PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses
Drummond, Henry, 1851-1897 · 33,030 words · 100 reading sections
Part 1
Produced by David Garcia, Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net The Greatest Thing In the World And Other Addresses…
26 wordsSECTION 2HENRY DRUMMOND
NEW YORK CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyrighted 1891 and 1898 By Fleming H. Revell Company. Printed in the United States of America…
26 wordsSECTION 3INTRODUCTORY.
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…
196 wordsSECTION 4THE 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 relig…
117 wordsSECTION 5CHRISTIANITY 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 witho…
509 wordsSECTION 6SECRET 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 _defende…
63 wordsSECTION 7I. 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…
534 wordsSECTION 8MEN'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.…
106 wordsSECTION 9II. 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 hav…
133 wordsSECTION 10THE 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…
369 wordsSECTION 11DOING 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 Hea…
776 wordsSECTION 12THE 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 _ou…
709 wordsSECTION 13FOR 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 happ…
226 wordsSECTION 14BORN 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 feve…
232 wordsSECTION 15CHRIST 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…
136 wordsSECTION 16THE 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 ther…
482 wordsSECTION 17THE ONE ETERNAL LESSON
for us all is _how better we can love_. What makes a man a good cricketer? Practice. What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a man a good linguist, a good stenographer? Practice. What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religi…
166 wordsSECTION 18CEASELESS PRACTICE.
What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Though perfect, we read that He _learned_ obedience, and grew in wisdom and in favor with God. Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and so…
565 wordsSECTION 19THE GREAT SACRIFICE
as He laid down Himself, all through life, and upon the Cross of Calvary; and you must love Him. And loving Him, you must become like Him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified. It is changed into…
99 wordsSECTION 20GAVE HIMSELF FOR US,
and you, too, will become a permanent magnet, a permanently attractive force; and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is the inevitable effect of Love. Any man who fulfills that cause must have that effect produced in him. Try to give up the idea that religion comes t…
229 wordsSECTION 21III. THE DEFENCE.
Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for singling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word it is this: _it lasts._ "Love," urges Paul, "never faileth." Then he begins again one of his marvelous lists of the great things of the day, and exposes them…
898 wordsSECTION 22IT WILL NOT LAST.
All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a little while. Love not the world therefore. Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration of an immortal soul. The immortal soul must give itself to something that is immortal. And the only immortal …
350 wordsSECTION 23EVERLASTING LIFE.
The Gospel offers a man a life. Never offer a man a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ came to give men a more abundant life than they have, a life abundant in love, and therefore abundant in salvation for themselves, and large in …
476 wordsSECTION 24NO WORSE FATE
can befall a man in this world 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; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is Love. Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join me in…
705 wordsSECTION 25LESSONS FROM THE ANGELUS.
God often speaks to men's souls through music; He also speaks to us through art. Millet's famous painting entitled "The Angelus" is an illuminated text, upon which I am going to say a few words to you to-night. There are three things in this picture--a potato field, a country lad and a country girl standing in the mid…
179 wordsSECTION 26I.
The first element in a symmetrical life is _work_. Three-fourths of our time is probably spent in work. Of course the meaning of it is that our work should be just as religious as our worship, and unless we can work for the glory of God three-fourths of life remains unsanctified. The proof that work is religious is t…
285 wordsSECTION 27WORK MAKES MEN.
A university is not merely a place for making scholars, it is a place for making Christians. A farm is not a place for growing corn, it is a place for growing character, and a man has no character except that which is developed by his life and thought. God's Spirit does the building through the acts which a man perform…
132 wordsSECTION 28THE MUSIC OF THE SOUL,
and is developed by exercise. Active use of the power entrusted to us is one of the chief means which God employs for producing the Christian graces. Hence the religion of a student demands that he be true to his work, and that he let his Christianity be shown to his fellow students and to his professors by the integri…
460 wordsSECTION 29II.
Another element in life, which of course is first in importance, is _God_. The Angelus is perhaps the most religious picture painted this century. You cannot look at it and see that young man standing in the field with his hat off, and the girl opposite him with her hands clasped and her head bowed on her breast, with…
446 wordsSECTION 30MAKING MEN BETTER.
