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The Greatest Thing in the
World
By Henry Drummond (1851 - 1897)
"I was staying with a party
of friends in a country house during my visit to England in 1884. On
Sunday evening as we sat around the fire, they asked me to read and
expound some portion of Scripture. Being tired after the services of the
day, I told them to ask Henry Drummond, who was one of the party. After
some urging he drew a small Testament from his hip pocket, opened it at
the 13th chapter of I Corinthians, and began to speak on the subject of
Love.
It seemed to me that I had never
heard anything so beautiful, and I determined not to rest until I
brought Henry Drummond to Northfield to deliver that address. Since then
I have requested the principals of my schools to have it read before the
students every year. The one great need in our Christian life is love,
more love to God and to each other. Would that we could all move into
that Love chapter, and live there.
This volume contains, in addition
to the address on Love, some other addresses which I trust will bring
help and blessing to many".
D L Moody
"Though I speak with the tongues of men
and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a
clanging 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, but 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, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does
not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not
behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all
things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are
prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease;
whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and
we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that
which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke 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 in a mirror,
dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know
just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love."
(1 Corinthians 13, verses 1 - 13)
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.
Henry
Drummond, c1880
For
an online site featuring this and other articles by Henry Drummond visit Project
Gutenberg
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