The Greatest Thing in the World

THE ANALYSIS PART THREE OF THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD THE ANALYSIS PART THREE 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 Stille, 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 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, ìMy boy, God loves you,î and went away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out to the people in the house, ìGod loves me! God loves me!î 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.