The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 582

"

LOVE

542 heavens opened

;

but love sends us thence back into the world to impart Yea, of love, not of faith be said, that it never faileth. Faith is turned into

the treasure of comfort there received to others.

and hope, can it sight and hope into enjoyment, for what a man seeth why doth he yet hope for? But even before the throne of God, love remains as young as

when

for the first time

perfection

holiness

is

was born in the heart. Even there the bond and the pledge of an infinite increase

it

at once the condition

and blessedness

here and there, even tho

;

and, therefore,

its

it

is

name has merely

of in

the greatest forever, both

third place.

To

the Chris-

whatever may change and vanish away, they can abide, for they are the unchangeable mark of every believer. They must abide, or our entire Christianity becomes a form without life. They will abide, for they are so sublimely divine and so tian here these three are constant companions

truly

human.

Faith

love with resistance

;

;

may have

to wrestle with darkness, hope with doubt, but where Christ truly lives in the heart, they must

abide forever.

There

are, of course, expressions in these passages for

these two divines alone are responsible

;

we mean

to

which show only that

men have strongly felt that Love's superiority of place and quality is principally conspicuous from the fact that, while faith and hope will finally cease, Love abides forever. Surely, faith and hope do not cease in the sense that other spiritual gifts cease. The word " temporal " has a twofold meaning. Temporal is the worm that dies and from which nothing remains. Temporal is the caterpillar that must die as a worm, but that rises beautiful again as a butterfly. The same is true of faith and hope, as compared with the spiritual gifts of speaking with tongues and healing the sick. The latter will fail altogether. They will comthese two

pletely disappear. Cor.

xiii. 8,

that sense.

more

They

But the

They

fail

only to rise

beautiful form of sight

But Love does not know forever, but

it

away, as St. Paul says in i and hope may not be taken in again in the fuller, richer, and

will vanish

failing of faith

and enjoyment.

this

metamorphosis.

ever abides unchanged.

It

not only abides

In the fact that all other

and that Love alone is eternal, we see the never-ending work of the Holy Spirit scintillating in the hearts of believers; in our meditation on Love we apprehend His proper gifts perish or change,

work

in all its depths,

even to the

root.

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