“THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD.”
By G. E. Fifield
[Sermon by Pastor G. E. Fifield, preached at the camp-meeting at Ellsworth, Me., 1900, and written out for publication in the SIGNS, by request of the editor, who was present.] TEXT.—“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” 1 Cor. 13:13. Love’s Transforming Power.
THIS is the love of God, and in this love is our only hope. We read, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.” The word “world” is in the original “cosmos.” Cosmos means order, arrangement, symmetry, beauty. But the world was out of order, out of harmony, out of symmetry, almost a chaos instead of a cosmos. But underneath the rubbish of evil, underneath the chaos which sin had made, God’s keen eyes of love saw the beauty of the possible cosmos, and loved it so that He gave His own life in His Son to bring it out and make it eternal. In the very beginning of the inspired Word we read that “the Spirit of God brooded over the chaos.” Ah! this brooding love, this love not of what is, but of what is to be, this love not of the present, but of the possible. Why does the hen brood over the eggs? Why but that she may bring out the possible chick? Why does she brood over the little chick? Why but that she may develop it into the possible hen? It is thus that God’s love even now broods over the chaos in every human heart, that it may bring forth the new creation where all is joy and beauty eternal. It was thus that Jesus, in manifesting the love of God, brooded over the rebellious Jewish nation. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings! and ye would not!” This is the love of God. When the Scripture speaks of the love of God, it does not mean simply our love to God, but rather God’s love in us, and acting the same in us that it does in Him,—giving itself here in and through us for others to bring out the possible in them. This is the only true way of looking at men. Even of the best men, John says, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” The best man, then, is but an embryo of some future glory beyond our utmost dreaming. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man” the full glory that God hath prepared for him. Christ is the light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. So, also, in the worst man, until he entirely crucifies it, is the germ of this Christ life,—this eternal and beautiful life. Each man, then, is a promise and prophecy of some future possible glory. How this heightens the interest with which we should behold men. I go out into the fields and woods, and pick up first a little pebble, and then an egg from some song-bird’s nest. Which is the most interesting object? They are of the same size, and shape, and color, and degree of smoothness. Why is the egg so much more interesting? It is because now I see the pebble at its best estate, it will never be anything but a pebble, but the egg is a prophecy of future glory. Give it a chance, and it will develop into a beautiful song-bird to sail the air and pour forth its song of praise. So man, suffering, sinning man, takes on a new interest and a new glory when we behold him thus. Carlyle beautifully says, “With other eyes could I now behold my fellow-men, with an infinite love, an infinite pity. Poor wandering, wayward man! Art thou not tired and beaten with stripes even as I am, and ever, whether thou wearest the royal mantle or the beggar’s garbardine, thou art so weary and so heavy laden, and thy bed of rest is but a grave. O my brother, my brother! why can I not take thee in my bosom and wipe all thy tears away! Man with his so mad wants and so mean endeavors had become the dearer to me, and even for his sufferings and his sins I now first named him brother.” Every man, look we but keenly enough, carries written in his face the tragedy, the comedy, the history of a human life, with its struggles, its hopes, its fears, its joys and disappointments; but alas, this is all written in the hieroglyphics of the heart, and in these days of commercialism, when the veins of too many men seem to run not a warm life blood, but a sort of detestable copperas banker’s ink, this is becoming an unknown tongue. A few years ago men did not understand the arrow-head inscriptions. The men of Assyria and Babylonia seemed an infinite distance removed from us in the misty labyrinths of a traditionary past. Yet the rocks of their native lands were covered with these inscriptions. Men were not even sure that they were a language. But the Orientalists reproduced the language and the grammar of a far-off age, and, translating these inscriptions, wrote the history of those peoples till they now seem to us real and near and a part of the human brotherhood. O, that some new student, learned in the lore of human experience, might decipher these heart hieroglyphics, and so bring us sympathetically nearer to the sinning, suffering brotherhood of the human race. It is well that we do not understand these signs while we are selfish ourselves, for we would misuse the knowledge we should gain. But Christ will become our interpreter as we partake of His Spirit, and under His tuition we may become so keen of vision as to see Him in all men. For is He not there? Did He not say that His life was the true light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world? and, Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye do it unto Me? Only the pure in heart can see God. If I can not see Him, it is not that He is not omnipresent, but it is the evidence of my own impurity and consequent blindness. Jesus lived the life of God perfectly here in human flesh. He said, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” But the jealous, envious, self-seeking Jews put Him to death because they said He had a devil. Hatred and envy can look straight in the face of God and see a devil there. But “blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.” We go too far to find God and render Him service. He is not in heaven only, that we should ascend to bring Him down. He is not in the deep, that we should go down to bring Him up. He is nigh thee. We try to push our love off into space, hoping it will find Him somewhere; but it is here in the persons of the sinning and the suffering that He is hungry and thirsty for our love. You have all heard of the legend of the Holy Grail so beautifully4wrought into poetic verse by James Russell Lowell in “The Vision of Sir Launfall.” The Holy Grail was the bowl out of which Christ partook of the last supper with His disciples. It had been lost, and whoever should find it would perform a meritorious act, and, in finding the Grail, they would find the Lord. As I remember the poem, Sir Launfall took upon himself the pledge to leave his ancestral home in pursuit of the Grail and never return until he had found it. One bright June morning, splendidly mounted on a magnificent charger, he left the palace and the castle of his fathers, and went upon his search. As he rode down the hill from his home, he saw a beggar cowering in the street, and asking an alms. Sir Launfall flung the coin to him haughtily, with averted face, and went upon his way. For many, many years he searched, ever with failure and loss and disappointment. He