424 THESE THREE
So tender was His love to us,
(We had not learned to love before),
That we grew like to Him, and thus Men sought His grace in us once more.1
f When the Jubilee Singers first visited our shores in 1873, an old believer used to repeat constantly the refrain of one of their songs, " Free grace and dying love." The love of Christ constrained her. " Kabbi " Duncan rose up from the Professor's chair, and walked up and down the platform as he discoursed on the Crucifixion with his students. " Ay, ay, d'ye know what it was — dying on the cross, forsaken by His Father — d'ye know what it was ? What ? What ? It was damnation — and damnation taken lovingly." The love of Christ constrained him.2
It was for me that Jesus died, for me and a world of men Just as sinful, and just as slow to give back His love again; And He didn't wait till I came to Him, but He loved me at
my worst; He needn't ever have died for me if I could have loved Him
first.3
THESE THREE.
We have looked at Faith, Hope, and Love separately. Now let us see them acting and re-acting the one on the other.
"Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three." In thus speaking of these cardinal virtues of the Christian character, it is evident that St. Paul means to distinguish them from one another. He speaks of them as "these three," and thereby represents them to us as three several virtues, each holding its own place, and serving its own purpose, to which it is peculiarly adapted, and in which the others are incapable of superseding it. Each one of that blessed triad of Christian graces has its own proper province in the spiritual life allotted to it. And each has important functions to discharge, which none but itself is capable of executing. Faith can be no substitute for love in the way of fulfilling the great duties of practical religion. And as little can love be any substitute for faith in the way of appropriating the merits of the Saviour, and thereby securing our justification in the sight of God. What St. Paul has elsewhere said of the
1 Coningsby William Dawson.
2 A. R. Simpson, These Three, 45. » Dora Greenwell.
i CORINTHIANS xm. 13 425
several offices in the Christian Church is equally applicable to the leading graces of the Christian character — that all of them are useful and needful in their respective spheres, like the various organs and members of the human body ; and that no one among them can set aside another any more than the hand can dispense with the services of the foot, or the eye undertake to perform the functions of the ear.
But while in this statement faith, hope, and love are thus represented as numerically distinct, they are notwithstanding very intimately associated, as having the closest mutual affinity and dependence. All three must abide together, in order to the perfection of each other, as well as of the whole character into which they enter. God has joined them ; and man must not attempt to sever them. Faith must animate the mind with hope, and " work by love," in order to show its genuineness as that living and operative faith of which alone the Scriptures have approved. Hope, if it do not rest on the good foundation which faith has laid for it, is altogether visionary and unwar- ranted ; and if it do not elevate the soul unto the unfeigned love of God and man, it is spurious or hypocritical. And love, if it be not originated by faith and sustained by hope, is merely an instinctive impulse of nature, accidental in its attachments, and limited to the sphere of visible things, and thus differing most essentially from that evangelical love of which it is written, that "the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."
1. Faith and Hope. — Faith and hope are twin sisters, and hardly to be known apart ; both as beautiful as they can be, and alike beautiful, and very often indeed mistaken each for the other. Yet this need never be ; because between them there is this clear difference, that while hope expects, faith inspects; while hope is like Mary, looking up-w&id, faith is like Martha, looking a^-ward ; while the light in the eyes of hope is high, the light in the eyes of faith is strong; while hope trembles in expectation, faith is quiet in possession. Hope leaps out toward what will be: faith holds on to what is; hope idealizes, faith realizes ; faith sees, hope foresees.
^ The trouble with some men is, that, while they hold on to
426 THESE THREE
the faith, they have lost hold of the hope of their religion. And so they inspect but they do not expect ; they believe in what has come, but not in what is comiDg. So they expire after they have ceased to inspire; they die, but they do not make many live. You get a grand lesson on this matter, as you go from the mouth to the springs of the Ehine. Passing through the fog and mist of Holland, as through a stagnant, grassy sea, you stretch upward, league after league ; and, as you go, the country gradually changes. The air grows clearer, the prospect finer ; everything that can stir the soul begins to reach down toward you, and touch you with its glory. But the higher you go, the harder is your going; only the deepening beauty never fails you. So at last you come into Switzerland, where the blue heavens bend over you with their infinite, tender light ; and the mountains stand about you, in their white robes, glorious as the gates of heaven, with green valleys nestling between, which, but for sorrow and sin, are beautiful as Paradise. And all about you is a vaster vision, and within you an intenser inspiration than can ever be felt on the foggy flats below. It is the difference between faith alone, and faith and hope together.1