The Greatest thing in the World
What is the greatest thing in the world ? What is the summon bonum, the supreme good, the noblest object of desire, the highest thing in life? What different answers different people give – happiness, health, wealth, success, power, fame! Men work and strive and hope for these things: is any one of them the stimmum bonum, the supreme good ?
Listen to what a very great and good man wrote nearly two thousand years ago: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass and a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.”
The Apostle Paul then says that one thing is greater than eloquence, knowledge, faith, charity, heroism ; and that thing is love. He certainly implies, therefore, that love is greater than happiness, health, wealth, success, power, fame : LOVE is the greatest thing in the world.
But what did Paul mean by love ? He has told us by describing what love does : “Love suffereth long, and is kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil, rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth ; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.” Analyse that description, and you will find that the ingredients of love are (in order)—patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfish-ness, good temper, guilelessness, and sincerity.
Why should love be regarded as the greatest thing in the world? Because it is the root and inspiration of all true goodness. “Love is the fulfilling of the law”, that is, of the moral law. A man who really loves his fellow men can no more wrong one of them than a loving brother can wrong his brother who is dear to him. We do not wrong those whom we love. If all men loved one another like this, what a different place this world would be! Hatred, malice, spite, selfishness, greed, deceit, dishonesty, oppression, persecution, crime, war, could not exist in an atmosphere of love. They would cease to be if mankind was a real brotherhood. Love would solve all social, political and economic problems.
This is not yet. But there is love in the world, as leaven ; and someday the- leaven will leaven the whole lump. Then mankind will partake of the divine nature; for “God is Love.”
