The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses Part 1

The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses Part 1

The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses.

by Henry Drummond.

INTRODUCTORY.

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 princ.i.p.als 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 G.o.d 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.

(signed) D.L. Moody.

LOVE:

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 n.o.blest 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. In the 13th chapter of I Corinthians, Paul takes us to

CHRISTIANITY AT ITS SOURCE;

and there we see, "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, "G.o.d is love."

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 the pa.s.sage to Heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ came and 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 fulfill the whole law."

You can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. "Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds before Me." If a man love G.o.d, 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 fulfill all these laws regarding G.o.d.

And so, if he loved man, you would never think of telling him to honor 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 neighbor. 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 neighbors 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 has learned that; and in this n.o.ble 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 _a.n.a.lyzed_; toward the end, we have Love _defended_ as the supreme gift.

I. 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 these things in detail. Their inferiority is already obvious.

He contrasts it with _eloquence_. And what a n.o.ble 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 sounding bra.s.s, or a tinkling cymbal." 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 G.o.d. And what is the object of connecting man with G.o.d? That he may become like G.o.d. But G.o.d is Love. Hence Faith, the means, is in order to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith.

"If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

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. Hence, "If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, but have not love it profiteth me nothing."

Then Paul contrasts it with _sacrifice_ and martyrdom: "If I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing."

Missionaries can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the impress and reflection of the Love of G.o.d upon their own character.

That is the universal language. It will take them years to speak in Chinese, or in the dialects of India. From the day they 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 pa.s.sed there years ago. They could not understand him; but they felt the love that beat in his heart. They knew that it was love, although he spoke no word.

Take into your sphere of labor, 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. 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_.

II. THE a.n.a.lYSIS.

After contrasting Love with these things, Paul, in three verses, very short, gives us an amazing a.n.a.lysis 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 pa.s.s it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its component colors--red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the rainbow--so Paul pa.s.ses this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements.

In these few words we have what one might call

THE SPECTRUM OF LOVE,

the a.n.a.lysis 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 mult.i.tude 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 its own."

Good temper "Is not provoked."