WHAT LOVE IS by Prof. Henry Drummond

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 20, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 40.

WHAT LOVE IS.

By Prof. Henry Drummond

LOVE is patience. Love passive. The normal attitude of love—love waiting to begin, not in a hurry, not petulant, not hasty, calm, composed—waiting to begin when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.

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 portion 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 that is not in our keeping, God reserves that for himself; but what he has put in our power is the happiness of our fellow-creatures, and that is to be secured by our being kind.

Generosity. That is love in competition with others. Whenever you have done a good turn, done a good work, you will find other men doing the same kind of work. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to that man who is in the same line as ourselves; a feeling of ill-will, and we hate ourselves for cherishing it. That will spring up the moment you get to your field, be it in this land or in any other land, unless you have learned generosity—to envy not. And then, after having learned that, you have to learn the other thing, to go into the shade, to hide, and not let your right hand know what your left hand has done.

Humility. Love hiding. "Vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." And the fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this summum bonum.

Courtesy. Love in relation to etiquette. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly." Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy has been defined as love in little things. And the secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can take the most untutored persons and put them in society, and if they have love as a reservoir in their heart they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it.

Unselfishness. "Love seeketh not her own." Observe: Seeketh not that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted to his rights. He likes to stand up for his rights, his rights as a man and his rights as an Englishman. And I fancy you have the same kind of patriotism. You stand up for your rights; and every man as an individual or as a citizen feels a sense of property over what he calls his rights. It is the privilege of that man to give up even his rights, if necessary, for the sake of another. "Seeketh not his own." It is easy to give up things that we are not quite certain are our own; but the things that are obviously yours, that are legally yours, that you have earned perhaps by years of labor and sacrifice of trouble or money, to give up those things which are your own, that is the hard thing. And yet the most obvious lesson of the Gospel is that there is no happiness in having and getting, but only in giving. I say, there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving; and half the world is on the wrong scent in the 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.

The next ingredient is also a remarkable one:—

Good temper. "Love is not easily provoked." Now, we are often inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless infirmity. We speak of it as being a mere infirmity of nature, not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's character, a kind of accident, a matter of temperament, and so on. And yet right here, right in the middle of this analysis of love, Paul plants that thing; and the Bible again and again comes to that little infirmity, as we call it, and makes a good deal of it. It is not a little infirmity to smile at. The peculiarity of ill-temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is the one blot on an otherwise noble character.

You know men who are all but perfect, and who would be almost entirely perfect, but you say they are hasty, they are touchy, they are ill-tempered. Now, there is nothing that a Christian has to take more trouble to eradicate forever from his being than ill-temper. It requires the struggle of years, perhaps of a life-time, but it has to be done. It is not to be looked upon as an accident of temperament; but it is a sin, one of the blackest of all the sins. It is the symptom of an unloving nature at bottom; a want of patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of humility, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, all are symbolized in one flash of evil temper. It is the revelation of what is inside a man, and therefore the man who has that must have his whole nature sweetened.

It is not enough to deal with the temper. You must go to the root and sweeten the whole nature, and then temper will die away of itself. But how can a man who has not had a victory over that part of his nature have a part with God's people in this world or in the next world? How is it possible? Why, a man with a temper such as I have described would make Heaven miserable for all the people who are in it; and except such a man be born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Christ says: "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 depths 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.—Prof. Henry Drummond.