can

compete with the love of the world.

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love for ever is to

live for ever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love

We want to live for ever for the same reason that we want to live

tomorrow. Why do you want to live tomorrow? It is because there is

some one who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be

with, and love back. There is no other reason why we should live on

than that we love and are beloved. It is when a man has no one to love

him that he commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love

him and whom he loves, he will live; because to live is to love. Be it

but the love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and

he has no contact with life, no reason to live. The "energy of life"

has failed. Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This is

Christ's own definition. Ponder it. "This is life eternal, that they

might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast

sent." Love must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis,

then, love is life. Love never faileth, and life never faileth, so

long as there is love. That is the philosophy of what Paul is showing

us; the reason why in the nature of things Love should be the supreme

thing--because it is going to last; because in the nature of things it

is an Eternal Life. That Life is a thing that we are living now, not

that we get when we die; that we shall have a poor chance of getting

when we die unless we are living now. No worse fate can befall a man

in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving, and unloved.

To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and

unloved; and to be saved is to love; and he that dwelleth in love

dwelleth already in God. For God is love.

Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in reading

this chapter once a week for the next three months? A man did that

once and it changed his whole life. Will you do it? It is for the

greatest thing in the world. You might begin by reading it every day,

especially the verses which describe the perfect character. "Love

suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not

itself." Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that

you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to. No

man can become a saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the condition

required demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time,

just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires

preparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at any

cost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours. You will

find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out,

the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have

done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and

beyond all the transitory pleasures of life, there leap forward those

supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to

those round about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which

you feel have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost all

the beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every

pleasure that He has planned for man; and yet as I look back I see

standing out above all the life that has gone four or five short

experiences when the love of God reflected itself in some poor

imitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem to be the

things which alone of all one's life abide. Everything else in all our

lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts of

love which no man knows about, or can ever know about--they never

fail.

In the Book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is depicted for us in

the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from

the goats, the test of a man then is not, "How have I believed?" but

"How have I loved?" The test of religion, the final test of religion,

is not religiousness, but Love. I say the final test of religion at

that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not what I have done,

not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have

discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that

awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done,

by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the

withholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ, the proof

that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain. It means that He

suggested nothing in all our thoughts, that He inspired nothing in all

our lives, that we were not once near enough to Him to be seized with

the spell of His compassion for the world. It means that--

"I lived for myself, I thought for myself,

For myself, and none beside--

Just as if Jesus had never lived,

As if He had never died."

It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world shall be

gathered. It is in the presence of Humanity that we shall be charged.

And the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge

each one. Those will be there whom we have met and helped: or there,

the unpitied multitude whom we neglected or despised. No other

Witness need be summoned. No other charge than lovelessness shall be

preferred. Be not deceived. The words which all of us shall one Day

hear, sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints

but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of

shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer-books but of cups of

cold water in the name of Christ. Thank God the Christianity of to-day

is coming nearer the world's need. Live to help that on. Thank God men

know better, by a hairsbreadth, what religion is, what God is, who

Christ is, where Christ is. Who is Christ? He who fed the hungry,

clothed the naked, visited the sick. And where is Christ?

Where?--whoso shall receive a little child in My name receiveth Me.

And who are Christ's? Every one that loveth is born of God.

_________________________________________________________________

THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY

To Preach Good Tidings unto the Meek:

To Bind up the Broken-hearted:

To proclaim Liberty to the Captives and the Opening of the Prison to

Them that are Bound:

To Proclaim the Acceptable Year of the Lord, and the Day of Vengeance

of our God:

To Comfort all that Mourn:

To Appoint unto them that Mourn in Zion:

To Give unto them--

Beauty for Ashes,

The Oil of Joy for Mourning,

The Garment of Praise for the Spirit of Heaviness.

_________________________________________________________________

THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY

"WHAT does God do all day?" once asked a little boy. One could wish

that more grown-up people would ask so very real a question.

Unfortunately, most of us are not even boys in religious intelligence,

but only very unthinking children. It no more occurs to us that God is

engaged in any particular work in the world than it occurs to a little

child that its father does anything except be its father. Its father

may be a Cabinet Minister absorbed in the nation's work, or an

inventor deep in schemes for the world's good; but to this

master-egoist he is father, and nothing more. Childhood, whether in

the physical or moral world, is the great self-centred period of life;

and a personal God who satisfies personal ends is all that for a long

time many a Christian understands.

But as clearly as there comes to the growing child a knowledge of its

father's part in the world, and a sense of what real life means, there

must come to every Christian whose growth is true some richer sense of

the meaning of Christianity and a larger view of Christ's purpose for

mankind. To miss this is to miss the whole splendour and glory of

Christ's religion. Next to losing the sense of a personal Christ, the

worst evil that can befall a Christian is to have no sense of anything

else. To grow up in complacent belief that God has no business in this

great groaning world of human beings except to attend to a few saved

souls is the negation of all religion. The first great epoch in a

Christian's life, after the awe and wonder of its dawn, is when there

breaks into his mind some sense that Christ has a purpose for mankind,

a purpose beyond him and his needs, beyond the churches and their

creeds, beyond Heaven and its saints--a purpose which embraces every

man and woman born, every kindred and nation formed, which regards not

their spiritual good alone but their welfare in every part, their

progress, their health, their work, their wages, their happiness in

this present world.

