 THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD AND OTHER ADDRESSES by Henry Drummond TITLE PAGE THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind. Love envyeth not, love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, thinketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceeth not in iniquity, but rejoiceeth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth, but where there be prophecies they shall fail, whether there be tongues they shall cease, whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away. For we know in part, we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a glass, darkly. But then, face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know, even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love. First Corinthians 13 The greatest thing in the world John has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the modern world. What is the sumum bonum, the supreme good? You have life before you, once only can you live it. What is the noblest 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 keynote 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. I have taken you, in the chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source. And there we have seen, 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 a Bideth, 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 sumum 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, God is love. And 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 their passage to heaven by keeping the ten commandments and the hundred and ten other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ 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. And you can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. If a man love God you will not require to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. Pick 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 God. 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 would 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 had learned that. And in this noble eulogy he has given us the most wonderful and original account extent of the Sumum 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 analyzed. Towards the end we have love defended as the supreme gift. End of title page and chapter titled The Greatest Thing in the World. The Greatest Thing in the World and Other Addresses by Henry Drummond. Paul begins by contrasting love with other things that men in those days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over those things in detail. Their inferiority is already obvious. He contrasts it with eloquence. What a noble 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 as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And 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 God. And what is the object of connecting man with God? That he may become like God. But God is love. Hence faith, the means, is in order to love, the end. Love therefore is obviously greater than faith. It is greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater than the 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 aroused 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. Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I beg the little band of would-be missionaries, and I have the honour to call some of you by this name for the first time, to remember that though you give your bodies to be burned and have not love, it profits nothing. Nothing. You can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the impress and reflection of the love of God upon your own character. That is the universal language. It will take you years to speak in Chinese or in the dialects of India. From the day you 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 remember the only white man they ever saw before, David Livingston. And as you cross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up as they speak of the kind doctor who passed their years before. They could not understand him, but they felt the love that beat in his heart. Take into your new sphere of labour, where you also mean to lay down your life. That simple charm and your life-work must succeed. You can take nothing greater. You need take nothing less. It is not worth while going if you take anything 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. The greatest thing in the world, the analysis, part one. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The greatest thing in the world, and other addresses, by Henry Drummond. The analysis, part one. 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 colors, red and blue and yellow and violet and orange and all the colors 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 that we hear about every day? That they are things which can be practiced by every man in every place in life? And how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the sumum 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, rejoiceeth not in iniquity, but rejoiceeth 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 an 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 a 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 of 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, hopeeth 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? Turn over it with that in mind, and you will find that he spent a great portion 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 that is not in our keeping. But what God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely secured by our being kind to them. The greatest thing, says someone, 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 super-abundantly 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 its yields of joy and woe and hope and fear, is just our chance o' the price 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 envyeth 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 unworthy moods which cloud a Christian soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every good work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly needs the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul that envyeth not. And then, having learned all that, you have to learn this further thing, humility, 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 heights even from itself. Love waves even self-satisfaction. Love bontoth not itself is not puffed up. The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this sumum 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. Carlisle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the plowman poet. It was because he loved everything, the mouse and the daisy, and all things great and small that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle in any society and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage on the banks of the air. 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 un-gentle, an un-gentlemanly 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 crosses, 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 higher 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. End of the analysis part one. The analysis part two of the greatest thing in the world. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The greatest thing in the world in other addresses by Henry Drummond. The analysis part two. 