He it is that "worketh in you." The buds of our nature are not all out yet; the sap to make them comes from the God who made us, from the indwelling Christ. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and we must bear this in mind, because the sense of God is kept up, not by logic, but by experience. Until she was s…
297 wordsSECTION 31EXPLAINS MANY OF THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE,
and takes away the fear which we would otherwise have in meeting the difficulties which lie before us. Two Americans who were crossing the Atlantic met on Sunday night to sing hymns in the cabin. As they sang the hymn, "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," one of the Americans heard an exceedingly rich and beautiful voice behind…
375 wordsSECTION 32III.
The third element in life about which I wish to speak is _love_. In this picture we notice the delicate sense of companionship, brought out by the young man and the young woman. It matters not whether they are brother and sister, or lover and loved; there you have the idea of friendship, the final ingredient in our li…
470 wordsSECTION 33MADE UP OF PHRASES;
how much of what we call Christian Experience is only a dialect of the Churches, a mere religious phraseology with almost nothing behind it in what we really feel and know. To some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences seem further away than when we took the first steps in the Christian life. That life has not open…
538 wordsSECTION 34GROSSLY IGNORANT OF HIS PROFESSION.
To do nothing but pray is a wrong done to prayer itself, and can only end in disaster. It is as if one tried to live only with the lungs, as if one assimilated only air and neglected solid food. The lungs are a first essential; the air is a first essential; but the body has many members, given for different purposes, s…
145 wordsSECTION 35WHAT DETHRONES PRAYER
is unanswered prayer. When men pray for things which do not come that way--pray with sincere belief that prayer, unaided and alone, will compass what they ask--then, not getting what they ask, they often give up prayer. This is the natural history of much atheism, not only an atheism of atheists, but a more terrible a…
276 wordsSECTION 36I. EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES.
Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance. God is a God of order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles, and never at random. The world, even the religious world, is governed by law. Character is governed by law. Happiness is governed by law. The Christian experiences are governed by law. Men, forge…
321 wordsSECTION 37THE ALMOST UNIVERSAL EXPECTATION.
Now what I mainly wish to do is to help you firmly to grasp this simple principle of Cause and Effect in the spiritual world. And instead of applying the principle generally to each of the Christian experiences in turn, I shall examine its application to one in some little detail. The one I shall select is Rest. And I …
804 wordsSECTION 38HIS RECEIPT
for it. That was all. But He would not make it for them. For one thing it was not in His plan to make it for them; for another thing, men were not so planned that it could be made for them; and for yet another thing, it was a thousand times better that they should make it for themselves. That this is the meaning becom…
224 wordsSECTION 39ORIGINALITY OF THIS UTTERANCE.
How novel the connection between these two words "Learn" and "Rest." How few of us have ever associated them--ever thought that Rest was a thing to be learned; ever laid ourselves out for it as we would to learn a language; ever practised it as we would practice the violin? Does it not show how entirely new Christ's te…
238 wordsSECTION 40WHAT ARE THE CHIEF CAUSES OF UNREST?
If you know yourself, you will answer--Pride; Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back upon the past years of your life, is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly come from the succession of personal mortifications and almost trivial disappointments which the intercourse of life has brought you? Great trials come …
120 wordsSECTION 41SOURCES OF MAN'S UNREST.
Now it is obvious why Christ pointed out as the two chief objects for attainment the exact opposites of these. To meekness and lowliness these things simply do not exist. They cure unrest by making it impossible. These remedies do not trifle with surface symptoms; they strike at once at removing causes. The ceaseless c…
352 wordsSECTION 42HOW TO LIVE.
Few men know how to live. We grow up at random carrying into mature life the merely animal methods and motives which we had as little children. And it does not occur to us that all this must be changed; that much of it must be reversed; that life is the finest of the Fine Arts; that it has to be learned with lifelong p…
89 wordsSECTION 43THE ART OF LIFE.
And its whole curriculum lies in one word--"Learn of me." Unlike most education, this is almost purely personal; it is not to be had from books, or lectures or creeds or doctrines. It is a study from the life. Christ never said much in mere words about the Christian graces. He lived them, He was them. Yet we do not mer…
195 wordsSECTION 44MUCH TO UNLEARN.
Many men never go to this school at all till their disposition is already half ruined and character has taken on its fatal set. To learn arithmetic is difficult at fifty--much more to learn Christianity. To learn simply what it is to be meek and lowly, in the case of one who has had no lessons in that in childhood, may…
516 wordsSECTION 45NOTHING THAT THE WORLD COULD DO TO HIM
that could ruffle the surface of His spirit. Such living, as mere living, is altogether unique. It is only when we see what it was in Him that we can know what the word Rest means. It lies not in emotions, or in the absence of emotions. It is not a hallowed feeling that comes over us in church. It is not something tha…
277 wordsSECTION 46KNEW HOW TO LIVE.