What, then, does Christ do all day? By what further conception shall

we augment the selfish view of why Christ lived and died?

I shall mislead no one, I hope, if I say --for I wish to put the social side of Christianity in its strongest light--that Christ did not come into the world to give men religion. He never mentioned the word religion. Religion was in the world before Christ came, and it lives to-day in a million souls who have never heard His name. What God does all day is not to sit waiting in churches for people to come and worship Him. It is true that God is in churches and in all kinds of churches, and is found by many in churches more immediately than anywhere else.

It is also true that while Christ did not give men religion He gave a new direction to the religious aspiration bursting forth then and now and always from the whole world's heart. But it was His purpose to enlist these aspirations on behalf of some definite practical good. The religious people of those days did nothing with their religion except attend to its observances. Even the priest, after he had been to the temple, thought his work was done; when he met the wounded man he passed by on the other side.

Christ reversed all this--tried to reverse it, for He is only now beginning to succeed. The tendency of the religions of all time has been to care more for religion than for humanity; Christ cared more for humanity than for religion--rather His care for humanity was the chief expression of His religion. He was not indifferent to observances, but the practices of the people bulked in His thoughts before the practices of the Church. It has been pointed out as a blemish on the immortal allegory of Bunyan that the Pilgrim never did anything, anything but save his soul.

The remark is scarcely fair, for the allegory is designedly the story of a soul in a single relation; and besides, he did do a little. But the warning may well be weighed. The Pilgrim's one thought, his work by day, his dream by night, was escape. He took little part in the world through which he passed. He was a Pilgrim travelling through it; his business was to get through safe. Whatever this is, it is not Christianity. Christ's conception of Christianity was heavens removed from that of a man setting out from the City of Destruction to save his soul.

It was rather that of a man dwelling amidst the Destructions of the City and planning escapes for the souls of others--escapes not to the other world, but to purity and peace and righteousness in this. In reality Christ never said "Save your soul." It is a mistranslation which says that. What He said was, "Save your life." And this not because the first is nothing, but only because it is so very great a thing that only the second can accomplish it. But the new word altruism--the translation of "love thy neighbour as thyself"--is slowly finding its way into current Christian speech.

The People's Progress, not less than the Pilgrim's Progress, is daily becoming a graver concern to the Church. A popular theology with unselfishness as part at least of its root, a theology which appeals no longer to fear, but to the generous heart in man, has already dawned, and more clearly than ever men are beginning to see what Christ really came into this world to do.

What Christ came here for was to make a better world. The world in

which we live is an unfinished world. It is not wise, it is not happy,

it is not pure, it is not good--it is not even sanitary. Humanity is

little more than raw material. Almost everything has yet to be done to

it. Before the days of Geology people thought the earth was finished.

It is by no means finished. The work of Creation is going on. Before

the spectroscope, men thought the universe was finished. We know now

it is just beginning. And this teeming universe of men in which we

live has almost all its finer colour and beauty yet to take. Christ

came to complete it. The fires of its passions were not yet cool;

their heat had to be transformed into finer energies. The ideals for

its future were all to shape, the forces to realize them were not yet

born. The poison of its sins had met no antidote, the gloom of its

doubt no light, the weight of its sorrow no rest. These the Saviour of

the world, the Light of men, would do and be. This, roughly, was His

scheme.

Now this was a prodigious task--to recreate the world. How was it to

be done? God's way of making worlds is to make them make themselves.

When He made the earth He made a rough ball of matter and supplied it

with a multitude of tools to mould it into form--the rain-drop to

carve it, the glacier to smooth it, the river to nourish it, the

flower to adorn it. God works always with agents, and this is our way

when we want any great thing done, and this was Christ's way when He

undertook the finishing of Humanity. He had a vast intractable mass of

matter to deal with, and He required a multitude of tools. Christ's

tools were men. Hence His first business in the world was to make a

collection of men. In other words He founded a Society.

_________________________________________________________________

THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY

IT is a somewhat startling thought--it will not be misunderstood--that

Christ probably did not save many people while He was here. Many an

evangelist, in that direction, has done much more. He never intended

to finish the world single-handed, but announced from the first that

others would not only take part, but do "greater things" than He. For

amazing as was the attention He was able to give to individuals, this

was not the whole aim He had in view. His immediate work was to enlist

men in His enterprise, to rally them into a great company or Society

for the carrying out of His plans.

The name by which this Society was known was The Kingdom of God.

Christ did not coin this name; it was an old expression, and good men

had always hoped and prayed that some such Society would be born in

their midst. But it was never either defined or set agoing in earnest

until Christ made its realization the passion of His life.

