be heavy laden,-have you come to Christ, and is He giving you rest? Do you know what it is to lean upon His breast, and feel His everlasting arms around you ? If in any these words arouse no echo, convey no recognized experience then let this Voice of Jesus reach them anew. He is saying from the right hand of God what He said in Galilee of old," Come unto Me!" Can He say it to any soul of man without an eager response to His gracious invitation?

For those who have come to Him, and have tasted that the Lord is gracious, He has but one word to add— "Abide in Me!"

H

SUNDAY IN QUINQUAGESIMA.

The Most Excellent Gift of Charity.

I Cor. xiii.

LET us meditate to-day upon the Scripture which forms the Epistle for this week. It is that sublime panegyric of Love which St. Paul has indited when writing to the Corinthians.

There are few Scriptural writers who differ so widely in regard of both the substance and the mode of their teaching, as St. Paul and St. John. The differing circumstances under which they wrote added much to natural character in constituting this contrast. St. Paul is the prominent figure of the Christian Age in its stormy beginning. St. John takes his place when the tempest is lulling, and calm is reigning. St. Paul did his work as a master builder with the foe around him :-like Nehemiah's men, "with one of his hands he wrought in the work, and with the other he held a weapon." His writings swell with the emotion and heave with the turbulence of controversy. In St. John's time, the seductions of Gentile immorality no longer deceived, and the advocates of Jewish legalism had separated themselves from the Church. The Christian Temple rose up, like Solomon's of old, without stroke of axe or noise of hammer ; and the workmen were at peace. At such a time came forth the Epistles of the beloved Apostle, calm and full of repose, affirming truth rather than disputing

against error, and suffused in every part with the glowing light of love.

The grand object of St. Paul, accordingly, is to maintain against the Jew that the title to blessedness is not of the law, but of God's free grace and favour. St. John, on the other hand, presses ever on the Christian that the only capacity for blessedness lies in love. But in the midst of the apparent diversity between these two great Apostles, such a passage as this rises up to show how profound is their essential unity. Whatever be the importance of that faith for which St. Paul so earnestly contends, after all, he says, love is the greater. In the glorifying of love St. Paul and St. John are at one. Their very style of writing seems to assimilate. Of this chapter an eloquent living writer has said :-"On each side the tumult of argument and remonstrance still rages, but within it all is calm: the sentences move in almost rhythmical melody; the imagery unfolds itself in almost dramatic propriety; the language arranges itself with almost rhetorical accuracy. We can imagine how the Apostle's amanuensis must have paused to look up in his master's face at the sudden change of his style of dictation, and seen his countenance lighted up as it had been the face of an angel, as the sublime vision of Divine perfection passed before him.”

Four points in connection with love are touched upon. by the Apostle in this chapter.

I. The first three verses affirm that no spiritual gifts can avail their possessor or profit the Church without love. An application of them, as if they spoke of natural gifts and acquirements, has been usefully made in all ages. But to us, who know something practically of tongues and prophecy, of the knowledge that sees mys

teries and the faith that works miracles, they come especially home. Silver, they say to us, is the current coin of the Kingdom of Heaven. You are rejoicing, and rightly, in the gold and precious stones wherewith the Bridegroom is now decking His Bride. But see that the silver is as the stones in the street for abundance.

2. Ver. 4-7 exhibit love as the root and source of all holy feeling and righteous living. Philosophy, both in ancient and modern times, has puzzled itself as to the ground of moral action. One school places it in expediency another in the dictates of conscience. Jesus Christ, and His Apostle after Him, supply a simple solution to the difficulty. Only love, they say, and all duty will follow. Love is wiser than expediency, more imperative than conscience. Love is the fulfilling of the Law.

3. The next five verses contrast the abidingness of love with the transitoriness of spiritual gifts. Let it not be thought, however, that they countenance the error of those who say that these gifts were intended only for the first age of the Church, as a scaffolding to be taken down when the building was sufficiently advanced. Prophecies are indeed to fail, tongues to cease, knowledge to vanish away, but when? "When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Let the Church ask herself if her perfection has come upon her and if not, where are her gifts which were to continue till then?

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4. The last verse has been sometimes misunderstood. The Apostle does not say that faith will be lost in sight, and hope in fruition; but love will abide. All three, he says, abide, when gifts vanish away: but the greatest of them is charity. The vision of God will ever be to the

faith of the spirit and not to the sense of the body. Hope will then as now spring eternal in the human breast, as that which is beyond will always seem brighter than what has already been attained. But love is the greatest.

Itself contains the other two: for it "believeth all things, hopeth all things." If we would pray for all good gifts in one, let us pray for love. When Solomon had his choice between wisdom, and riches, and length of life, and chose wisdom, he found the other two to follow; and he wrote of Wisdom-" Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour."

The object of the Apostle in all this is to show the Corinthians that super-excellent way in which all spiritual gifts must be exercised. In ch. xii. he had laid out the truth of the One Body as the foundation of the action of its various memberships.* But the substance of that truth is love. The unity of the Body stands in love: and where love is, the greatest diversity of character causes no strife and no schism. No cement but this of love can bind together the stones of the Temple of God.

And this love, which perfects humanity, has its source and counterpart in Deity. Christianity comes to us with the revelation of God as love in essence, and the example of Christ as love in action, and the shedding abroad of the Holy Spirit as love in communication. The Gospel of this week sounds the first note in the Christian Year of the greatest of all manifestations of love. "The Son of Man shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted upon: and they shall scourge Him, and put Him to death: and the third day He shall rise again." Already we stand at the entrance

* Comp. Rom. xii; Eph. iv.