bles, that from
which it comes and by which it lives. The fire kindled is cognate
with the fire that kindles; and the love that is in man is like the
love that is in God. It is the climax of his nature; it is the
fulfilling of all duty; it is the crown and jewelled clasp of all
perfection. And so 'abideth faith, hope, love, and the greatest of
these is love.'

III. Lastly, what follows from all this?

First, let us be quite sure that we understand what this abiding love
is. I dare say you have heard people say 'Ah! I do not care much
about Paul's theology. Give me the thirteenth chapter of the first
Epistle to the Corinthians. That is beautiful; that praise of Love;
_that_ comes home to men.' Yes, very beautiful. Are you quite sure
that you know what Paul means by 'love'? I do not use the word
charity, because that lovely word, like a glistening meteor that
falls upon the earth, has a rust, as it were, upon its surface that
dims its brightness very quickly. Charity has come to mean an
indulgent estimate of other people's faults; or, still more
degradingly, the giving of money out of your pockets to other
people's necessities. These are what the people who do not care much
about Paul's theology generally suppose that he means here. But these
do not exhaust his meaning. Paul's notion of love is the response of
the human love to the divine, which divine is received into the heart
by simple faith in Jesus Christ. And his notion of love which never
faileth, and endureth all things, and hopeth all things, is love to
men, which is but one stream of the great river of love to God. If we
rightly understand what he means by love, we shall find that his
praise of love is as theological as anything that he ever wrote. We
shall never get further than barren admiration of a beautiful piece
of writing, unless our love to men has the source and root to which
Paul points us.

Again, let us take this great thought of the permanence of faith,
hope, and love as being the highest conception that we can form of
our future condition. It is very easy to bewilder ourselves with
speculations and theories of another life. I do not care much about
them. The great gates keep their secret well. Few stray beams of
light find their way through their crevices. The less we say the less
likely we are to err. It is easy to let ourselves be led away, by
turning rhetoric into revelation, and accepting the symbols of the
New Testament as if they carried