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 very seriously into 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 that 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 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-Christianize 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. He can get all credit for his virtues. Look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his 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 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. Analyze, 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 all 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, then 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. Accept, 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 of 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 symbolized 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, under penetrating hours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate and rehabilitate the inner man. Willpower 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 and 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 authorized 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 read there 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 rejoiceth to find them better than suspicion feared or calamity denounced. End of the analysis part 2 The analysis part 3 of the greatest thing in the world this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the greatest thing in the world and other addresses by Henry Drummond the analysis part 3 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 playground it is a school room 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 vigor of moral fiber no 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 Christ-like 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 practicing? though perfect we read that he learned obedience he increased in wisdom and in favor 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 for 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 molding 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 Stile doch ein Charakter 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 colors 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 fulfill 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 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 in 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 at 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 magnetized body and that piece of iron for a time becomes magnetized 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 center of power a permanently attractive force and like him 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 fulfills 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 creating 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 End of the analysis part three End of the analysis the greatest thing in the world the defense this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the greatest thing in the world and other addresses by Henry Drummond the defense now I have a closing sentence or two 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 argues 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 men thought were going to last and shows that they are all fleeting temporary and passing away whether there be prophecies they shall fail it was a 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 this book is full of prophecies one by one they have failed that is have been fulfilled their work is finished they have nothing more to do now in the world 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 50 years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader Paul goes farther and with even greater boldness adds whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away the wisdom of the ancients where is it it is wholly gone a schoolboy today knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew his knowledge has vanished away you put yesterday's paper in the fire its knowledge has vanished away you buy the old editions of the great encyclopedias for a few pence 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 the other day the steam engine is passing away whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away at every workshop you will see in the backyard 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 Minn flocked in from the country to see the great invention now it is superseded its day is done and all the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old but yesterday in the University of Edinburgh the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson the discoverer of chloroform the other day 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 he no longer needed and his reply to the librarian was this take every textbook 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 Minn came from all parts of the earth to consult him and almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by the science of today to oblivion and in every branch of science it is the same now we know in part we see through a glass darkly 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 Minn thought had something in them and pushed 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 Minn denounces 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 a Bideth 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 and 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 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 yourselves to many things give yourselves 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 that is the character of Christ which is built around love I have said this thing is eternal did you 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 whoever 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 trusted in him that is whosoever loveth him for trust is only the avenue to love hath everlasting life the gospel offers a man life never offer men a thimble full 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 tomorrow why do you want to live tomorrow? it is because there is someone who loves you and whom you want to see tomorrow 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 and he has no contact with life no reason to live the energy of life has failed eternal life also is to know God when God is love this is Christ's own definition ponder it this is eternal life 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 that life is a thing that we are living now not what we get when we die that we shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living now no worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone unloving and unloved to be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition loveless and unloved and to be saved is to love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God for God is love now I have all but finished how many of you will join me in reading this chapter once a week for the next three months a man did that once and it changed his whole life will you do it it is the greatest thing in the world you might begin by reading it every day especially the verses which describe the perfect character love suffereth long and is kind love envyeth not love vaunteth not itself get these ingredients into your life then everything that you do is eternal it is worth doing it is worth giving time to no man can become a saint in his sleep and to fulfill the condition required demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time just as improvement in any direction bodily or mental requires preparation and care address yourselves to that one thing at any cost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours you will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love as memory scans the past above and beyond all the transitory pleasures of life there leap forward those supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those round about you things too trifling to speak about but which you feel have entered into your eternal life I have seen almost all the beautiful things God has made I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that he has planned for man and yet as I look back I see standing out above all the life that has gone four or five short experiences when the love of God reflected itself in some poor imitation some small act of love of mine and these seem to be the things which alone of all one's life abide everything else in our lives is transitory every other good is visionary but the acts of love which no man knows about or can ever know about they never fail in the book of Matthew where the judgment day is depicted for us in the imagery of one seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from the goats the test of a man then is not how have I believed but how have I loved the test of religion the final test of religion is not religiousness but love I say the final test of religion at the great day is not religiousness but love not what I have done not what I have believed not what I have achieved but how I have discharged the common charities of life sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to by what we have not done by sins of omission we are judged it could not be otherwise for the withholding of love is the negation of the spirit of Christ the proof that we never knew him that for us he lived in vain it means that he suggested nothing in all our thoughts that he inspired nothing in all our lives that we were not once near enough to him he seized with the spell of his compassion for the world it means that I lived for myself I thought for myself for myself and none beside just as if Jesus had never lived as if he had never died it is the son of man before whom the nations of the world shall be gathered it is in the presence of humanity that we shall be charged and the spectacle itself the mere sight of it will silently judge each one those will be there whom we have met and helped or the unpittied multitude whom we neglected or despised no other witness need be summoned no other charge than lovelessness shall be preferred be not deceived the words which all of us shall one day hear sound not of theology but of life not of churches and saints but of the hungry and the poor not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter and clothing not of bibles and prayer books but of cups of cold water in the name of Christ thank God the Christianity of today is coming nearer the world's need live to help that on thank God men know better by a hair's breadth what religion is what God is who Christ is where Christ is who is Christ he who fed the hungry clothed the naked visited the sick and where is Christ where whoso shall receive a little child in my name receiveeth me and who are Christs everyone that loveth is born of God end of the defense end of the greatest thing in the world chapter seven of the greatest thing in the world and other addresses the program of Christianity this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the greatest thing in the world and other addresses by Henry Drummond chapter seven the program of Christianity to preach good tidings unto the meek to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God to comfort all that mourn to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion to give unto them beauty for ashes full of joy for mourning the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness Isaiah 61 one through three A the program of Christianity what does God do all day once asked a little boy one could wish that more grown up people would ask so very real question unfortunately most of us are not even boys in religious intelligence but only very unthinking children it no more occurs to us that God is engaged in any particular work in the world than it occurs to a little child that its father does anything except be its father its father may be a cabinet minister absorbed in the nation's work or an inventor deep in schemes for the world's good but to this master egoist he is father and nothing more childhood whether in the physical or moral world is the great self centered period of life and a personal God who satisfies personal ends is all that for a long time many a Christian understands but as clearly as there comes to the growing child a knowledge of its father's part in the world and a sense of what real life means there must come to every Christian whose growth is true some richer sense of the meaning of Christianity and a larger view of Christ's purpose for mankind to miss this is to miss the whole splendor and glory of Christ's religion next to losing the sense of a personal Christ the worst evil that can be fall a Christian is to have no sense of anything else to grow up in complacent belief that God has no business in this great groaning world of human beings and to attend to a few saved souls is the negation of all religion the first great epoch in a Christian's life after the awe and wonder of its dawn is when there breaks into his mind some sense that Christ has a purpose for mankind a purpose beyond him and his needs beyond the churches and their creeds beyond heaven and its saints a purpose which embraces every man and woman born every kindred and nation formed which regards not their spiritual good alone but their welfare in every part their progress their health their wages their happiness in this present world what then does Christ do all day by what further conception shall we augment the selfish you of why Christ lived and died I shall mislead no one I hope if I say for I wish to put the social side of Christianity in its strongest light that Christ did not come into the world to give men religion he never mentioned the word religion religion was in the world before Christ came and it lives today in a million souls who have never heard his name what God does all day is not to sit waiting in churches for people to come and worship him it is true that God is in churches and in all kinds of churches and is found in many churches more immediately than anywhere else it is also true that while Christ did not give men religion he gave a new direction to the religious aspiration bursting forth now and then and always from the whole world's heart but it was his purpose to enlist these aspirations on behalf of some definite practical good the religious people of those days did nothing with their religion except attend to its observances even the priest after he had been to the temple thought his work was done when he met the wounded man he passed by on the other side Christ reversed all this tried to reverse it for he is only now beginning to succeed the tendency of the religions of all time has been to care more for religion than for humanity Christ cared more for humanity than for religion rather his care for humanity was the chief expression of his religion he was not indifferent to observances but the practices of the people bulked in his thoughts more than the practices of the church it has been pointed out as a blemish on the immortal allegory of Bunyan that the pilgrim never did anything anything but save his soul the remark is scarcely fair for the allegory is designedly the story of a soul in a single relation and besides he did do a little but the warning may well be weighed the pilgrims one thought his work by day his dream by night was escape he took little part in the world through which he passed he was a pilgrim traveling through it his business