Addresses

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At the time this was typed in 02/04/2000, there were images showing
Millet's "The Angelus" available on the internet at the following
sites: http://www.tam.itesm.mx/~jdorante/art/realismo/1205.jpg

http://www.udayton.edu/mary/gallery/artists/angelus.html
http://www.tigtail.org/TVM/X2/a.NeoClassic/millet_angelus.1859.jpg
http://www.i-a-s.de/IAS/Bilder/MILLET/Angelus.htm While this list
is not exhaustive (and should include the Louvre--where the painting
is hung--but I couldn't find it there) there should be at least
one of these active at the time of the reading.

Addresses by Henry Drummond

Introductory.

I was staying with a party of friends in a country house during my
visit to England in 1884. On Sunday evening as we sat around the
fire, they asked me to read and expound some portion of Scripture.
Being tired after the services of the day, I told them to ask Henry
Drummond, who was one of the party. After some urging he drew a
small Testament from his hip pocket, opened it at the 13th chapter
of I Corinthians, and began to speak on the subject of Love.

It seemed to me that I had never heard anything so beautiful, and
I determined not to rest until I brought Henry Drummond to Northfield
to deliver that address. Since then I have requested the principals
of schools to have it read before the students every year. The one
great need in our Christian life is love, more love to God and to
each other. Would that we could all move into that Love chapter,
and live there.

This volume contains, in addition to the address on Love, some
other addresses which I trust will bring help and blessing to many.

[signed]D. L. Moody.

Contents

Love, the Greatest Thing in the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Lessons from the Angelus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Pax Vobiscum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
First! An Address to Boys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
The Changed Life, the Greatest Need of the World . . . . . . . 82
Dealing with Doubt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Love: The Greatest Thing in the World

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. Once only you can live it. What is the
noblest 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 great word has been the key-note
for centuries of the popular religion; and we have easily learned
to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are
wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. In the
13th chapter of I Corinthians, Paul takes us to

Christianity at its source;

and there we see, "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." So far from forgetting,
he deliberately contrasts them, "Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love,"
and without a moment's hesitation the decision falls, "The greatest
of these is Love."

And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to others his
own strong point. Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing
student can detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all
through his character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote
"The greatest of these is love," when we meet it first, is stained
with blood.

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out
love as the "summum bonum." The masterpieces of Christianity are
agreed about it. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent love
among yourselves." ABOVE ALL THINGS. And John goes farther, "God
is love."

You remember the profound remark which Paul makes elsewhere, "Love
is the fulfilling of the law." Did you ever think what he meant
by that? In those days men were working the 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 simple way. If you do one thing,
you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking
about them. If you LOVE, you will unconsciously fulfill the whole
law."

You can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take any
of the commandments. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me."
If a man love God, you will not require to tell him that. Love is
the fulfilling of that law. "Take not His name in vain." Would he
ever dream of taking His name in vain if he loved him? "Remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Would he not be too glad to
have one day in seven to dedicate more exclusively to the object
of his affection? Love would fulfill all these laws regarding God.

And so, if he loved man, you would never think of telling him
to honor his father and mother. He could not do anything else.
It would be preposterous to tell him not to kill. You could only
insult him if you suggested that he should not steal--how could
he steal from those he loved? It would be superfluous to beg 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 dream
of urging him not to covet what his neighbors had. He would rather
they possess it than himself. In this way "Love is the fulfilling
of the law." It is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new
commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one.

Secret of the Christian life.

Now Paul has learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has given
us the most wonderful and original account extant of the "summum
bonum." We may divide it into three parts. In the beginning of
the short chapter we have Love CONTRASTED; in the heart of it, we
have Love ANALYZED; toward the end, we have Love DEFENDED as the
supreme gift.

I. The Contrast.

Paul begins by contrasting Love with other things that men in those
days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over these things
in detail. Their inferiority is already obvious.

He contrasts it with ELOQUENCE. And what a noble gift it is,
the power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rousing
them to lofty purpose and holy deeds! Paul says, If I speak with
the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." We all know why. We have
all felt the brazenness of words without emotion, the hollowness,
the unaccountable unpersuasiveness, of eloquence behind which lies
no Love.

