"And now abideth faith, hope, charity: these three; but the greatest of these is charity." — 1 Cor. 13: 13.

The twelfth chapter of this epistle details spiritual gifts. The thirteenth is an exposition of the graces of the Spirit, and the fourteenth is the combining of the two, with regard to utility, or to the edifying of the Church.

This text suggests two contrasts: First, the superiority of grace to gifts, referred to as the "more excellent way"; secondly, the superiority of love to all other gifts and graces.

I. We are to notice the superiority of grace to gifts, whether gifts of grace, of nature, or directly the gifts of the Spirit.

In all ages men have been more liable to be captured by the external than the internal religion. If formalists, the tendency lies in the direction of architecture, music and eloquence. If spiritually-minded, even then liable to pay too much attention to the outward fruit, such as eating, drinking, dress, etc., while both extremes are liable to meet in diverting too much attention away from internal conditions of the heart.

Let us notice, in detail, the superiority of grace.

1. Gifts are varied and unequal. Some may possess but one, others five, and still others ten. They also vary in their importance — some more, some less valuable, and, because of this great variety, there is no proper basis of unity in the gifts; but their very diversity and inequality furnishes a source of strife and disagreement, envy or jealousy, among believers.

Even in Paul's day churches quarrelled, and believers were separated on this matter of gifts and talents in their various pastors. (See 1 Cor. 3: 4.)

The gifts of the Spirit, like those through nature, are dealt out by the inscrutable sovereignty of God. In contrast to this, grace is for all, and for all alike.

The graces are the same in kind in all worlds, and among all races of beings. Repentance, faith, submission, love, patience, and similar graces, are in substance the same among angels, men or children. Here there are no invidious distinctions. Everybody may have pardon and a pure heart full of love. Hence the graces form a bond of union, a source of sympathy throughout the pious universe.

Love is the bond of perfection. We are knit together in love, not in wisdom, or power, or talent; and because of the universality of the graces they are superior to gifts.

2. Gifts are merely instrumental. They are the spiritual machinery of the soul. They are lodged in the mind, the sensibilities, the voice, the body. They are external in their manifestations, more than internal. They do not constitute in themselves character, either good or bad. The implements on a farm by which the soil is tilled are not the staple product. Balaam was really a prophet, and wonderfully endowed with both natural and spiritual gifts, yet they did not make him holy. Judas was wonderfully endowed for the apostolic office, and was with the other apostles when they cast out devils and wrought miracles, while his heart was devoid of grace. A block of ice may transmit sunshine in such a manner as to ignite material substances; so one may be the medium of truth, through His gifts, and not thereby be saved. Paul says we may give our money to magnificent enterprises, and become a voluntary martyr, without love.

But grace enters into the very nature of the soul. It goes deeper than the body, the sensibilities, or the mind. It changes and purines the very fountain of being itself. It creates, nourishes and matures holy character; and because grace constitutes character it is as superior to gifts as the harvest is superior to the implements which aided in its production.

3. Gifts are transitory. They are adapted to this life and our present mode of being. We may have gifts at one period which may not go with us to the end. We may have special facilities, supernatural endowments, and unexplained powers for accomplishing things, which may be held but by a short tenure.

The gift of tongues at Pentecost was not constant. The gifts of faith and of healing and of spiritual discernment may be very great at one time of life, and they may suddenly or gradually pass away from the person having them. " Whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." The gifts mentioned in chapter twelve will not be needed in a heavenly state of being.

In contrast with these endowments, which are transitory, we are told that "love never faileth." Faith, hope and love are to be everlasting residents in the soul, and through all outward changes these change not.

II. We are now to consider the second contrast, and show wherein love is greater than all other gifts and graces.

To do this, let us have a general definition of these three words.

Faith is the apprehension of truth, either truth past or truth in a promise, and a reliance on it.

Hope is the anticipation of good things, or those supposed to be good, in future.

This word "charity," or love, means divine love, and not human. It also means pure love in contradistinction from mixed love, so that in general terms we may define this word "charity" to mean the present fruition of the will of God to us here and now.

Hence, while faith may have to extend over the past, and hope may be nourished on what lies in the future, love, like God, lives in the ever-present. It is a meek and quiet spirit, receiving God's will now and living on that will.

Now, wherein is this love superior to the other graces?

