Love - The Supreme Gift

( Originally Published 1891 )

EVERY one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as of the modern world: What is the summum bonum-the supreme good ? You have life before you. That is the burning question for you to face: What is the supreme object of desire—the supreme gift to covet ? We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is faith. That has been the key-note for centuries of the evangelical religion; and we have learned to look upon that as the greatest thing in the world. Well; we are wrong. If we have been told that, we have been told wrong. I have taken you in the chapter which I have read to-night (I Corinthians, xiii.) to Christianity at its source; and there we have read, " The greatest of these is love." It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says: " If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." It is not an oversight; and it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his own strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. There is a beautiful tenderness which the observing student can detect as Paul gets old—growing and ripening all through his character; but the hand that wrote, " The greatest of these is love," when we meet it first, is stained with blood. Nor is Paul singular in singling out love as the summum bonum. The three masters of Christianity are agreed about it. Peter says: " Above all things have fervent love among yourselves." And John goes farther: " God is love."

" Love is the fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what Paul meant by that ? In those days men were working their passage to heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ came and said: I will show you a more excellent way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking about it—unconsciously. If you love, you will fulfil the whole law." And you can readily see for yourselves how that comes to be. Take any of the commandments. " Thou shall have no other gods before Me." If a man love God, you will not have to tell him that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. " Take not His name in vain." He would never dream of taking His name in vain if he loved Him.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." He would be too glad to have a day to meditate upon the object of his affection. Love would fulfil all these laws. And so, if he loved man, you would never require to tell him to honor his father and mother. He would do that without thinking about it. It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. He would never dream of it. It would be absurd to tell him not to steal. He would never steal from those he loved. He would rather they possessed the goods than that he should possess them. It would be absurd to tell him not to bear false witness against his neighbor. If he loved him it would be the last thing he would do. And you would never have to tell him not to covet what his neighbor had. He would be rejoicing in his neighbor's possessions. So you see, " love is the fulfilling of the law."

Now, Paul had learned that; and in this argument we have a most wonderful account of the summum bonum. (We - may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of this little chapter, we have love contrasted; in the middle of it we have love analyzed; and towards the end of it, we have love defended as the supreme gift.

Paul begins by contrasting love with other things that men in those days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over those things in detail. They are very obvious. He contrasts it with eloquence. How many men covet eloquence !—and what a noble gift it is—the gift of playing upon the minds and souls and wills of men—of moulding them. Paul says: " If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with mysteries. He contrasts it with faith. He contrasts it with charity. Love is greater than faith, because the end is greater than the means. And love is greater than charity, because the whole is greater than a part..

Love is greater than faith, because the end is greater than the means. What is the use of having faith ? It is to connect the soul with God. And what is the use of being connected with God ? It is to become like God. For " God is love." This is to say, faith is in order to love. The end is greater than the if it means. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It is greater than charity, because the whole is greater than a part. Charity is only a little bit of love, and there is a great deal of charity without love. It is a very easy thing to toss a twenty-five-cent piece to a beggar. It is a very easy thing to do that when the love is in withholding. We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings which are aroused by the spectacle of misery, at the cost of a quarter of a dollar. It is too cheap—too cheap for us, and it is often too dear for the beggar. We must either do more for him or less. Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom ; and I beg the little band—shall I not say the large band ?—of missionaries (and I have the honor to call some of you by this name -for the first time)—shall I not say to you missionaries, Remember that though you give your bodies to be burned, and have not love, it profits nothing—nothing ! You can take nothing greater to the heathen than the impress and the reflection of the love of God upon your own character—nothing. That is the universal language. It will take you years to speak in Chinese, or in the dialects of India, but from the day you land, that language of love—understood by all, and eloquent to every one—will be going forth from you, consciously or un-consciously, and it is the man who is the missionary, it is not his words. In the heart of Africa, among the great lakes, I have come across black men and women who remembered the only white man they ever saw before—David Livingstone; and as you cross his footsteps in that dark Continent, you see men's faces light up as they speak of the kind Doctor who passed there years ago. They could not understand him ; but they felt the love that beat in that great heart. They knew that it was love-that that life was laying itself down for Africa—although he spoke no word. Take into your new sphere of labor where you are laying down your life that simple charm, and your life must succeed. You can take nothing greater. You may take every accomplishment; but if you give your body to be burned, and have not love, it will profit you and the cause of Christ nothing.

