The Worlds Great Sermons, Volume 10 | Page 8

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 upon the cross of 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 an electrified body, and
that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified. It is changed into a
temporary magnet in the mere presence of a permanent magnet, 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 permanent magnet, a permanently attractive
force; and like Him you 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 fulfils 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 spiritual 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,
"My boy, God loves you," and went away. And the boy started from his
bed, and called out to the people in the house, "God loves me! God
loves me!" It changed that boy. The sense that God loved him
overpowered him, melted him down, and began the creating of 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.
Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for
singling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkable
reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. "Love," urges Paul, "never
faileth." Then he begins one of his marvelous lists of the great things of
the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over the things that men
thought were going to last, and shows that they are all fleeting,
temporary, passing away.
"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." It was the mother's
ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet.
For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet,
and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited
wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when
he appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, "Whether there
be prophecies, they shall fail." This book is full of prophecies. One by
one they have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their work is
finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to feed
a devout man's faith.
Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly
coveted. "Whether there be tongues, they shall cease." As we all know,
many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in
this world. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for
illustration merely, as languages in general--a sense which was not in
Paul's mind at all, and which tho it can not give us the specific lesson
will point the general truth. Consider the words in which these chapters
were written--Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin--the other great tongue

of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian language. It is
ceasing. The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands is
dying before our eyes. The most popular book in the English tongue at
the present time, except the Bible, is one of Dickens' works, his
"Pickwick Papers." It is largely written in the language of London
street-life, and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be
unintelligible to the average English reader.
Then Paul goes further, and with even greater boldness adds, "Whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." The wisdom of the ancients,
where is it? It is wholly gone. A schoolboy today knows more than Sir
Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You put
yesterday's newspaper in the fire.