The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10: Drummond to Jowett, and General Index
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10: Drummond to Jowett, and General Index
Sermons
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 her own."
Good temper--"Is not easily provoked."
Guilelessness--"Thinketh no evil."
Sincerity--"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in 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.
There is no time to do more than to make a passing note upon each of
these ingredients. Love is 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 wo
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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