After contrasting love with these things, Paul in three verses, very short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is. I ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is like light. And as you have seen a natural philosopher take a beam of light and pass it through his crystal prism, and as you have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its component colors—red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the rainbow—so Paul passes this thing, love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements, and in these words we have the spectrum of love—the analysis of love. Will you observe what these things are ? Will you notice that they have common names—that they are virtues which we hear about every day, they are things which can be practised by every man in every circumstance of life, and how by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues the supreme thing, the summum bonum is made up.

The spectrum of love has nine elements—nine colors—nine ingredients : Patience—" love suffereth long." Kindness—" and is kind." Generosity—" love envieth not." Humility—" love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." Courtesy —love " doth not behave itself unseemly." Unselfishness—love " seeketh not her own." Good temper—love "is not easily provoked." Guilelessness—" thinketh no evil." Sincerity—" rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth."

Patience ; kindness ; generosity ; humility ; courtesy ; unselfishness ; good temper ; guilelessness ; sincerity—these make up the supreme gift—the stature of the perfect man. We talk a great deal of peace with God. God says much about peace on earth. " Good-will toward men." And you will observe that all these things, all these virtues and graces, are in relation to men—in relation to life—in relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. There is no time to do more than make a passing note upon each of these ingredients.

Patience. Love passive. The normal attitude of love—love waiting to begin ; not in a hurry ; not petulant ; not hasty ; calm ; composed-waiting to begin when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.

Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ's life was spent in doing kind things—in merely doing kind things ? Run over it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a great proportion of His time simply in making people happy-in doing good turns to people. There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness ; and that is not in our keeping—God reserves that to Himself ; but what He has put in our power is the happiness of our fellow-creatures, and that is to be se-cured by our being kind. After we have been kind—after love, after long waiting, has gone out into action and done its beautiful work—we must then exercise the third of these graces : go back into the shade again, and say nothing about it. " Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." " Love vaunteth not."

Generosity. That is love in competition with others. Whenever you have done a good turn—done a good work—you will find other men doing the same kind of work. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to that man who is in the same line as ourselves—a feeling of ill-will—and we hate ourselves for cherishing it. That will spring up the moment you get to your field—be it in this land or in any other land—unless you have learned generosity : to envy not. And then, after having learned that, you have to learn the further thing : to go into the shade—to hide, and not let your right hand know what your left hand has done.

Humility. Love hiding. " Vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." -And the fifth Ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this summum bonum.

Courtesy—love in relation to etiquette. " Love doth not behave itself unseemly." Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy has been defined as love in little things. And the secret of politeness is to love. Love cannot be-have itself unseemly. You can take the most untutored persons and put them in society, and if they have love as a reservoir in their heart they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply can-not do it. Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was because he lived to love everything —the mouse, and the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God made ; and so he could go into any society—into courts and palaces—from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. We heard the other day from one of the speakers on this platform about the meaning of the word " gentleman." It means a gentle man--a man who does things gently, with love. " Love doth not behave itself unseemly."

Unselfishness. " Love seeketh not her own." Observe: Seeketh not even that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted to his rights. He likes to stand up for his rights—his rights as a man, and his rights as an Englishman. And I fancy you have the same kind of patriotism. You stand up for your rights ; and every man as an individual or as a citizen feels a sense of propriety over what he calls his rights. It is the privilege of that man to give up even his rights, if necessary, for the sake of another. " Seeketh not her own." It is easy to give up things that we are not quite certain are our own ; but the things that are obviously yours—that are legally yours—that you have earned perhaps by years of labor and sacrifice of trouble or money—to give up those things which are your own, that is the hard thing. And yet the most obvious lesson of the Gospel is that there is no happiness in having and getting, but only in giving. I say, there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving, and half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It consists in giving, and in serving others. And he that would be great among you, let him serve. He that would be happy, let him remember that it is more blessed—it is more happy—to give than to receive.