did not find the Holy Grail. He did not find the Lord. Finally, grown old and poor and weary and discouraged in his fruitless search, he turned back toward his childhood’s home. In his heart he said, “I took upon myself the pledge never to go back to the old home till I had found the Grail; but it is of no use for me to seek longer. I may as well give up the pledge, and see the old place once more before I die.” So one bleak December morning finds him, worn and weary and old, slowly climbing on foot the hill to the old mansion. At the same turn in the road he finds a beggar as disreputable looking as the one he barely remembers of old. He said to himself, “Well, here is a failure, a disgusting failure,” and was about to pass by. Then the thought came to him as he looked at himself, “Well, here is another failure. Am I not a failure, a disgusting failure too?” His heart had to own that he was. A feeling of sympathy grew in his heart for the poor beggar. It was as if he said to himself, “Well, there are two of us here, two of a kind.” He felt in his pocket for his last coin. He gave it to the beggar, and this time he gave his heart with the coin. It went out to the beggar in sympathy and love. The legend says that instantly the old beggar was transformed into the image of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and he found there at his very door what he had sought in vain all the years of weary wandering. Ah yes! we seek too far for the Lord. He is all around us in the persons of His suffering ones; and it is here that He most needs our love. That this love which gives itself to bring out the possible in others is the real meaning of the word “charity” in my text, every verse of the chapter from which it is taken shows. “Tho I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. And tho I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and tho I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And tho I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and tho I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” All this, without the motive of love in the heart, is external and formal. Men have become so proud because they were humble that they would stand for years on a pillar and let the people worship them. But spiritual pride is not love, but rather the meanest kind of pride. No motive but this love of which we have spoken will ever accomplish the work which we as a people have undertaken under God. It is love only which will preach this Gospel of the kingdom in all lands. All other motives are the strange fire which desecrates the altar. If anything I say to you to-day shall be of permanent benefit to you, it will not be because of any beauty or eloquence of language; it will rather be because some of the love which the blessed Christ has put into my heart has thrilled along the line of the words which I have spoken, and so got into your heart to abide there. “Charity suffereth long.” Yes, says some one, “I have suffered long.” Well that is not enough. Did you keep sweet about it? That is the real question. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind.” “Charity envieth not.” Envy is the feeling of discomfort that comes to us when we see others advanced in positions of power and trust. But how can we feel that discomfort if we love them so as to be willing even to give our lives to bring out these capabilities, and make them worthy of such advancement? Nothing is clearer now than that charity can not envy. “Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.” The egotist is always the small man. He is so narrow and near-sighted for lack of love that he does not see the good in others, and so imagines that it is all centered in himself. Charity sees so much good in all men that it can not but keep humble. Charity: “doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil.” Charity, as we have seen, is too busy seeking the good of others, too full of love for all, ever to be selfish or petulant. How can she think evil, when she is thinking good of all men, and wishing good for all men. She would rather be mistaken a thousand times in thinking a man good when he is really evil, than once in thinking him evil when he is good. He that thinks good of one helps to make him good, and is a part of God’s great plan to save him; while he who thinks evil of a man is a part of Satan’s plan to destroy him. Charity “rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.” How often we see a pious (?) church-member who, when some one has fled to Canada, perhaps with another man’s wife, or with some money that is not his own, can not wait to do up the breakfast dishes. She must leave them standing while she goes the rounds of the neighborhood telling every one the delicious morsel of scandal, and, because she wants a monopoly of it all herself, making each one promise not to tell. This is rejoicing in iniquity. Sometimes I have thought it would be impossible to hold a successful tea party or sewing circle in the New Jerusalem. There will be no moral or spiritual corpses there to dissect, and, thank God, there will be no one there who wishes the employment of dissecting them. Charity refuses to believe evil until compelled to by the evidence, and then receives the word with reluctance, with tears. Charity “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. . . . When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Prophecies were only the secondary means of communion with God when sin had denied us the first. With them we see here as through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. We know not, perhaps, in what language man first spoke of God and sung His praise. We do know that sin, beginning at Babel and extending to the present time, has been the separating, confusing power which has divided and multiplied earth’s languages, thus breaking up the human brotherhood. Some day all these languages will give place to that one perfect and universal speech in which eternity can best hymn God’s praise. Then there will be no longer Jew or Greek, but all will be one in Christ Jesus. Our knowledge, too, it shall vanish away. True, all truth is eternal; for God is the truth. But we know so little as yet of the absolute truth. We talk learnedly of gravitation and of electricity, and we know not even what they are. We hide our ignorance, even from ourselves, under sounding words, and so feel wise. An ordinary lamp will illuminate our bed-chamber so we can see to disrobe; but if we set it, still burning, in the eastern window while we sleep, when we awake, and the great sun has arisen, flooding the earth with its light, we shall notice that in those powerful rays the very flame of that lamp will cast a shadow on the wall. It is thus that our little knowledge will vanish away in the great in-coming flood-tide of eternal truth, when “we shall know even as also we are known.” Shall we not pray with the poet, “Awake, winds of heaven, and blow
The mists of earth away;
Shine out, O Light divine, and show
How wide and far we stray.” After all these things have vanished with this child-life, charity, love, such as we have sought to describe, will be the language and law of eternity and of heaven. Surely, “Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”