Hope is a grand essential quality to be sought for in missionaries. Despondency clogs exertion more and more, as it sinks, until it reach despair, and then exertion entirely ceases. Other things being equal, a hopeful Christian will be a better witness for God in the heathen's sight than a desponding one. Hope is the mainspring of laboring love—hope in the Lord, first for yourself and then for your neighbor. There is a lion on the path of every one who would go forth upon the world to win souls to the Savior. The savage African will not give earnest heed to anything; the subtle Asiatics expend all their earnestness on idols. Unbelief is graven in the very being of the Jews by the uninterrupted habits and prejudices of sixty generations; and, mystery of iniquity, throughout the jurisdiction of Rome, a consummate knowledge is successfully wielded to propagate and perpetuate a consummate ignorance.
Among ourselves, the young are vain, and the aged covetous; the rich are proud, and the poor regardless. On a survey of the field, they who walk by sight pronounced effort vain; and desponding Christians, although they say less, will not do more. But one hopeful, loving heart will chase a thousand of these difficulties, as wind drives smoke, away. He who trusts in Christ walks by faith; and he who walks by faith will hope; and he who hopes will love; and he who loves will work; and he who works will win-will win souls to God.
Thirdly, the superior magnitude of the last” the greatest of these is love.”
In two distinct aspects love is the greatest of all—in its work on earth, and its permanence in heaven.
In its work on earth it is the only one of the three that reaches other men, and directly acts upon them for their good. “Thy faith hath saved thee,” Christian! but what can it do for thy brother? It does not reach him. It is a secret in your own breast. Its power is great, but it is the power of a root, not of a branch. It operates by sustaining and stimulating other graces. Specifically and expressly, “faith worketh by love.”
Hope, in like manner, begins and ends in the heart of a disciple. These two departments of the kingdom lie “within” its loyal subjects. They send forth other missionaries, but do not themselves go forth. Such is the nature of both faith and hope that they will not thrive if they are frequently exposed to view. Do not show me thy faith or thy hope; but show me, by love's suffering and doing, that both love's blessed constituents prosper in your soul. The less that your hope, as such, protrudes itself on the notice of mankind, the better for its own health; but the more it swells within your breast, the more of love will it send forth to bless the world.
On the contrary, it is the nature of love to come out. Unless it act, and act on others, it cannot be. Love does not begin and end with the lover. Its essence is an outgoing. These three exercises of a human spirit have objects which they grasp, each its own. Faith fastens on Christ, hope on heaven, but love on humankind. It will not, it cannot let the world alone. All the neighbors know it, feel it. Love is like Him who “went about doing good.”
Thus, in its actual contact with the world and time, love is the largest of the three. Love teaches the ignorant, clothes the naked, feeds the hungry. Love reproves sin, withdraws temptation, leads back the wanderer to the path of righteousness. Love translates the Bible into every human tongue, and strives to introduce it into every human dwelling. Love is the fulfilling of that law which came latest from the Lord's own lips, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature.”
A tree stands in a lawn alone, and has stood there while three generations of its owners have successively been carried past it to the grave. It grows in a sheltered spot, and in a generous soil. Having no neighbors near, it has occupied the ground with its own roots, and the air with its own branches. You observe the tree from a distance, and pronounce it a lovely object in the landscape; but you see only the branches. It appears as one great symmetrical mass of green, globular or conical, according to its kind, towering high into heaven above, and beneath, leaning on the sward all round. It has, you know, a strong straight stem bearing, and a deep, wide-spread root, nourishing all these branches; but the stem and the root are invisible. As you come nearer you may get glimpses of the stem, and by digging in the earth you may discover and expose the roots. But both of these are in position withdrawn from view, and in bulk diminutive. The roots, the stem, the branching top—these three constitute the tree-but the greater of these, for beauty or for fruitfulness—the greatest of these is the collective head of leafy, blossoming, fruit-producing branches.
Precisely such an object on the broad field of scripture is this thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. At the bottom, living and life-giving, but small in dimensions, and almost concealed from view, you find faith and hope, the nourishing root and supporting stem; but love springs up and spreads out on every side, and fills the observer's eye. Behold the multitudinous, miscellaneous, intertwined and radiating branches; how sweet-scented and fruitful each; how great and gorgeous the united whole! “Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”
In its permanence in heaven. Faith and hope are unspeakably precious to [those who were] sinners; but in their present form at least they are in their nature partial and temporary. If there had been no sin they would not have been needed; and when sin has been completely removed, they will be needed no more. It is true that in faith and hope grow all the love which constitute the heaven of the redeemed; but it is equally true that when love is perfect, the faith and hope which bore it will disappear.
On this side, the terrestrial image of the spiritual fact is found, not in the tree which flourishes as freshly as ever after the grandson of its planter has been gathered to his fathers in a good old age; but in the feebler, yet twofold more precious and necessary grain stalks which germinate, and fructify, and die, within the compass of a year. In spring and summer the tender roots and soft green stems of his field absorb all the care of the husbandman. His life is bound up in these, and he cherishes them accordingly. If these fail, all is lost. But in autumn, when the ripened grain is stored in safety, he sees, without regret, both roots and stems rolling into dust. Such, in relation to eternity, are the faith and hope which grow from the seed of the word in broken hearts during the preparatory season of time. When the love which they bear is fully ripe it will be stored to keep forever, and they will be left behind. “Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”
Nor is there any cause for jealousy in this sisterhood of grace. To make love great—to make love greatest—does not make faith less. The more precious the ripened fruit is discovered to be, the more value will be set upon the only root which bears it. Love is greatest; and of that greatest thing none worthy of the name is owned by men on earth or in heaven, except that which has grown on faith. Does not this doctrine magnify the office of faith?
On the other hand, does anyone comfort himself with the thought that he possesses faith, the one essential for a sinful creature, although he is, in point of fact, neglecting the labor which love both demands and supplies? What is his faith? A root that bears nothing: a stump. “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him” (James 2:1414What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? (James 2:14))? Faith, if it hath not the “works” on which all true love ever toils, “is dead, being alone.”
Those who draw their life from Christ may well expand their strength in his cause. “Rooted in him” (Col. 2:77Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:7)), they have access to all the fullness of the Godhead bodily: they might—they should be— “fat and flourishing.” Getting much through faith from the world's Savior, they should do much by love for a sinful world. If the hidden root be living, the ripening fruit should be good and great. W. A.