“The Greatest of These is Love”
By F. W. Robertson
Love is its own perennial fount of strength. The strength of affection is a proof, not of the worthiness of the object, but of the largeness of the soul which loves. Love descends, not ascends. The might of a river depends not on the quality of the soil through which it passes, but on the inexhaustibleness and depth of the spring from which it proceeds. The greater mind cleaves to the smaller with more force than the other to it. A parent loves the child more than the child the parent, and partly because the parent’s heart is larger, not because the child is worthier. The Saviour loved his disciples infinitely more than his disciples loved him, because his heart was infinitely larger. Love trusts on—ever hopes and expects better things; and this a trust springing from itself, and out of its own deeps alone. It is this trusting love that makes men what they are trusted to be, so realizing itself. Would you make men trustworthy? Trust them. Would you make them true? Believe them. . . . It is on this principle that Christ wins the hearts of his redeemed. He trusted the doubting Thomas, and Thomas arose with a faith worthy “of his Lord and his God.” He would not suffer even the lie of Peter to shake his conviction that Peter might love him yet; and Peter answered to that sublime forgiveness. . . . Therefore, come what may, hold fast to love. Though men should rend your heart, let them not embitter or harden it. We win by tenderness; we conquer by forgiveness. O, strive to enter into something of that large, celestial charity which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and which even the overbearing world can not withstand forever! Learn the new commandment of the Son of God—not to love, but to love as he loved. Go forth in this spirit to your life-duties; go forth, children of the Cross, to carry everything before you, and win victories for God by the conquering power of a love like his.