The Greatest Thing In the World | Page 6

speak of it with such unusual
plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving
nature at bottom. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks
unintermittent disease within; 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; in a word, the lightning form of a hundred hideous and
un-Christian sins. 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.
Hence it is not enough to deal with the Temper. We must go to the
source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die
away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids
out, but by putting something in--a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit
of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens,
purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what is wrong, work a
chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner
man. Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men.
CHRIST DOES.
Therefore, "Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."
Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember, once more, that
this is a matter of life or death. 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. _It is better not to live than not to
love._
Guilelessness and Sincerity may be dismissed almost without a word.
Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. 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; but in that atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement
and educative fellowship.
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. This
is the great unworldliness. Love "thinketh no evil," 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
even to meet with it for a day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we
try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in
proportion to their belief of our belief in them. The respect of another is
the first restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what
he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.
"Love rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth." I
have called this Sincerity from the words rendered in the Authorized
Version by "rejoiceth in the truth." And, certainly, were this the real
translation, nothing could be more just; for 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. But the more literal translation of the Revised Version calls
for just such a sacrifice for truth's sake here. For what Paul really meant

is, as we there read, "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth
with the truth," a quality which probably no one English word--and
certainly not _Sincerity_--adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more
strictly, 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 or calumny denounced.
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