the greatest thing in the world

by Henry Drummond

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues,they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Introduction

• Love is the summum bonum - the supreme good
• God is love - 1 John 4:16
• Love is the fulfilment of the law - Romans 13:8

Love contrasted

• With eloquence - Hollow, brazen without love. The language of love, understood by all, pours forth its unconscious eloquence
• With faith - Faith is to connect the soul with God, that he may become like God. God is love. The end is greater than the means.
• With charity, with prophesy - the whole (love) is greater than these parts

Love analysed

• Love - a compound, like light. Through the prism of Paul's inspired intellect: the Spectrum of Love, the analysis of love
• All the elements are in relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known today and the near tomorrow, 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.

1. 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 summon comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. For love understands, and therefore waits.
2. Love is kindness. Love active. Note the proportion of time Christ spent making people happy. God has put in our power the happiness of those about us - secured largely by our being kind to them. How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How fallibly it is remembered. God is love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Don't "try to please" but "give pleasure" - 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."
3. Love is generosity. "Love envieth not." Love is not in competition with others. Envy only the large, rich, generous soul which "envieth not".
4. Love is humility. Having learned the above, to put a seal on 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.
5. Love is courtesy. "Love is not rude." The secret of politeness is to love. Courtesy is love in the little things.
6. Love is unselfishness. "Love seeketh not her own" - even that which is her own. Love not only gives up, but forgets our rights. There is no greatness in things. The only greatness is unselfish love. Nothing is a hardship to love - Christ's yoke is easy. Love is an easier and a happier way than any other. There is no unhappiness in having or getting, but only in giving. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
7. Love is a good temper. Anger - a sin of the disposition. Not viewed as seriously as sins of the body (eg. prodigal son) but it embitters life, breaks up communities, destroys sacred relationships, withers people - it is sheer gratuitous misery-producing power. Temper is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of the 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...for a want of patience, a want of kindness, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolised in one flash of Temper. We must go to the source to deal with the temper, we must change the inmost nature. Sweetness not by taking out bitterness, but by adding a sweetener, a purifier, a transformer: the Spirit of Christ. Neither willpower nor time changes men, but Christ does. It is better not to live than not to love.
8. Love is guilelessness and sincerity. You will find that the people who influence you are the people who believe in you. Love "thinketh no evil"...but "rejoiceth in the truth". Sincerity includes the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others' faults; the charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but "covers all things"; the sincerity of purpose which endeavors to see things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared or calumny denounced.

• Love is learnt by practice. Exercising the muscle of the soul to gain strength of character, moral fiber, spiritual growth.
• Do not complain of your cares and vexations. 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 patience, 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.