nothing_.

II. THE ANALYSIS.

After contrasting Love with these things, Paul, in three verses, very
short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is.

I ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is
like light. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and
pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the
other side of the prism broken up into its component colors--red, and
blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the
rainbow--so Paul passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent
prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side
broken up into its elements.

In these few words we have what one might call

THE SPECTRUM OF LOVE,

the analysis of Love. Will you observe what its elements are? Will you
notice that they have common names; that they are virtues which we
hear about every day; that they are things which can be practised by
every man in every place in life; and how, by a multitude of small
things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the _summum bonum_, is
made up?

The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients:

Patience "Love suffereth long."
Kindness "And is kind."
Generosity "Love envieth not."
Humility "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."
Courtesy "Doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness "Seeketh not its own."
Good temper "Is not provoked."
Guilelessness "Taketh not account of evil."
Sincerity "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth
with the truth."

Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness;
good temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make up the supreme
gift, the stature of the perfect man.

You will observe that all are in relation to men, in relation to life,
in relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the
unknown eternity. We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke much of
love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ made
much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or added thing, but
the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal
spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, in short, is
not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the
multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common
day.

_Patience_. This is