The Greatest Thing in the World

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD by HENRY DRUMMOND THE ANALYSIS PART 1 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 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 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 today and the near tomorrow, 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, hopeth all things. For love understands, and therefore waits. 5. 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 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 superabundantly it pays itself back, for there is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, 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 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 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 unchristian 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. Humility. Only one thing truly need the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul that envieth 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 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 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. 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 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 ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle 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.