Henry Drummond - The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses
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Henry Drummond >> The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses
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8 The Greatest Thing
In the World
And Other Addresses
BY
HENRY DRUMMOND
NEW YORK CHICAGO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyrighted 1891 and 1898
By Fleming H. Revell Company.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS.
LOVE, THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD 7
LESSONS FROM THE ANGELUS 35
PAX VOBISCUM 44
FIRST! AN ADDRESS TO BOYS 70
THE CHANGED LIFE, THE GREATEST NEED OF THE WORLD 82
DEALING WITH DOUBT 113
INTRODUCTORY.
I was staying with a party of friends in a country house during my
visit to England in 1884. On Sunday evening as we sat around the fire,
they asked me to read and expound some portion of Scripture. Being
tired after the services of the day, I told them to ask Henry
Drummond, who was one of the party. After some urging he drew a small
Testament from his hip pocket, opened it at the 13th chapter of I
Corinthians, and began to speak on the subject of Love.
It seemed to me that I had never heard anything so beautiful, and I
determined not to rest until I brought Henry Drummond to Northfield to
deliver that address. Since then I have requested the principals of my
schools to have it read before the students every year. The one great
need in our Christian life is love, more love to God and to each
other. Would that we could all move into that Love chapter, and live
there.
This volume contains, in addition to the address on Love, some other
addresses which I trust will bring help and blessing to many.
(signed) D.L. Moody.
LOVE:
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.
Every one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the
modern world: What is the _summum bonum_--the supreme good? You have
life before you. Once only you can live it. What is the noblest object
of desire, the supreme gift to covet?
We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the
religious world is Faith. That great word has been the key-note for
centuries of the popular religion; and we have easily learned to look
upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we
have been told that, we may miss the mark. In the 13th chapter of I
Corinthians, Paul takes us to
CHRISTIANITY AT ITS SOURCE;
and there we see, "The greatest of these is love."
It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment
before. He says, "If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains,
and have not love, I am nothing." So far from forgetting, he
deliberately contrasts them, "Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love," and
without a moment's hesitation the decision falls, "The greatest of
these is Love."
And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own
strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing student
can detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all through his
character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote, "The greatest of
these is love," when we meet it first, is stained with blood.
Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out love as
the _summum bonum_. The masterpieces of Christianity are agreed about
it. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love among yourselves."
_Above all things._ And John goes farther, "God is love."
You remember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love is
the fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what he meant by that?
In those days men were working the passage to Heaven by keeping the
Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which
they had manufactured out of them. Christ came and said, "I will show
you a more simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred
and ten things, without ever thinking about them. If you _love_, you
will unconsciously fulfill the whole law."
You can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take any of
the commandments. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." If a man
love God, you will not require to tell him that. Love is the
fulfilling of that law. "Take not His name in vain." Would he ever
dream of taking His name in vain if he loved him? "Remember the
Sabbath day to keep it holy." Would he not be too glad to have one day
in seven to dedicate more exclusively to the object of his affection?
Love would fulfill all these laws regarding God.
And so, if he loved man, you would never think of telling him to honor
his father and mother. He could not do anything else. It would be
preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only insult him if you
suggested that he should not steal--how could he steal from those he
loved? It would be superfluous to beg him not to bear false witness
against his neighbor. If he loved him it would be the last thing he
would do. And you would never dream of urging him not to covet what
his neighbors had. He would rather they possessed it than himself. In
this way "Love is the fulfilling of the law." It is the rule for
fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old
commandments, Christ's one
SECRET OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
Now Paul has learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given us
the most wonderful and original account extant of the _summum bonum_.
We may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of the short
chapter we have Love _contrasted_; in the heart of it, we have Love
_analyzed_; toward the end, we have Love _defended_ as the supreme
gift.
I. THE CONTRAST.
Paul begins by contrasting Love with other things that men in those
days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over these things in
detail. Their inferiority is already obvious.
He contrasts it with _eloquence_. And what a noble gift it is, the
power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing them to
lofty purposes and holy deeds! Paul says, "If I speak with the tongues
of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal." We all know why. We have all felt the
brazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable
unpersuasiveness, of eloquence behind which lies no Love.
He contrasts it with _prophecy_. He contrasts it with _mysteries_. He
contrasts it with _faith_. He contrasts it with _charity_. Why is Love
greater than faith? Because the end is greater than the means. And why
is it greater than charity? Because the whole is greater than the
part.
Love is greater than _faith_, because the end is greater than the
means. What is the use of having faith? It is to connect the soul with
God. And what is the object of connecting man with God? That he may
become like God. But God is Love. Hence Faith, the means, is in order
to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith.
"If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I
am nothing."
It is greater than _charity_, again, because the whole is greater than
a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of the innumerable
avenues of Love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal of
charity without Love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a
beggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do
it. Yet Love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relief
from the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at
the copper's cost. It is too cheap--too cheap for us, and often too
dear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would either do more
for him, or less. Hence, "If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
but have not love it profiteth me nothing."
