March 1, 2019

Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
—1 Corinthians 13:13

What is the supreme good?30 You have life before you. Once only can you live it. What is the noblest object of desire to covet?
We have been told that the greatest thing in the religious world is faith. Well, we were wrong. I have taken you, in [1 Corinthians 13] to Christianity at its source, and there we have seen, “the greatest of these is love.” [Paul] says, “If I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”
Paul, in three short verses, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is. 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 is patient.”
• kindness—“Love is kind.”
• generosity—“[Love] does not envy.”
• humility—“[Love] does not boast, it is not proud.”
• courtesy—“[Love] is not rude.”
• unselfishness—“[Love] is not self-seeking.”
• good temper—“[Love] is not easily angered.”
• guilelessness—“[Love] keeps no record of wrongs.”
• sincerity—“[Love] does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.”

Observe that all are in relation to people, in relation to life, in relation to the known today and near tomorrow and not to the unknown eternity. 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.
Where love is, God is. Whoever lives in love lives in God. God is love. Therefore love—without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination. Lavish it on the poor, where it is very easy; especially on the rich, who often need it most; most of all on our equals, 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.
—Henry Drummond

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