1. Love furnishes the proper limit and boundary of all other graces. It is in that sense the bond, or bandage, of perfection rimming them in. If the soul is lacking in other graces, love pieces them out; or, if there be a redundance or extravagance in the other graces, love curbs them to a proper limit.

It is impossible to be too extreme in pure love; but where love is lacking, the other graces may be pushed into extravagance. Every person who becomes a fanatic is a fanatic for lack, as Wesley puts it, of " lowly, humble, patient love."

Hope may in some things go too far. Hope takes in future events, such as our death, the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the body, or the various fulfillments of prophecy; and if the soul runs out on these lines continuously, it may soon lose the spirit of love, and enter into various forms of fanaticism.

The baptism of the Holy Ghost annihilates space and time to the soul's apprehension, and it may make events which lie thousands of years in the future so real that they may seem on the eve of taking place. Hence many devout souls overbalanced with the hope element, have made almanacs for the second coming of Jesus; they have predicted the time for the rising of the Sun of Righteousness and the tidal wave of the judgment. Others fancy they will not die, but be translated. Others think that the visible Church and the nation are crumbling into ruin, and that special prophecies are being fulfilled; and with these intense views they denounce other saints who do not follow their extravagances, as being devoid of the Spirit. Thus hope has run away with their chariot and wrecked the spirit of love. As long as love governs our hope, it cannot be too full.

In like manner, faith may run at such high pressure or shoot out on certain lines of truth in a way that will be likely to damage our experience and that of other souls. Truth may be apprehended with such intense vividness that unless the soul is filled with patient love, the truth will be handled like a razor in the hands of a madman. Hence the Scriptures tell us not only to speak the truth, but to speak it in love, for even truth, devoid of love, may be ruinous.

The faith by which the sick are healed, if pushed into the extravagant statement that physical healing is parallel with soul salvation, would be ruinous to deep piety; for the moment that we affirm that physical healing is parallel with soul salvation, we will reach the next logical step, that people are sick because they are not holy, and the next logical step will be to reprimand and upbraid the saints who are sick in body as being destitute of the Holy Ghost; and this leads to all manner of rashness and bitterness of speech. There are many eminently holy ones who have poor health in body, and many who have been healed in body have but shallow and transitory piety.

If faith is allowed to go into rash presumption it is liable to be turned into bald skepticism; but if faith works by love, and is under the control of a patient, humble spirit, it will never go too far. Hence love is greater than these graces because it can govern and properly limit them.

2. Love is greater than the ~ other graces because it utilizes them all to edification.

"Love, the divinest of the train,

And sovereign of the rest."

Pure love utilizes all our knowledge, and relinquishes that kind of knowledge which is useless. It utilizes wisdom, not only seeking to do right, but to do right in the very best way.

Paul teaches us that everything is to be done to edification. That which love cannot use it drops or gives no prominence to. Hence trances, dreams, falling in certain postures, inarticulate and loud screaming, odd and singular expressions, and everything in the manner which does not really conduce to good, the spirit of love will seek to weed out.

There are demonstrations of the Spirit and overwhelming displays of God to the soul, which, for the time being may suspend our self-control; there may also be true Scriptural trances, and God may teach individuals through dreams; but if these things become the objects of attention, and are magnified, they cease to be edifying. They come under the head where Paul says, "If ye have an unknown tongue, or a dream, have it to yourself. In the church of God I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that others may be edified, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." Thus love weeds out the useless things, and emphasizes and uses those which are good.

Love gives color and weight and fruit to all religious actions. Our prayers and sermons and songs and money-giving and church, work are valuable, and in the end fruitful in ratio to the love there is in them. It is love that gives specific gravity to all our talents and all our labors.

3. Love is greater than the other graces because it is in this that we preeminently resemble God, and are turned into likeness to His nature. God is love. All His actions originate and terminate in love. Whether He creates worlds or tribes, or redeems or rewards and punishes, all the motions of His infinite will are in love. And when we are so melted and transformed by His Spirit that all our thoughts are loving thoughts, and all our judgments and opinions of men and things are conceived and uttered in a loving spirit, and all our labors are prompted with love to God and our neighbor, it is then that we are fitted by perfect similarity to the divine nature both to do the will of God on earth and to live in everlasting communion with Him in heaven. We never can approximate a resemblance to God in gifts and talents; but in love we may bear His full image. Thus, the greatest of these is love.