The next ingredient is also a remarkable one: Good temper. " Love is not easily provoked." Now, we are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless infirmity. We speak of it as being a mere infirmity of nature—not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's character—a kind of accident—a matter of temperament, and so on. And yet here, right in the middle of this analysis of love, Paul plants this statement; and the Bible again and again comes to that little infirmity, as we call it, and makes a great deal of it. It is not a little infirmity to smile at. The peculiarity of ill-temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It is the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You know men who are all but perfect; and who would be almost entirely perfect, but you say they are hasty—they are touchy—they are ill-tempered. Now, there is nothing that a Christian has to take more trouble to eradicate forever from his being than ill-temper. It re-quires the struggle of years—perhaps of a lifetime; but it has to be done. It has to be done. It is not to be looked upon as an accident of temperament; but it is a sin—one of the blackest of all the sins. It is the symptom of an unloving nature at bottom. A want of patience,—a want of kindness,-a want of generosity, —a want of humility,—a want of courtesy,---a want of unselfishness—are all symbolized in one flash of evil temper. It is the revelation of what is inside a man, and therefore the man who has that must have his whole nature sweetened. It is not enough to deal with the temper. You must go to the root, and sweeten the whole nature, and then temper will die away of itself. But how can a man who has not had a victory over that part of his nature have a part in God's people in this world or in the next world ? How is it possible ? Why: a man with a temper such as I have de-scribed would make Heaven miserable for all the people who are in it; and except such a man be born again he can-not enter into the kingdom of God. Christ says: " Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." That is to say, it is the deliberate verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to love. It is better not to live than not to love. I shall spend no time over the last two of these virtues. Guilelessness. Courtesy is love in society. Unselfishness is love denying. Good temper is love restraining. Guilelessness is love believing. And Sincerity is love learning. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. " Thinketh no evil." The way to win a man is to believe in him. That is the greatest secret of the Christian worker. The way to elevate a man is to believe in him and trust him. Love " thinketh no evil "—imputes no motive—puts the best construction on every action. What a delightful frame of mind to live in ! And then love is sincere—wears no mask.

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; " rejoiceth not in our doctrine—in this church's doctrine, or in that church's doctrine, in this ism or that ism—but rejoiceth in the truth.

So much for this analysis of love. Now, the business of our lives is to fit these things into our character. That is the supreme thing to which we need to address ourselves; to learn love. And life is full of opportunities for learning love. Every man and woman has a* thousand of them every day. The world is not a playground ; it is a schoolroom : and its great lesson that we are always to learn is the lesson of love in all its parts.

What makes a man a good foot-ball player? Practice. What makes a man a good artist—a good sculptor--a good musician ? Practice. What makes a man a good athlete ? Practice. What makes a man a good man ? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in a different way—under different laws—from that in which we get the body. If a man does not exercise his arm, he gets no biceps muscle ; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he has no muscle in his soul—no strength of character, no robustness. Love is not a thing of emotion and gush. It is a robust, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole character and nature in its fullest development. And these things are only to be acquired by daily and hourly practice. Do not quarrel, there-fore, with your lot in life. Do not quarrel with the quality you have of life. Do not be angry that you have to go through a network of temptation—that you are haunted with it every day. That is your practice, which God appoints you. That is your practice ; and it is having its work in making you patient, and humble, and sincere, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous, and guileless. Do not grudge the hand that is moulding the shapeless image in you: it is growing more beautiful; and every touch is adding to its perfection. Keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and amongst difficulties and obstacles. " Esbildet ein Talent sick in der Stille, Dock ein Character in dem Strom der Welt." You remember Goethe's words: " Talent develops itself in solitude ; character in the stream of life." " Talent develops itself in solitude " —the talent of prayer, of faith. " Character in the stream of life." That is where you are to learn love.

