A Devotion by Henry Drummond
Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
—1 Corinthians 13:13
Isn’t life full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. If people do not exercise their arms they develop no biceps muscles; if they do not exercise their souls, they acquire no muscle in the soul, no strength of character, no vigor of moral fiber nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, vigorous expression of the whole, round Christian character—the Christlike nature in its fullest development. And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice.
Paul’s reason for singling out love as the supreme possession is this: it lasts. “Love,” urges Paul, “never fails.”
Some think the time may come when two of these three things will also pass away—faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul does not say so. But what is certain is that love must last. God, the eternal God, is love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage that will be current in the universe when all the other coinages of the nations of the world will be useless and unhonored. You will give yourselves to many things—give yourselves to love. Let at least the first great object of our lives be to achieve the character—and it is the character of Christ—that is built around love.
How many of you will join me in reading this chapter once a week for the next three months? You might begin by reading it every day. Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to.
It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world shall be gathered. It is in the presence of humanity that we shall be charged. And the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it, will silently judge each one. Be not deceived. The words that all of us shall one day hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines but of shelter and clothing, not of Bibles and prayer books but of cups of cold water in the name of Christ. Everyone who loves is born of God.