On one of his trips to England, D. L. Moody was staying at Lord Aberdeen’s country house, near London. He was asked to give a devotional, but being weary after preaching, he asked if Prof. Drummond might speak instead. This was the substance of Drummond’s message, repeated at Northfield, Moody’s Massachusetts summer conference.
Based on 1 Corinthians 13, the author divides the chapter under three heads: love contrasted (vv. 1-3); love analyzed (vv. 4-7); and love defended (vv. 8-13). This article is excerpted from the main middle section.
Paul, in four verses (4-7) gives an amazing analysis of what Love, the supreme thing, is. It is a compound thing. As a beam of light passing through a crystal prism is broken into its component colors, so Paul passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken into its elements. In these few words we have what one might call the Spectrum of Love.
Will you observe what its elements are? They have common names; they are virtues which we hear about every day; they are things which can be practiced by every man in every place in life. Thus 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…in the truth.”
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.…The supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the 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 on 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; endureth all things. For Love understands, and therefore waits.
Love is Kindness. This is Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s life was spent in merely doing kind things? “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 honorable, so superbly honorable, as Love.
“Love never faileth.” Love is success, Love is happiness, Love is life. Where Love is, God is. He that dwells in Love dwells in God. God is love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. 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, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all.
Love is 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. That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian’s soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly should the Christian envy—the large, rich, generous soul which “envieth not.”
Love is 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 vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”
Love is Courtesy. The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this summum bonum. It is Love in society, Love in relation to etiquette. “Love doth not behave itself unseemly.” Courtesy is said to be love in little things. 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. You know the meaning of the word “gentleman.” It means a gentle man—a man who does things gently. And that is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing.
Love is Unselfishness. “Love seeketh not her own.” Observe: seeketh not even that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted 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.
There is a greater challenge than giving up our rights—to give up ourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have sought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already. But not to seek them, to look every man not on his own things, but on the things of others. “Seekest thou great things for thyself?” said the prophet; “seek them not” (Jer. 45:5). Why? Because there is no greatness in things. The only greatness is unselfish love.
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. But 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 happy to give than to receive.
Love is Good Temper. “Love is not easily provoked.” Nothing could be more striking than to find this here. We are inclined to look on bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, not a thing to take into very serious account. 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 more 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. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics.
No form of vice does more to unChristianize 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.
You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not in what it is alone, but in what it reveals. It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is 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. 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.
Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid out, but by putting something in. A great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ penetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does. Therefore “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Some of us have not much time to lose. 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.
Love is Guilelessness and Sincerity. This 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. 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. Love 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 to meet with it! And if we try to influence others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in what God can do in them.
Love is Sincerity. “Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in [or with] the truth.” 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.
This Sincerity includes 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 endeavors to see things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared.
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 schoolroom. 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 artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. 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; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no strength of character, no vigor of moral fiber, nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the Christ-like nature in its fullest development.
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. 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 moulding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful though you see it not, and every touch of testing may add to its perfection. Therefore do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles.
To make it easier to see how this works, I have named a few of the elements of love. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined. Light is something more than the sum of its ingredients—a glowing, dazzling, tremulous energy. And love is something more than all its elements—a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing. 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?
In the First Epistle of John you will find these words: “We love, because He first loved us” (4:19, rv). This is the cause: “Because He first loved us,” and the effect follows that we love. We cannot help it. Because He loved us, we love. 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 into 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 on the Cross of Calvary; and you must love Him. And loving Him, you must become like Him. Love begets love.
Written by Henry Drummond