EPISTLE FOR QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY.

1 CORINTHIANS XIII. 1-13.

1 IF I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become but sounding brass or a clanging 2 cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove 3 mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And if I feed others with all my substance, and if I surrender my body that I may be burned, and have not charity, I am 4 nothing profited. Charity is longsuffering, and kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not herself; is not 5 puffed up; is not unmannerly; seeketh not her own; is not 6 provoked; reckoneth not evil; rejoiceth not at iniquity, but 7 rejoiceth with the truth; covereth all things, believeth all 8 things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but, whether it be prophesyings, they will be abolished; or tongues, they will cease; or knowledge, it will be abolished. 9, 10 For in part we know, and in part we prophesy; and, when

ever the perfect has come, that which is in part will be abo11 lished. When I was a child, I talked as a child, I felt1 as a

child, I reasoned as a child: when I have become a man, 1 12 have abolished the things of the child. For we see now by a

mirror, in riddle; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know fully, even as also I was fully 13 known. But at present there remaineth faith, hope, charity, these three things; and the greatest of these is charity.

1 Literally, I was minded as a child; that is, my sentiments (thoughts and feelings) were those of a child.

SERMON VI.

PRESENT KNOWLEDGE AND FUTURE.

1 CORINTHIANS XIII. 12.

For now we see through a glass, darkly: but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even us also I am known.

1

VI.

WE reach to-day what may be called, without SERMON
disparagement to others, the most beautiful of all
the Sunday Epistles. That short chapter which
records the workings and celebrates the praises of
charity or Christian love, has been familiar to all
of us from childhood. If it had been always made,
as it ought to have been, the touchstone of Chris-
tianity in communities and in individuals; if the
confession of a true faith had been made to consist
less in the correct enunciation of abstruse doctrine,
and more in the watchful maintenance of a spirit
of love, it would have been well for the cause of
Christ on earth, and well for the souls of His people
both in this world and in that which is to come. Let
us pray for a special blessing on the brief considera-
tion of this glorious passage to-day.

This chapter forms what a human critic might call

H

SERMON an episode in the Epistle. But not on that account

VI.

is it without its link before and after. St. Paul is speaking of those spiritual gifts, on the possession of which the congregation at Corinth was so much priding itself; priding itself with little appreciation either of the aim of all gifts-the spiritual good of others or of the relative value of the various gifts 1Cor.xii.31. as measured by this standard. Covet earnestly, he says in the last verse of the preceding chapter, the greater gifts; that is, the higher and the better because the more practical and profitable gifts; and yet show I unto you a more excellent way: there is something higher and greater yet than any gift: take heed that ye miss not that one straight unerring road to life, from which there are so many paths diverging, which end not in life but in death. Now follow the train of thought thus introduced.

Verse 1.

Verse 2.

There is a very showy and a very marvellous gift, by which a man, under the influence of the Almighty Spirit, may speak to a congregation gathered from all parts of the earth in the very tongue wherein each was born. And yet he might speak thus every language and every dialect both of heaven and earth, and, lacking withal the spirit of a living love, be found, for any practical purpose, the utterer of unmeaning sounds, like those of the echoing brass or the clanging cymbal. And there is another gift, higher than the former, even that power of prophesying, which is the intelligent utter

VI.

ance, under Divine direction, of the revealed secrets of SERMON the Gospel and there is, yet beyond this, that supernatural gift of faith by which a man, in his Master's service, may bid the very mountain, which opposes his progress, to be removed and cast into the sea: and yet, in either case, the possessor of these mighty powers may be destitute of a gentler influence, the voice of love within; and, if so, if he be indeed so, all his prodigies of speech and action will have been, for himself, in vain he is nothing; nothing in the sight of God, nothing in the awards of eternity. And there is yet Verse 3. a quality which approaches very closely indeed in form and feature to the blessed principle of charity; so closely that in the later days of the Church it shall even take its name and reap its honour; there is a liberality of almsgiving, which may go to great lengths of self-denial, even to the bestowal of all that a man has upon the relief, in soul or body, of the destitute; and there is a zeal too of devotion, which may carry a man to martyrdom in defence of what he deems, and perhaps justly deems, to be the cause of truth and right: and yet neither the one nor the other of these is charity; both the one and the other may be wholly dissevered from charity: and, if it be so, if it be indeed so, then shall it profit a man nothing to have possessed and displayed either this or that, in the day when God looks for one thing, and can accept in its stead no substitute and no counterfeit.

SERMON

VI.

Verse 4.

Verse 5.

Verse 6.

Verse 7.

And what then is that great grace, on the possession of which all depends? How shall I trace its features, so that you may hold up the mirror to yourselves, and see whether they are your likeness or no?

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Charity suffereth long, and is kind: charity envieth not: charity vaunteth not herself; makes no display: is not puffed up; is not vain, is not conceited: doth not behave herself unseemly; is not rude, arrogant, or unmannerly seeketh not her own; is not selfish, is no self-seeker is not provoked:1 reckoneth not evil; does not put down a wrong in her account, as though it needed to be paid off by retaliation: rejoiceth not at iniquity, has no pleasure in reading or hearing of another's ill-doing, another's crime or folly, but, on the contrary, rejoiceth with the truth, shares, as it were, in the joy of the truth, of righteousness and of good, when a triumph is vouchsafed to it in the world of human conflict: covereth all things by a merciful reticence, believeth all things by a refusal to mistrust, hopeth all things where she cannot approve, endureth all things where she is herself oppressed and overborne. As it has been beautifully expressed in a brief paraphrase of the original, Charity hides the evil, believes the good, hopes the best, bears the worst.'

1 The word easily in the Authorized Version comes I know not whence.

2 Professor Stanley's Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians, Vol. I. p. 280, 1st Edition. He prefers, however, the other rendering of the first clause; bears all things.