He contrasts it with PROPHECY. He contrasts it with MYSTERIES.
He contrasts it with FAITH. He contrasts it with CHARITY. Why
is Love greater than faith? Because the end is greater than the
means. And why is it greater than charity? Because the whole is
greater than the 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 object of connecting man with God?
That he may become like God. But God is Love. Hence Faith, the
means, is in order to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously
is greater than faith. "If I have all faith, so as to remove
mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

It is greater than CHARITY, again, because the whole is greater
than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of the
innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be, and there is,
a great deal of charity without Love. It is a very easy thing
to toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is generally an
easier thing than not to do it. Yet Love is just as often in the
withholding. We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings
roused by the spectacle of misery, at the copper's cost. It is too
cheap--too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beggar. If we
really loved him we would either do more for him, or less. Hence,
"If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, but have not love it
profiteth me nothing."

Then Paul contrasts it with SACRIFICE and martyrdom: "If I give
my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing."
Missionaries can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the
impress and reflection of the Love of God upon their own character.
That is the universal language. It will take them years to speak
in Chinese, or in the dialects of India. From the day they land,
that language of Love, understood by all, will be pouring forth
its unconscious eloquence.

It is the man who is the missionary, it is not his words. His
character is his message. 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,

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 his
heart. They knew that it was love, although he spoke no word.

Take into your sphere of labor, where you also mean to lay down
your life, that simple charm, and your lifework must succeed. You
can take nothing greater, you need take nothing less. You may
take every accomplishment; you may be braced for every sacrifice;
but if you give your body to be burned, and have not Love, it will
profit you and the cause of Christ NOTHING.

II. The Analysis

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. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of
light and pass it through a crystal prism, 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.

In these few words we have what one might call

The spectrum of Love,

the analysis of love. Will you observe what its elements are?
Will you notice that they have common names; that they are virtues
which we hear about every day; that they are things which can
be practised by every man in every place in 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 ingredients:

Patience . . . . . "Love suffereth long."
Kindness . . . . . "And is kind."
Generosity . . . . "Love envieth not."
Humility . . . . . "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."
Courtesy . . . . . "Doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness . . "Seeketh not its own."
Good temper . . . "Is not provoked."
Guilelessness . . "Taketh not account of evil."
Sincerity . . . . "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth
with the truth."

Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness;
good temper; guilelessness; sincerity--these make up the supreme
gift, the stature of the perfect man.

You will observe that all 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. We hear much of love to God; Christ
spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven;
Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or
added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing
of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme
thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further
finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum
of every common day.

PATIENCE. This is the normal attitude of love; Love passive, love
waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when
the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and
quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth
all things; hopeth all things. For Love understands, and therefore
waits.

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 it is not in our keeping; but
what God HAS put in our power is the happiness of those about us,
and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.

"The greatest thing," says some one, "a man can do for his Heavenly
Father is to be kind to some of His other children." I wonder why
it is that we are not all kinder than we are? How much the world
needs it! How easily it is done! How instantaneously it acts! How
infallibly it is remembered! How superabundantly it pays itself
back--for there is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly
honorable, as Love. "Love never faileth." Love is success, Love
is happiness, Love is life. "Love," I say with Browning, "is energy
of life."

"For life, with all it yields of joy or woe
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."

Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in
God. God is Love. Therefore LOVE. Without distinction, without
calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the
poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need
it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult,
and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is a difference
between TRYING TO PLEASE and GIVING PLEASURE. Give pleasure.
Lose no chance of giving pleasure; for that is the ceaseless and
anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit. "I shall pass through
this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or
any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now.
Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way
again."

GENEROSITY. "Love envieth not." This is love in competition with
others. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men
doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy
them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the
same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction.
How little Christian work even is a protection against un-Christian
feeling! That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which
cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of
every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity.
Only one thing truly need the Christian envy--the large, rich,
generous soul which "envieth not."

And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this
further thing, HUMILITY--to put a seal upon your lips and forget
what you have done. After you have been kind, after Love has stolen
forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the
shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself.
Love waives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is
not puffed up." Humility--love hiding.

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this "summum
bonum:" COURTESY. This is Love in society, Love in relation to
etiquette. "Love doe not behave itself unseemly."

Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said
to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is
to love.

Love CANNOT behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored
persons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir
of Love in their hearty they will not behave themselves unseemly.
They simply cannot do it. Carlisle said of Robert Burns that there
was no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was
because he loved everything--the mouse, and the daisy, and all the
things, great and small, that God had made. So with this simple
passport he could mingle with any society, and enter courts and
palaces from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr.

You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It means a gentle
man--a man who does things gently, with love. That is the whole art
and mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things
do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the
inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature, cannot do anything else. "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,
and rightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may
exercise even

The higher right

of giving up his rights.

