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 marvelous 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 be done away." 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." The Bible
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' works, his "Pickwick Papers." It is largely written in
the language of London street-life; 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 by KNOWLEDGE, it shall be done 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 cents: 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
Thompson, said in Scotland, at a meeting at which I was present,
"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; not it is superseded, its day is done. And all
the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old.
In my time, in the university of Edinburgh, the greatest figure
in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of choloform.
Recently 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 (midwifery) that were no longer needed.
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." Knowledge does
not last.
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 favorite 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
unhonored. You will give yourself to many things, give yourself
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 he character of Christ--which is built round
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 a life. Never offer a man 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 forever is
to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with
love. We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to
live to-morrow. Why do we want to live to-morrow? Is it because
there is some one who loves you, and whom you want to see to-morrow,
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, he has no contact with life, no reason
to live. He dies by his own hand.
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. It 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.