The Greatest Thing In the World | Page 9

is passing
away." "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." At every
workshop you will see, in the back yard, a heap of old iron, a few
wheels, a few levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust. Twenty
years ago that was the pride of the city. Men flocked in from the
country to see the great invention; now it is superseded, its day is done.
And all the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old.
In my time, in the university of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the
faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. Recently
his successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the
librarian of the University to go to the library and pick out the books on
his subject (midwifery) that were no longer needed. His reply to the
librarian was this:
"Take every text-book that is more than ten years old and put it down in
the cellar."
Sir James Simpson was a great authority only a few years ago: men
came from all parts of the earth to consult him; and almost the whole

teaching of that time is consigned by the science of to-day to oblivion.
And in every branch of science it is the same. "Now we know in part.
We see through a glass darkly." Knowledge does not last.
Can you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things Paul did not
condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but he
picked out the great things of his time, the things the best men thought
had something in them, and brushed them peremptorily aside. Paul had
no charge against these things in themselves. All he said about them
was that they would not last. They were great things, but not supreme
things. There were things beyond them. What we are stretches past
what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that men denounce
as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is a favorite
argument of the New Testament. John says of the world, not that it is
wrong, but simply that it "passeth away." There is a great deal in the
world that is delightful and beautiful; there is a great deal in it that is
great and engrossing; but
IT WILL NOT LAST.
All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the
pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the world therefore.
Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration of an
immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something that is
immortal. And the only immortal things are these: "Now abideth faith,
hope, love, but the greatest of these is love."
Some think the time may come when two of these three things will also
pass away--faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say so. We
know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But
what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal God, is Love.
Covet, therefore, that everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain
is going to stand, that one coinage which will be current in the Universe
when all the other coinages of all the nations of the world shall be
useless and unhonored. You will give yourselves to many things, give
yourself first to Love. Hold things in their proportion. _Hold things in
their proportion._ Let at least the first great object of our lives be to
achieve the character defended in these words, the character--and it is

the character of Christ--which is built round Love.
I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how continually
John associates love and faith with eternal life? I was not told when I
was a boy that "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting life."
What I was told, I remember, was, that God so loved the world that, if I
trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I was to have rest,
or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But I had to find out for
myself that whosoever trusteth in Him--that is, whosoever loveth Him,
for trust is only the avenue to Love--hath
EVERLASTING LIFE.
The Gospel offers a man a life. Never offer a man a thimbleful of
Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest,
or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give men a more
abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and therefore
abundant in salvation for themselves, and