How ? Now, how ? I might go over all the futile means of becoming like Christ. We apply ourselves to love. We strive for it. We brace our wills to get it. We make laws for ourselves. And we pray for it. These things will not bring love into our nature. Love is an effect. It is a question of cause and effect; and if you fulfil the right condition you must have the effect produced in you. Shall I tell you what the cause of love is ? If you turn to the Revised Version of the Epistles of John, you will find there these words: " We love be-cause He first loved us." " We love "—not " We love Him." That is the way the old version has it, and it is wrong. " We love because He first loved us." Look at that word " because." There is the cause of which I have spoken. " Be-cause He first loved us." The effect follows that we love Him—we love all men. Our heart is slowly changed. Because He loved us, we love. Contemplate the love of Christ, and you will love. Stand before that, and you will be changed in-to the same image, from tenderness to tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot love to order. You can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it. You cannot command yourself to do it. And so look at the great sacrifice of Christ, as He laid down His life all through life, and at His death upon the Cross of Calvary; and you must love Him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction. You put a piece of iron in the mere presence of an electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified. It becomes a temporary magnet in the presence of a permanent magnet, and as long as you leave the two side by side, they are both magnets. Remain side by side with Him who loved us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will become a permanent magnet —a permanent attractive force; and like Him you will draw all men unto you. That is the inevitable effect of love. Any man who fulfils that cause must have that effect produced in him. Give up the idea that religion comes to us by chance or by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law; or by supernatural law, for all law is Divine.

Edward Irving went to see a dying boy once, and when he entered the room he just put his hand on the sufferer's head, and said: " My boy, God loves you," and went away. And the boy started from his bed, and he called out to the people in the house, " God loves me ! God loves me! " One word ! It changed that boy. The sense that God loved him had overpowered him, melted him down, and begun the making of a new heart. And that is how the love of God melts down the unlovely heart in us, and begets in us this new creature, who is patient Now, lastly: I have a word or two to say about Paul's reason for singling out love as the supreme possession. Love defended or justified. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. It is a thing that is going to last. " Love never faileth." Then Paul begins again one of his marvellous lists of the great things of the day, and exposes them. He runs over the things that men thought were going to last—the things that men accounted great; and he shows that they are all fleeting and transitory. He says: " Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." It was the mother's ambition for a boy in those days that he should become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet, and the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited for a prophet to appear, and hung upon his lips when he did. Paul says: " Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." This book is full of prophecies. One by one they have failed; that is, having been fulfilled, their work is finished ex cept as evidences—as matters of interest. Their work has failed. " Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail "—they have nothing more to do in the world except to feed a devout man's faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly coveted. " Whether there be tongues, they shall cease." As we all know, many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this world. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it in its narrowest sense. which probably was not in Paul's mind at all—languages in general. Take the words in which these chapters were written—Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin—the other great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian language. Lt is ceasing. The language of my own Scottish High-lands is ceasing. The most popular book in the English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of Dickens' works—his " Pickwick Papers." It is written in the language of London street life; and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader. Its language is ceasing.

Then Paul goes further, and with even greater boldness he says: Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." And the wisdom of the ancients, where is it ? It is already gone. A school-boy to-day knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You put yesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away. You buy the old editions of the great encyclopædias for a few cents. Their knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been superseded by the steam-engine. Look how electricity—look how the telephone has come in and put a hundred inventions aside. Ay, and they will have their day and then vanish away. The greatest living authority on electricity and on physics—Sir William Thomson—said in Scotland at a meeting at which I was present: " The steam-engine is passing away." " Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." At every workshop in America you will see out in the back-yard a heap of old iron —a few wheels, and a few levers, all rusty. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city. Men flocked in from the country to see this great invention, and now it has been superseded and has vanished away. And all the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old. It is not going to last. Let us pursue it; but let us not make it the chief thing. Let us be humble with it when we get it, because it is temporary. In my time in the University of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. Just before I left Scotland, his successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the Librarian of the University to go to the library and pick out the books on his subject (midwifery) that were no longer needed. And his reply to the Librarian was this: " Take every book that is more than ten years old, and put it down into the cellar." Knowledge has vanished away. Sir James Simpson was a great authority twelve years ago; men came from all parts of the earth to consult him; and the whole knowledge of that day, within this short period, is now consigned by the science of to-day to the cellar. How true are the words of Paul:

We know in part, and we prophesy in part." " We see through a glass darkly." Can you tell me anything that is going to last ?

