“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. “Add to your faith virtue.” The word virtue here means courage and fortitude. The Greeks were a warlike people. With them cowardice was the greatest vice, and courage the greatest virtue. Christianity took this word and lifted it, as it did many other Greek words, out of the mere physical realm, into the spiritual. While not excluding the physical courage, it here means that higher spiritual courage and fortitude which dares to do right and to continue steadfast in the right under all circumstances. Without faith this is impossible. Moses was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, and Egypt stood at the very front of the world’s civilization. He was heir to the throne of the Pharaohs. Held in abject bondage under his taskmasters was a race of despised slaves. The truth of the unity of Deity is the most sublime and the most sacred truth that the human mind and heart has ever known. This truth the Egyptians had once known, but they had departed far from it into the grossest polytheism. In his study Moses discovered these facts, and his soul was thrilled with this truth; he saw also that the Israelites, tho held in slavery, were the one people who stood for this sublime truth before the world. He stepped down from the throne of Egypt, refused the honor of being called Pharaoh’s son, and took his place with those slaves to stand with the truth. What gave him the courage to do it? We are told that “He had ‘respect unto the recompense of the reward.’” While not denying that Egypt, with its temples and pyramids, and worldly honors, and magnificent ceremonials, was good to the carnal eye and heart, he saw that it was all transient, and faith beheld the “far more exceeding and ‘eternal weight of glory;” faith grasped the eternal city with its infinite and eternal and soul-satisfying love. Because Moses had faith, he had also courage. The time for such heroic decisions is not yet passed in this world, but will come, sooner or later, to each soul. Ah, then, we, too, shall need faith in order to have courage! “And to courage knowledge.” Sometimes it seems to me that the devil, the world, and the church have all combined to keep men in ignorance, while the Lord says, “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” Men write out their little creeds, and look askance with scorn, and socially, politically, and financially ostracize the man who dares to think and believe beyond the narrow boundaries they have established. And all the while beyond these barriers which pride and bigotry have raised, the infinite ocean of divine truth and limitless love lies all unexplored. In order to gain the knowledge which God would gladly give to each soul, one must have faith enough to get courage enough to dare to walk alone with God. To that soul God will verify His promise, “I will give you the ‘Spirit of Truth, ‘. . . and He shall guide you into all the truth.’” “And to knowledge temperance,” or self-control. One can readily see that self-control depends upon knowledge,—the knowledge first of our own weakness, and then of God’s willingness and power. “And to temperance patience.” Without temperance, or self-control, it is clear that it is impossible to be patient. Patience is not one of the striking virtues like courage or heroism, but it is the secret charm of a beautiful life. We visit some grand scene in nature, and at first we are impressed only with the towering rocks and the yawning chasms. It is only after repeated visits and much thought that we discover that much of the secret charm of the place depends upon some little ferns growing out of a crevice high up, or upon some delicate tinting of the rocks, which has come only by years and years of frost and sunshine and shadow. So patience is the secret charm of that perfect life of Him who “was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and ‘as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not His mouth.’” “And to patience godliness.” Godliness is God-likeness, and this is but the sublimity of patience. How it tests our patience if some one lies about us and misrepresents us before our friends! But Satan lied about God in the beginning, and all the mythologies, and all the theologies of the world have picked up those lies and perpetrated them. The best of us are only beginning to be able to testify now and then in the social meeting without misrepresenting God, and charging up to Him much of the misery which has resulted from our own and others’ misdeeds. And all the while God has been patiently waiting through the centuries for the time to come when truth and love shall finally, grandly, eternally, universally triumph over falsehood and hate. “And to godliness brotherly kindness.” Now we are getting up into the neighborhood of charity, where we can begin to smell the aroma of this lily of the valley. There are two English words “kind.” We spell them alike and pronounce them alike, but we are wont to consider them entirely separate words. We speak of a kind of wheat, and we speak of a kind man. In reality the words are the same word from the old English kinned or related. The kind man is the man who owns his kinship to all men, and treats them as tho they were, as indeed they are, brothers. Than brotherly kindness, there is only one grace higher, and that is charity. “And to brotherly kindness [add] charity.” What is charity? Some one replies that it is love, and that the word is so translated in the Revised Version. Yes, but what kind of love? I love my wife and my children; is this charity? They surely would not like to think so. We all love our friends. Is this charity?—Most certainly not. What kind of love, then, is charity? Let us illustrate. A mother has a family of children. There is John and Henry and Mary and Tom and perhaps others that I have not counted. The other children are all right, but Tom is a bad boy. He drinks and stays out late nights in bad company, and sometimes almost curses his mother to her face. The neighbors all say there is no hope for him; that he is an irreclaimable reprobate. How does mother feel about Tom? Does she hate and condemn him with the rest of the world?—Ah no! God help him if she does. But mother does not. She thinks more about Tom than about any of the other children, for she has to think about him when all the others are safely in bed, and she does not know where he is. It often happens that mother, in thinking more about Tom than about any other child, comes to think more of Tom than of the other children. And mother thinks more of Tom than any one else does, because she has studied him with love’s keen and sympathetic eyes till she sees possibilities of good in him which no one else sees. When all others speak against Tom, mother constantly says, “I don’t know, ‘somehow I think there is yet hope; and that Tom will make a man ‘yet, only give him time, and a good man, too.” Ah! love’s keen eyes can see good in embryo, and so discover possibilities that to all others are hidden. What a blessed thing it is that a mother looks thus upon a child with perennial hope and faith! Would it not be more blessed still if this way of looking at men and women extended beyond the family circle, including uncles and aunts and cousins and second cousins and thirty-second cousins until it reached the whole race, which is one in Adam? Would not this transform even this old earth into a heaven! This is charity,—the love that has no place for cruel criticism and condemnation6the love that sees good in the embryo, that beholds the ideal, and discovers possibilities that are hidden to other eyes by the rubbish and weeds of present evil.