Yet Paul does not summon us to give up our rights. Love strikes
much deeper. It would have us not seek them at all, ignore them,
eliminate the personal element altogether from our calculations.

It is not hard to give up our rights. They are often eternal. The
difficult thing is to give up OURSELVES. The more difficult thing
still is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have
sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken
the cream off them for ourselves already. Little cross then to
give them up. But not to seek them, to look every man not on his
own things, but on the things of others--that is the difficulty.
"Seekest thou great things for thyself?" said the prophet; "SEEK
THEM NOT." Why? Because there is no greatness in THINGS. Things
cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even
self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a
great purpose or a mightier love can justify the waste.

It is more difficult, I have said, not to seek our own at all
than, having sought it, to give it up. I must take that back. It
is only true of a partly selfish heart. Nothing is a hardship to
Love, and nothing is hard. I believe that Christ's "yoke" is easy.
Christ's yoke is just His way of taking life. And I believe it is
an easier way than any other. I believe it is a happier way than
any other. The most obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that
there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in
giving. I repeat, THERE IS NO HAPPINESS IN HAVING OR IN GETTING,
BUT ONLY IN GIVING. 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. "He that would be great among you," said Christ,
"let him serve." He that would be happy, let him remember that
there is but one way--"it is more blessed, it is more happy, to
give than to receive."

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: GOOD TEMPER. "Love
is not provoked."

Nothing could be more striking than to find this here. We
are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness.
We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a
matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account
in estimating a man's character. And yet here, right in the heart
of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and
again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements
in human nature.

The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous.
It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character. You
know men who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely
perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or "touchy"
disposition. This compatibility of ill temper with high moral
character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics.
The truth is, there are two great classes of sins--sins of the BODY
and sins of the DISPOSITION. The Prodigal Son may be taken as a
type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second. Now, society
has no doubt whatever as to which of these is the worse. Its brand
falls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. But are we right?
We have no balance to weigh one another's sins, and coarser and
finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may be
less venal than those in the lower, and to the eye of Him who is
Love, a sin against Love may seem a hundred times more base. No
form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness
itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper. For
embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the
most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up
men and women, for taking the bloom of childhood, in short,

For sheer gratuitous misery-producing power

this influence stands alone.

Look at the Elder Brother--moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful--let
him get all credit for his virtues--look at this man, this baby,
sulking outside his own father's door. "He was angry," we read,
"and would not go in." Look at the effect upon the father, upon the
servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect
upon the Prodigal--and how many prodigals are kept out of the
Kingdom of God by the unlovely character of those who profess to
be inside. Analyze, as a study in Temper, the thunder-cloud itself
as it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. What is it made of?
Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness,
touchiness, doggedness, sullenness--these are the ingredients of
this dark and loveless soul. In varying proportions, also, these
are the ingredients of all ill temper. Judge if such sins are of
the disposition are not worse to live in, and for others to live
with, than the sins of the body. Did Christ indeed not answer the
question Himself when He said, "I say unto you that the publicans
and the harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven before you"? There
is really no place in heaven for a disposition like this. A man
with such a mood could only make heaven miserable for all the people
in it. Except, therefore, such a man be

Born again,

he cannot, simply CANNOT, enter the kingdom of heaven.

You will see then why Temper is significant. It is not in what
it is alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I speak of it
with such unusual plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a
revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the intermittent
fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional
bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness
underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped
involuntarily when off one's guard; in a word, the lightning form
of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins. A want of patience, a
want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want
of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolized in one flash
of Temper.

Hence it is not enough to deal with the Temper. We must go to the
source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humors will die
away of themselves. souls are made sweet not by taking the acid
fluids out, but by putting something in--a great Love, a new Spirit,
the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating
ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate
what is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate,
and rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men.
Time does not change men.

Christ does.

Therefore, "Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."

Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember, once more, that
this is a matter of life or death. I cannot help speaking urgently,
for myself, for yourselves. "Whoso shall offend one of these little
ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone
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.

GUILELESSNESS and SINCERITY may be dismissed almost without a word.
Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. The possession
of it is

The great secret of personal influence.

You will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who
influence you are people who believe in you. In an atmosphere of
suspicion men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere they expand, and
find encouragement and educative fellowship.

It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable
world there should still be left a few rare souls who think no
evil. this is the great unworldliness. Love "thinketh no evil,"
imputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction
on every action. What a delightful state of mind to live in! What
a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day! To
be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate
others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their
belief of our belief in them. The respect of another is the first
restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what
he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.

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