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.