How keenly He felt regarding His task, how enthusiastically He set

about it, every page of His life bears witness. All reformers have one

or two great words which they use incessantly, and by mere reiteration

imbed indelibly in the thought and history of their time. Christ's

great word was the Kingdom of God. Of all the words of His that have

come down to us this is by far the commonest. One hundred times it

occurs in the Gospels. When He preached He had almost always this for

a text. His sermons were explanations of the aims of His Society, of

the different things it was like, of whom its membership consisted,

what they were to do or to be, or not do or not be. And even when He

does not actually use the word, it is easy to see that all He said and

did had reference to this. Philosophers talk about thinking in

categories-- the mind living, as it were, in a particular room with

its own special furniture, pictures, and viewpoints, these giving a

consistent direction and colour to all that is there thought or

expressed. It was in the category of the Kingdom that Christ's thought

moved. Though one time He said He came to save the lost, or at another

time to give men life, or to do His Father's will, these were all

included among the objects of His Society.

No one can ever know what Christianity is till he has grasped this

leading thought in the mind of Christ. Peter and Paul have many

wonderful and necessary things to tell us about what Christ was and

did; but we are looking now at what Christ's own thought was. Do not

think this is a mere modern theory. These are His own life-plans taken

from His own lips. Do not allow any isolated text, even though it seem

to sum up for you the Christian life, to keep you from trying to

understand Christ's Programme as a whole. The perspective of Christ's

teaching is not everything, but without it everything will be

distorted and untrue. There is much good in a verse, but often much

evil. To see some small soul pirouetting throughout life on a single

text, and judging all the world because it cannot find a partner, is

not a Christian sight. Christianity does not grudge such souls their

comfort. What it grudges is that they make Christ's Kingdom

uninhabitable to thoughtful minds. Be sure that whenever the religion

of Christ appears small, or forbidding, or narrow, or inhuman, you are

dealing not with the whole --which is a matchless moral symmetry-- nor

even with an arch or column--for every detail is perfect--but with

some cold stone removed from its place and suggesting nothing of the

glorious structure from which it came.

Tens of thousands of persons who are familiar with religious truths

have not noticed yet that Christ ever founded a Society at all. The

reason is partly that people have read texts instead of reading their

Bible, partly that they have studied Theology instead of studying

Christianity, and partly because of the noiselessness and invisibility

of the Kingdom of God itself. Nothing truer was ever said of this

Kingdom than that "It cometh without observation." Its first

discovery, therefore, comes to the Christian with all the force of a

revelation. The sense of belonging to such a Society transforms life.

It is the difference between being a solitary knight tilting

single-handed, and often defeated, at whatever enemy one chances to

meet on one's little acre of life, and the feel of belonging to a

mighty army marching throughout all time to a certain victory. This

note of universality given to even the humblest work we do, this sense

of comradeship, this link with history, this thought of a definite

campaign, this promise of success, is the possession of every

obscurest unit in the Kingdom of God.

_________________________________________________________________

THE PROGRAMME OF THE SOCIETY

HUNDREDS of years before Christ's Society was formed, its Programme

had been issued to the world. I cannot think of any scene in history

more dramatic than when Jesus entered the church in Nazareth and read

it to the people. Not that when He appropriated to Himself that

venerable fragment from Isaiah He was uttering a manifesto or

announcing His formal Programme. Christ never did things formally. We

think of the words, as He probably thought of them, not in their

old-world historical significance, nor as a full expression of His

future aims, but as a summary of great moral facts now and always to

be realized in the world since he appeared.

Remember as you read the words to what grim reality they refer. Recall

what Christ's problem really was, what His Society was founded for.

This Programme deals with a real world. Think of it as you read--not

of the surface-world, but of the world as it is, as it sins and weeps,

and curses and suffers and sends up its long cry to God. Limit it if

you like to the world around your door, but think of it-- of the city

and the hospital and the dungeon and the graveyard, of the

sweating-shop and the pawn-shop and the drink-shop; think of the cold,

the cruelty, the fever, the famine, the ugliness, the loneliness, the

pain. And then try to keep down the lump in your throat as you take up

His Programme and read--

TO BIND UP THE BROKEN-HEARTED:

TO PROCLAIM LIBERTY TO THE CAPTIVES:

TO COMFORT ALL THAT MOURN:

TO GIVE UNTO THEM--

BEAUTY FOR ASHES,

THE OIL OF JOY FOR MOURNING,

THE GARMENT OF PRAISE FOR THE SPIRIT OF HEAVINESS.

What an exchange--Beauty for Ashes, Joy for Mourning, Liberty for

Chains! No marvel "the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue

were fastened on Him" as He read; or that they "wondered at the

gracious words which proceeded out of His lips." Only one man in that

congregation, only one man in the world to-day could hear these

accents with dismay--the man, the culprit, who has said hard words of

Christ.

We are all familiar with the protest "Of course"--as if there were no

other alternative to a person of culture--"Of course I am not a

Christian, but I always speak respectfully of Christianity." Respect­

fully of Christianity! No remark fills one's soul with such sadness.

One can understand a man as he reads these words being stricken

speechless; one can see the soul within him rise to a white heat as

each fresh benediction falls upon his ear and drive him, a half-mad

enthusiast, to bear them to the world. But in what school