The Greatest Thing.

The Greatest Thing in the World. (Abridged)

by Drummond (1851-1857)

Everyone 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 noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet?

We have been accustomed to be told the greatest thing in the religious world is faith. Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. 

"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. 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. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^b but do not have love, I gain nothing.

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

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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 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. 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.

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

1 Corinthians 13.

"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 I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts them. "Now abides faith, hope, and 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 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 supreme good. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about it. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love among yourselves." Above all things.

And John goes further, "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 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.

You can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take any of the commandments. "You shall have no other gods before me." If a man loves God, you will not require to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law...If he loved man, you would never think of telling him to honor his mother and father. He could not do anything else. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You would only insult him if you suggested he should not steal - how could he steal from those he loved...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.