XXI.

THE PRE-EMINENCE OF CHARITY.

"And above all things have fervent oherity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins."-1 PETER iv. 8.

THE grace of charity is exalted as the highest attainment of the Christian life by St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John. These three men were very different from each other. Each was the type of a distinct order of character. And it is a proof that the Gospel is from God, and that the sacred writings are inspired from a single Divine source, that personal peculiarities are not placed foremost in them, but the foremost place is given by each to a grace which certainly was not the characteristic quality of all the three.

It is said in these modern days that Christianity was a system elaborated by human intellect. Men, they say, philosophized, and thought it out. Christianity, it is maintained, like ethics, is the product of human reason. Now had this been true, we should have found the great teachers of Christianity each exalting that particular quality which was most remarkable in his own temperament. Just as the English honor truthfulness, and the French brilliancy, and the Hindoos subtlety, and the Italians finesse, and naturally, because these are predominant in themselves, we should have found the Apostles insisting most strongly on those graces which grew most naturally in the soil of their own hearts.

Indeed in a degree it is so. St. John's character was tender, emotional, and contemplative. Accordingly, his writings exhibit the feeling of religion, and the predominance of the inner life over the outer.

St. Paul was a man of keen intellect, and of soaring

and aspiring thought which would endure no shackles on its freedom. And his writings are full of the two subjects we might have expected from this temperament. He speaks a great deal of intellectual gifts; very much of Christian liberty.

St. Peter was remarkable for personal courage. A soldier by nature: frank, free, generous, irascible. In his writings, accordingly, we find a great deal said about martyrdom.

But each of these men, so different from each other, exalts love above his own peculiar quality. It is very remarkable. Not merely does each call charity the highest, but each names it in immediate connection with his own characteristic virtue, and declares it to be more divine.

St. John, of course, calls love the heavenliest. That we expect, from St. John's character. "God is love. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God." "No man

hath seen God at any time: if we love one another, God dwelleth in us.

But St. Paul expressly names it in contrast with the two feelings for which he was personally most remarkable, and, noble as they are, prefers it before them. First, in contrast with intellectual gifts. Thus, 1 Cor. xii., "Covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet show I unto you a more excellent way: though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and have not charity, it is nothing." Gifts are nothing in comparison of charity. Again, "We know that we all have knowledge: knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up.' Knowledge is nothing in comparison.

Next, in comparison of that liberty which was so dear to him. Christian liberty permitted the converts the use of meats, and the disregard of days from which the strict law of Judaism had debarred them. Well but there were cases in which the exercise of that liberty might hurt the scruples of some weak Christian brother, or lead him to imitate the example against his conscience. "If thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Liberty said, You have a right to indulge; but Charity said, Refrain.

So that, according to St. Paul, there is one thing, and one only, to which Christian liberty must be sacrificed. That one is Christian love.

Now let us see how St. Peter does honor to the same grace, at the expense of that which we should have expected him to reckon the essential grace of manhood. Just before the text, we find the command, "Be sober, and watch unto prayer." This is a sentence out of St. Peter's very heart. For in it we have prayer represented as the night-watch of a warrior, armed, who must not sleep his watch away. "Be sober, and watch,

the language of the soldier and the sentinel; words which remind you of him who drew his sword to defend his Master, and who in penitence remembered his own. disastrous sleep when he was surprised as a sentry at his post. But immediately after this," And, above all things, have fervent charity amongst yourselves." Sobriety, self-rule, manhood, courage, yes; but the life of them all, says St. Peter, the very crown of manhood, without which sobriety is but prudent selfishness, and courage is but brute instinct, is Love.

Now I take that unanimity as a proof that the Gospel comes from one Living Source. How came St. Peter and St. John, so different from each other, and St. Paul, who had had almost no communion with either of them, to agree, and agree so enthusiastically, in this doctrine,

Love is over all and above all; above intellect, freedom, courage, —unless there had streamed into the mind and heart of each one of them Light from One Source, even from Him the deepest principle of Whose Being, and the law of Whose life and death, were love?

We are to try, to-day, to understand this sentence of St. Peter. It tells us two things,

I. What charity is.
II. What charity does.

I. What charity is.

It is not easy to find one word in any language which

rightly and adequately represents what Christ and his Apostles meant by charity. All words are saturated with some imperfect meaning. Charity has become identified with almsgiving. Love is appropriated to one particular form of human affection, and that one with which self and passion mix inevitably. Philanthropy is a word too cold and negative.

Let us define Christian charity in two sentences: 1. The desire to give. 2. The desire to bless.

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1. The desire to give. Let each man go deep into his own heart. Let him ask what that mysterious longing means which we call love, whether to man or God, when he has stripped from it all that is outside and accidental; when he has taken from it all that is mixed with it and perverts it. Not in his worst moments, but in his best, what did that yearning mean? I say it meant the desire to give. Not to get something, but to give something. And the mightier, the more irrepressible this yearning was, the more truly was his love love. To give, whether alms in the shape of money, bread, or a cup of cold water, or else self. But be sure, sacrificè, in some shape or other, is the impulse of love, and its restlessness is only satisfied and only gets relief in giving. For this, in truth, is God's own love, the will and the power to give. It is more

blessed to give than to receive." Therefore God is the only blessed One, because He alone gives and never receives. The universe, teeming with life, is but God's Love expressing itself. He creates life by the giving of Himself. He has redeemed the world by the giving of His Son. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." The death of Christ was sacrifice. The Life of God is one perpetual sacrifice, or giving of Himself and shedding forth of His Spirit. Else it would not be love.

And so, when the poor sinful woman gave her costly ointment with a large profuseness, Christ saw in it an evidence of love. "She loved much." For love gives. 2. The desire to bless.

All love is this in a degree. Even weak and spuri

ous love desires happiness of some kind for the creature that it loves. Almsgiving is often nothing more than indolence. We give to the beggar in the street to save ourselves the trouble of finding out fitter objects. Still, indolent as it is, it is an indolent desire to prevent pain.

What we call philanthropy is often calm and cool, too calm and cool to waste upon it the name of charity. But it is a calm and cool desire that human happiness were possible. It is in its weak way a desire to bless. Now, the love whereof the Bible speaks, and of which we have but one perfect personification, viz., in the Life of Christ, is the desire for the best and true blessedness of the being loved. It wishes the well-being of the whole man, body, soul, and spirit; but chiefly spirit.

Therefore, He fed the poor with bread. Therefore, He took His disciples into the wilderness to rest when they were weary. Therefore, "He gave Himself for us, that we, being dead unto sin, might live unto righteousness." For the Kingdom of God is not bread only and repose, which constitute physical happiness, but goodness, too; for that is blessedness.

And the highest love is, therefore, the desire to make men good and godlike; it may wish, as a subordinate attainment, to turn this earth into a paradise of comfort by mechanical inventions; but far above that, to transform it into a Kingdom of God, the domain of love, where men cease to quarrel and to envy, and to slander and to retaliate. "This, also, we wish," said St. Paul, even your perfection.'

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Concerning this charity we remark two points: 1. It is characterized as fervent. 2. It is capable of being cultivated.

1. "Fervent."

Literally, intense, unremitting, unwearied. Now, there is a feeble sentiment which wishes well to all so long as it is not tempted to wish them ill, which does well to those who do well to them. But this being merely sentiment will not last. Ruffle it, and it becomes vindictive. In contrast with that St. Peter calls Christ's spirit, which loves those who hate it, "fervent