2. Let us examine the important word by which he designates this more excellent way. There is hardly a more difficult one to render exactly, in the whole compass of the New Testament. Our language has not a term which will exactly convey to an English reader the full idea. It is the word, indeed, by which at the same time God's love to man, and that feeble return of ours which is called love to Him, are both expressed. Still, our word " love " would not by any means do its full work in this chapter. We have that word in so many restricted senses— the love of friendship, the love of wedded life, even the love of lower and less worthy objects — that there would perhaps be danger of our escaping from the largeness of regard here insisted on into some of those smaller channels and abiding places, and satisfying our- selves that we had attained that which is required of us. For instance, when it is said, " Love suffereth long, and is kind," instead of forming in our minds the idea of some unusual indwell- ing grace which always and to all men suffereth long and is kind, we should be saying in our hearts, ° 0 yes — we know that there is nothing one will not endure from an object deeply loved " ; and
1 E. L. Hicks, Studia Biblica, iv. 9. * J. Cross, 1'auline Charity, 6.
i CORINTHIANS xm. i 349
so of similar expressions, thereby missing the whole force and blessedness of the description.
The A.V. has unfortunately departed here from the earlier rendering " love " of Tindale and Cranmer (which the Kevised Version has restored) and has followed the Vulgate caritas. Thus the force of this eloquent panegyric on love is impaired, and the agreement between the various writers of the New Testament much obscured. The aim, no doubt, of the Vulgate translators was to avoid the sensuous associations which the Latin word amor suggested. But the English word charity has never risen to the height of the Apostle's argument. At best it signifies only a kindly interest in and forbearance towards others. It is far from suggesting the ardent, active, energetic principle which the Apostle had in view. And though the English word "love" includes the affection which springs up between persons of different sexes, it is generally understood to denote only the higher and nobler forms of that affection, the lower being stig- matized under the name of "passion." Thus it is a suitable equivalent for the Greek word here used.
The word " charity " is open to grave objections. For, in the mind of the common English reader, it absolutely identifies the quality here spoken of with that very practice of almsgiving with which it is in one verse of the chapter so forcibly contrasted. And it is partly owing to the fact of the word " charity " having been used here by our translators that the chapter itself falls so dead on the ear of the English public. The word, as already said, was adopted from the writers of the Latin Vulgate. Of our own English versions, it is found in Wyclif, and in the Eheims Eoman Catholic translation, both of which were made from the Latin. All the versions of the Eeformation — Tindale, Cranmer, and the Geneva Bible — had " love " throughout ; but King James's trans- lators, to whom we owe our Authorized Version, unhappily returned to " charity," so much more easily mistaken, and so characteristically doing the work of Eome, in being capable of representing a mere external act, instead of the largeness of Christian spirit here described. "This," says Dean Alford, "is one out of not a few instances in which we owe our translators no thanks for having taken from us the life and spirit of our
350 THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
genuine Reformation Bibles, and having gone back to the ambiguous and less expressive language of the version by which Eonie supports so many of her errors."
The difference between the two terms is well exhibited in 1 John iv. 8, where the Vulgate reads : " God is charity." Even the A.V. would not accept this. In Luke xi. 42, the Latin has : " Ye pass over judgement and the charity of God," but in John v. 42 : " Ye have not the love of God in yourselves." These passages suggest that it was the intention of the Latin editors to dis- tinguish between love as a principle and its manifestation. Yet in Eom. v. 5, we have " the charity of God is diffused in our hearts." Again, Eom. viii. 35, " What shall separate us from the charity of Christ ? " It has also to be observed that the Latin caritas had not precisely the same meaning as has attached itself to our " charity." With us it means beneficence, practical kindness, but in Latin it represents more the inward feeling. Hence Cicero speaks of "the charity which exists between children and parents." The whole case shows how wisely the Eevisers have applied their principle — not always observed — which required the same English word to represent one in the original.
Tf Watts about the same time completed the group of the graces by adding his picture of " Charity." This picture is in the manner of the old Italian masters, and might well have been painted by Correggio or Andrea del Sarto. Charity is a calm, modern Madonna, the homely, motherly love which is a constant revelation of His heart who comforts us as one whom his mother comforteth, robed in richly coloured vesture, and tenderly en- circling three bright, chubby-faced children with her arms — an attempt to picture the " motherliness of God." It is evident that the painter has a different and higher idea of charity than merely that of one who ministers to the poor, for in that case he would have represented the mother with a look of profound pity on her face, and the children with attenuated frames and gaunt, hungry countenances. The conception which he has of this virtue is that of St. Paul. Charity is more than the love that exists between man and woman. It has none of its excitement and passion. There is no selfishness or exclusiveness such as tinges even the most disinterested love between the sexes. It is more than benevolence, for it makes the rich as well as the poor the objects of its regard. It is not pity and a desire to help that it