The Worlds Great Sermons, Volume 10 | Page 4

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 or wo And hope and fear, Is just our
chance o' the prize 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 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 needs the Christian envy, the
large, rich, generous soul which "envieth not."
And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this further
thing, humility--to put a seal upon 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 _summum
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 can not behave itself unseemly.
You can put the most untutored persons into the highest society, and if
they have a reservoir of love in their hearts, they will not behave
themselves unseemly. They simply can not do it. Carlyle said of Robert
Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the
plowman-poet. It was because he loved everything--the mouse, the
daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God had made. So with
this simple passport he could mingle with any society, and enter courts
and palaces from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. 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 gentle man can not in the nature of things do an ungentle and
ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate,
unsympathetic nature can not 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 cross 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 can not be