All this is the perfection of living, of living in the mere sense of passing through the world in the best way. Hence His anxiety to communicate His idea of life to others. He came, He said, to give men life, true life, a more abundant life than they were living; "the life," as the fine phase in the Revised Version has…
121 wordsSECTION 47II. WHAT YOKES ARE FOR.
There is still one doubt to clear up. After the statement, "Learn of Me," Christ throws in the disconcerting qualification: "_Take my yoke_ upon you, and learn of Me." Why, if all this be true, does He call it a _yoke_? Why, while professing to give Rest, does He with the next breath whisper "_burden_"? Is the Christ…
205 wordsSECTION 48AN INSTRUMENT OF MERCY.
It is not a malicious contrivance for making work hard; it is a gentle device to make hard labor light. It is not meant to give pain, but to save pain. And yet men speak of the yoke of Christ as if it were slavery, and look upon those who wear it as objects of compassion. For generations we have had homilies on "The Yo…
551 wordsSECTION 49CHRIST'S YOKE
is simply His secret for the alleviation of human life, His prescription for the best and happiest method of living. Men harness themselves to the work and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural ways. The harness they put on is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar at the best, they make its strain and friction p…
471 wordsSECTION 50III. HOW FRUITS GROW.
Were Rest my subject, there are other things I should wish to say about it, and other kinds of Rest of which I should like to speak. But that is not my subject. My theme is that the Christian experiences are not the work of magic, but come under the law of Cause and Effect. I have chosen Rest only as a single illustrat…
588 wordsSECTION 51HOW TO GET JOY.
"These things have I spoken unto you," He said, "that My Joy might remain in you, and that your Joy might be full." It was a purposed and deliberate communication of His…
32 wordsSECTION 52SECRET OF HAPPINESS.
Go back over these verses, then, and you will find the Causes of this Effect, the spring, and the only spring, out of which true Happiness comes. I am not going to analyze them in detail. I ask you to enter into the words for yourselves. Remember, in the first place, that the Vine was the Eastern symbol of Joy. It was…
431 wordsSECTION 53SOURCES OF PURE HAPPINESS.
Even the simplest of them--to do good to other people--is an instant and infallible specific. There is no mystery about Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must come out. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringing forth much fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for Happin…
354 wordsSECTION 54LET US DEAL WITH CAUSES.
"To be," says Lotze, "is to be in relations." About every other method of living the Christian life there is an uncertainty. About every other method of acquiring the Christian experiences there is a "perhaps." But in so far as this method is the way of nature, it cannot fail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe-…
66 wordsSECTION 55THE TRUE VINE.
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fru…
243 wordsSECTION 56AN ADDRESS TO BOYS.
I have three heads to give you. The first is "Geography," the second is "Arithmetic," and the third is "Grammar."…
20 wordsSECTION 57I.
First. Geography tells us where to find places. Where is the Kingdom of God? It is said that when a Prussian officer was killed in the Franco-Prussian war, a map of France was very often found in his pocket. When we wish to occupy a country, we ought to know its geography. Now, _where_ is the Kingdom of God? A boy ove…
859 wordsSECTION 58Part 58
If you want to get the Kingdom of God into your workshop, or into your home, let the quarreling be stopped. Live in peace and harmony and brotherliness with everyone. For the Kingdom of God is a kingdom of brothers. It is a great Society, founded by Jesus Christ, of all the people who try to live like Him, and to make …
125 wordsSECTION 59II.
I pass, therefore, to the second head; What was it? Arithmetic. Are there any arithmetic words in this text? "Added." What other arithmetic words? "First." Now, don't you think you could not have anything better to seek "first" than the things I have named to do what is right, to live at peace, and be always making th…
76 wordsSECTION 60THE BEST WORTH SEEKING.
Do you know anything better than these three things, anything happier, purer, nobler? If you do, seek them first. But if you do not, seek first the Kingdom of God. I do not tell you to be religious. You know that. I do not tell you to seek the Kingdom of God. I tell you to seek the Kingdom of God _first_. _First._ Not …
619 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.