Then Paul contrasts it with _sacrifice_ and martyrdom: "If I give my
body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing."
Missionaries can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the
impress and reflection of the Love of God upon their own character.
That is the universal language. It will take them years to speak in
Chinese, or in the dialects of India. From the day they land, that
language of Love, understood by all, will be pouring forth its
unconscious eloquence.
It is the man who is the missionary, it is not his words. His
character is his message. In the heart of Africa, among the great
Lakes, I have come across black men and women who remembered the only
white man they ever saw before--David Livingstone; and as you cross
his footsteps in that dark continent,
MEN'S FACES LIGHT UP
as they speak of the kind doctor who passed there years ago. They
could not understand him; but they felt the love that beat in his
heart. They knew that it was love, although he spoke no word.
Take into your sphere of labor, where you also mean to lay down your
life, that simple charm, and your lifework must succeed. You can take
nothing greater, you need take nothing less. You may take every
accomplishment; you may be braced for every sacrifice; but if you give
your body to be burned, and have not Love, it will profit you and the
cause of Christ _nothing_.
II. THE ANALYSIS.
After contrasting Love with these things, Paul, in three verses, very
short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is.
I ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is
like light. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and
pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the
other side of the prism broken up into its component colors--red, and
blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the
rainbow--so Paul passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent
prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side
broken up into its elements.
In these few words we have what one might call
THE SPECTRUM OF LOVE,
the analysis of Love. Will you observe what its elements are? Will you
notice that they have common names; that they are virtues which we
hear about every day; that they are things which can be practised by
every man in every place in life; and how, 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 its own."
Good temper "Is not provoked."
Guilelessness "Taketh not account of evil."
Sincerity "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth
with the truth."
Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness;
good temper; guilelessness; sincerity--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 to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the
unknown eternity. We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke much of
love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ made
much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or added thing, but
the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal
spirit through this temporal world. 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.
_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. For Love understands, and therefore waits.
_Kindness_. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's
life was spent in doing kind things--in _merely_ doing kind things?
Run over it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a great
proportion of His time simply in making people happy, in
DOING GOOD TURNS
to people. There is only one thing greater than happiness in the
world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what
God _has_ put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and
that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.
"The greatest thing," says some one, "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 superabundantly 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. "Love," I say with Browning, "is energy of life."
"For life, with all it yields of joy or woe
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 un-Christian 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
need 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." Humility--love hiding.
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 does 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 _cannot_ behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored
persons 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. Carlisle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer
gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was because he loved
everything--the mouse, and 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. That is the whole art and
mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do an
ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the
inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature, cannot 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 eternal. 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 to give them up. But
not to seek them, to look every man not on his own things, but on the
things of others--that is the difficulty. "Seekest thou great things
for thyself?" said the prophet; "_seek them not_." Why? Because there
is no greatness in _things_. Things cannot be great. The only
greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is
almost a mistake. Only a great purpose or a mightier love can justify
the waste.
It is more difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all than,
having sought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It is only
true of a partly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to Love, and
nothing is hard. I believe that Christ's "yoke" is easy. Christ's yoke
is just His way of taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than
any other. I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most
obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in
having and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, _there is
no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving_. Half the
world is on the wrong scent in pursuit of happiness. They think it
consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It
consists in giving, and in serving others. "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 blessed, it is
more happy, to give than to receive."
The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: _Good temper._ "Love is
not provoked."
Nothing could be more striking than to find this here. We are inclined
to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as
a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament,
not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's
character. 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 most 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. You know men
who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but
for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy" disposition. This
compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the
strangest and saddest problems of ethics. The truth is, there are two
great classes of sins--sins of the _Body_ and sins of the
_Disposition_. The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first,
the Elder Brother of the second. Now, society has no doubt whatever as
to which of these is the worse. Its brand falls, without a challenge,
upon the Prodigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one
another's sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but faults
in the higher nature may be less venal than those in the lower, and to
the eye of Him who is Love, a sin against Love may seem a hundred
times more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold,
not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize 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 of childhood, in
short,
FOR SHEER GRATUITOUS MISERY-PRODUCING POWER
this influence stands alone.
Look at the Elder Brother--moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful--let
him get all credit for his virtues--look at this man, this baby,
sulking outside his own father's door. "He was angry," we read, "and
would not go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon the
servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect upon
the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the Kingdom of
God by the unlovely character of those who profess to be inside.
Analyze, as a study in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself as it gathers
upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger,
pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness,
sullenness--these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul.
In varying proportions, also, these are the ingredients of all ill
temper. Judge if such sins of the disposition are not worse to live
in, and for others to live with, than the sins of the body. Did Christ
indeed not answer the question Himself when He said, "I say unto you
that the publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven
before you"? There is really no place in heaven for a disposition like
this. A man with such a mood could only make heaven miserable for all
the people in it. Except, therefore, such a man be
BORN AGAIN,
he cannot, simply _cannot_, enter the kingdom of heaven.
You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not in what it is
alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I 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.
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