Many things Paul did not condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but he picked out the great things of his time, and then brushed them aside. A great many things that men denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is a favorite argument of Paul's. John says " The world passeth away." That is a great charge against the world. There is a great - deal in it that is delightful and beautiful ; there is a great deal in it that is useful and pleasant ; but it passeth away—all that is in the world—the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. But while the world passeth away, " he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." And Paul's argument is precisely that all these things are going to pass away, and therefore they are not worth the entire life and the consecration of an immortal soul. Let the immortal soul give himself to something that is immortal ; and the only things that are eternal are these: " Now abideth faith, hope, love ; but the greatest of these is love." You can see that the time will come when two of these things will perhaps pass away. I do not know—we know so little about the conditions of life in the other world—but it seems to me as if there will come a time when faith shall vanish into sight, and when hope shall vanish into full fruition. Then there will be one thing left, and that is love. Covet that everlasting gift—that one thing which is going to stand ; that one coinage which will be current when all the other coin-ages of all the nations shall be returned from the bank of eternity. Covet that, and give yourself to that. Put things their proportion ; and let the object of your life be for yourself to have the character defended in these words—and it is the character of Christ—borne into your character, that you may be created into the same image.

I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how John is continually associating love and faith with eternal life ? I was not told when I was a Sunday-scholar that " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting life." What I was told, I remember, was that God so loved the world that if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I was to have rest, or I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But I had to find out for myself that whosoever trusteth in Him—that is, whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only the means to the end—bath ever-lasting life. The Gospel offers a man life. Do not offer men a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or merely safety; but remember how Christ came to give men a more abundant life than they had, and then you will take hold of the whole of a man—you will give him a bigger life, a fuller life-current, than the life he is living. Then our Gospel will move him, if he has laid hold of it. Instead of laying hold of a part of his nature, you lay hold of the whole of his nature. Christ becomes to him the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. Do you want to know whether you are to live to-morrow? Why do you want to live to-morrow ? It is because there is some one who loves you, and whom you want to see to-morrow, and be with, and to love back. There is no other reason why we should live on than that we love and are beloved. The moment a man has no one to love him, he commits suicide. So long as a man has those who love him, and whom he loves, he will live; because to live is to love. If it be but the love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and he has no contact in life—no reason to live. He dies by his own hand. You want to live because you love, so that love is life. " Love never faileth." Life never' faileth, so long as there is love. That is the philosophy of what Paul is showing us: why love should be the supreme thing—because it is going to last. It is the eternal thing.

Now, I have finished. How many of you will join me in reading that chapter once a week for the next three months, then once a month for the following three months ? I know a man who did that, and it changed his whole life. Will you do it ? It is for the greatest thing in the world. Ay, you might begin by reading it every day for a week, especially the verses in the middle which describe the perfect character. " Love suffereth long and is kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself." Get these ingredients fitted into your life. Then everything that you do is eternal. I need not tell you that eternal life is not a thing that we are to get when we die. It is a thing that we are living now, and that we will have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living it now. The life of love is an eternal life ; and there is no worse fate can befall a man than to live and grow old alone, unloving and unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved ; and to be saved is to love—for God is love. So that this thing is worth doing. It is worth doing ! It is worth giving time to. No man can become a saint in his sleep; and to fulfil the condition requires a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time, just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires a certain amount of preparation and time. Address yourselves to that one thing, and have this supreme thing engraven upon your character. You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out above every-thing else are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. " He that loveth is born of God;" and above all the transitory pleasures of life there stand forward those supreme moments when we have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those about us —things too trifling to speak about, but they become a part of us. I can remember them now. I have seen almost all the beautiful things God has made ; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that God has planned for man ; and yet I can look back, and I see standing out above all the life that has gone four or five short experiences when the love of God reflected itself in some poor imitation, some small act of love of mine ; and that is the thing that I get comfort from now. When I think about my past life, everything else has been transitory—has passed away. But the acts of love which no man knows about, or will ever know about—they never fail.

And let me remind you that in the book of Matthew, where the great judgment day is depicted for us in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then is not " How have I believed ? " but " How have I loved ? " The test of religion—the final test of religion—is not religiousness, but love. I say the final test of religion at the great assizes is not religiousness, but love; not what I have done—not what I have believed—not what I have achieved—but how I have loved: according to the number of the cups of cold water we have given in the name of Christ.

" Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In lives made better by their presence."