was to get through same whatever this is it is not Christianity Christ's conception of Christianity was heavens removed from that of a man setting out from the city of destruction to save his soul it was rather that of a man dwelling amidst the destructions of the city and planning escapes for the souls of others escapes not to the other world but to purity and peace and righteousness in this in reality Christ never said soul it is a mistranslation which says that what he said was save your life and this not because the first is nothing but only because it is so very great a thing that only the second can accomplish it but the new word altruism the translation of slowly finding its way into current Christian speech the people's progress not less than the pilgrim's progress is daily becoming a grave or concern to the church a popular theology with unselfishness as part at least of its root a theology which appeals no longer to fear but to the generous heart in man has already dawned and more clearly than ever men are beginning to see what Christ really came into this world to do what Christ came here for was to make a better world the world in which we live is an unfinished world it is not wise it is not happy it is not pure it is not good it is not even sanitary humanity is little more than raw material almost everything has yet to be done to it before the days of geology people thought the earth was finished it is by no means finished the work of creation is going on before the spectroscope men thought the universe was finished we know now it is just beginning and this teeming universe of men in which we live has almost all its finer color and beauty yet to take Christ came to complete it the fires of its passions were not yet cool their heat had to be transformed into finer energies the ideals for its future were all to shape the forces to realize them were not yet born the poisons of its sins had met no antidote the gloom of its doubt no light the weight of its sorrow no rest these the savior of the world the light of men would do and be this roughly was his scheme now this was a prodigious task to recreate the world how was it to be done God's way of making worlds is to make them make themselves when he made the world he made a rough ball of matter and supplied it with a multitude of tools to mold it into form the raindrop to carve it the glacier to smooth it the river to nourish it the flower to adorn it God works always with agents and this is our way when we want any great thing done and this was Christ's way when he undertook the finishing of humanity he had a vast intractable mass of matter to deal with and he required a multitude of tools Christ's tools were men hence his first business in the world was to make a collection of men in other words he founded a society end of chapter 7 of the greatest thing in the world and other addresses chapter 8 chapter 8 of the greatest thing in the world and other addresses this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the greatest thing in the world and other addresses by Henry Drummond chapter 8 the founding of the society it is a somewhat startling thought it will not be understood that Christ probably did not save many people while he was here many an evangelist in that direction has done much more he never intended to finish the world single handed but announced from the first that others would not only take part but do greater things than he for amazing as was the work to individuals this was not the whole aim he had in view his immediate work was to enlist men in his enterprise to rally them into a great company or society for the carrying out of his plans the name by which this society was known was the kingdom of God Christ did not coin this turn it was an old expression and good men had always hoped and prayed that some such society would be born in their midst but it was never either defined or said a going in earnest until Christ made its realization the passion of his life how keenly he felt regarding his task how enthusiastically he said about it every page of his life bears witness all reformers have one or two great words which they use incessantly and by mere reiteration embed indelibly in the thought and history of their time Christ's great word was the kingdom of God of all the words of his that have come down to us this is by far the commonest one hundred times it occurs in the gospels when he preached he had almost always this for a text his sermons were explanations of the aims of his society of the different things it was like of whom its membership consisted what they were to do or be or not to do or be and even when he does not actually use the word it is easy to see that all he said and did have reference to this philosophers talk about thinking in categories the mind living as it were in a particular room with its own special furniture pictures and viewpoints is giving a consistent direction and color to all that is their thought or expressed it was in the category of the kingdom that Christ's thought moved though one time he said he came to save the lost or at another to give men life or to do his father's will these were all included among the objects of society no one can ever know what Christianity is till he has grasped this leading thought in the mind of Christ Peter and Paul have many wonderful and necessary things to tell us about what Christ was and did but we are looking now at what Christ's own thought was do not think it was a modern theory these are his own life plans taken from his own lips do not allow any isolated text even though it seemed to sum up for you the Christian life to keep you from trying to understand Christ's program as a whole the perspective of Christ's teaching is not everything but without it it will be distorted and untrue there is much good in a verse but often much evil to see some small soul pirouetting through life on a single text and judging all the world because it cannot find a partner is not a Christian sight Christianity does not grudge such souls their comfort grudges is that they make Christ's kingdom uninhabitable to thoughtful minds be sure that whenever the religion of Christ appears small or forbidding or narrow or inhuman you are dealing not with the whole which is a matchless moral symmetry nor even with an arch or column for every detail perfect but with some cold stone removed from its place and suggesting nothing of the glorious structure from which it came tens of thousands of persons who are familiar with religious truths have not noticed yet that Christ ever founded a society at all the reason is partly that people have read texts instead of reading their Bible partly that they have studied theology instead of studying Christianity and partly because of the noiselessness and invisibility of the kingdom of God itself nothing truer was ever said of this kingdom than that it cometh without observation its first discovery before comes to the Christian with all the force of a revelation the sense of belonging to such a society transforms life it is the difference between being a solitary knight tilting single-handedly and often defeated at whatever enemy one chances to meet on one's little acre of life and the feeling of belonging to a mighty army marching through all time to a certain victory this note of universality given to even the humblest work we do this sense of comradeship this link with history this thought of a definite campaign this promise of success is the possession of every obscurist in the kingdom of God end of chapter 8 the founding of the society