XIV

LOVE PREDOMINANT

There is no more remarkable illustration of the superiority of nature of this great man, Paul, than this thirteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians. Above all miraculous gifts and endowments, above faith itself, he puts love.

We should not have been greatly surprised to find this exalted position assigned to love in St. John, but to find it in St. Paul is somewhat startling. This man of many gifts sees something greater than gifts. This man of unconquerable faith sees something greater than faith. This man of distinguished spiritual powers sees something greater than such powers. This is very surprising and all the more so when, looking carefully into Church history, we find that these apostles are ahead of the different stages of development in Church history. They are theological leaders all the time and for all centuries, as much leaders in our century as in the centuries past.

Constantly we have to go to the Bible to correct our partial and narrow views. Constantly we have to go to it for rescue from the tendencies to sectarianism which are in human nature. In presence

of such a fact, why need we hesitate as to the inspiration of these men? If men of the time of Paul and John can keep ahead, as Christian thinkers, of the majority of Christians in all centuries since, why need we hesitate as to their being men wondrously inspired of God? The influences of the Holy Spirit of God must have taken full possession of them or such a fact could not be.

The main proposition which the apostle lays down in this section of his epistle to the Corinthians is this: That in all times and everywhere there is one great endowment for every Christian individual and for every Christian church, an endowment so essential, so fundamental, that without it everything else is ineffective. Nothing is superior to this endowment. Everything namable is inferior to it. Miraculous gifts are inferior to it. A miraculous understanding is inferior to it. The vigor which comes from a faith so strong that it can remove obstacles that are like mountains is inferior. Benevolence which beggars itself to feed the poor is inferior. Sectarian zeal that can boldly march up to a martyr's death rather than give in, is inferior. And all these gifts and competencies are conceivable without the existence of this one endowment, which is not only superior to any one of them, but to all of them. The one endowment referred to is in the old version called charity, in the new version, and more properly, love.

That royal endowment which is thus introduced to us under this name is the one quality which gives permanent worth and value to all other qualities.

That it is the greatest of all endowments will be seen if we consider its universality and its lastingness. It is something that everyone can have, for its seat is the heart. It belongs to ripeness of nature in all people and in all times. Everything that is intellectual, all mere knowledge and everything of the same nature as knowledge, passes away; but love abides. It never passes away. All eloquence, all speech-power is temporary and fleeting. As one puts it: "The next time you are disposed to be vain of a few facts, or a little reading, or a smattering of science, pause and think that all the knowledge of the great and wise men of the apostle Paul's day, except the knowledge of Christ crucified, is worthless now. All they knew has vanished, all has failed but this, that 'they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'"

Let us remember that the worth of anything is to be estimated by these two qualities, lastingness or unfailingness and universality- the ability of belonging to everyone. That which has its seat in the intellectual part of our nature does not last and it does not belong to everyone. The knowledge of two or three centuries ago is not the knowledge of our century. Nothing remains the same. Views and opinions continually change because one opinion leads to another greater than itself. The progress from the less to the greater is necessary and inevitable. The boy is not the man. The clothes that fit the boy will not fit the man.

Religion has its intellectual side and on that side

it changes and must change. It is like everything else in that respect. But as in every one of us there is something permanent which abides unchangingly and brings every part of our life into unity, making it one life, so is it with religion. Properly speaking, the word religion is only another word for a man's deep inner life. Every man has a religion, whether he calls it by that word or not. The deepest thing in the Christian religion never changes. That deepest something which St. Paul calls love never changes. It is the central substance which binds all and everything into unity.

When therefore we meet with a question like this: How can a man be satisfied that he has got the right thing in religion, when there are so many creeds, and so many views and opinions, and so many sects and denominations? How can there be any confidence and any settledness? When we meet with such questions the answer is simple and easy. There is an underneath-something in all true religion which never changes which grows from less to more, but never changes in any essential character. St. Paul calls it "Love." If you can love God and love your fellow men, that is all you need.

Simple as this statement is it includes vastly more than at first appears. To love God, we must know him. We must have a revelation of him. Has he given us such a revelation of his heart as to warrant us in saying, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that trust him"? Such a revelation as warrants our saying: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. . . . . Thy

will be done, as is in heaven, so on earth"? If so - where is it? It must be in a person, for a personal is necessarily the highest form of revelation and the only one suited to us. And so Jesus Christ becomes a religious necessity. But what we need

to recognize is that we may have gifts that are brilliant and helpful and yet not have love. We may have intense sectarian zeal and not love. We may be so bigoted religiously as to be blinded by our own bigotry and blindly go to the stake and give our bodies to be burned (false religions have had their martyrs) and yet love like that Paul exalts we may not possess.

This seems very startling, almost unintelligible, and yet there can be no doubt it is true. We have only to look at the results of blind religious zeal, to see how true it is. The bitter sectarianism which has sprung up inside Christianity is proof of its truth. Men will very often do for sect what they will not do for Christ and Christianity simply. There are very many men who are not mentally or affectionally large enough to let in the greatness of pure apostolic Christianity; but they are just large enough to be first-class sectarians.

No one was in such diametric antagonism to this spirit as was St. Paul. He never seemed to glow with such angry indignation as when these Corinthian Christians were in danger of splitting up into sects under different names: "I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized into the name of Paul?"