This chapter of the apostle Paul's has received many names of high esteem in popular discourse and writing, as, "The Anthem of Love," "The Psalm of Love," "The Song of Love" for the New Testament, as the "Song of Songs," which is Solomon's, is for the Old Testament. The Forty-fifth Psalm has the title, "A Song of Loves," and with rich and rare rhetoric it prophesies poetically of spiritual love as much as the Hebrew times could; but in this chapter St. Paul pours forth the message of his consciousness as it was illuminated by the light that shined around him at midday, but which became ever afterward the true enlightenment of his being. Who knows this, Paul's love-song, by heart, knows Paul by heart, as he was able to reflect in his words the divine Principle of man.
It is impossible to make a translation for reading that shall give smoothly all the variations of meaning, gradations of thought, picturesqueness of language, or touches of local color of this song in the Greek; so that, as good as the Authorized Version is, or the Revised, they but poorly render the original into English. Nothing of an extended scholarly discussion along linguistic lines will be attempted in this paper, and yet attention ought to be directed to the principal word in the original and some of the illustrative strokes and shades of meaning which are in the Greek.
The life of the chapter is in the word that is translated "charity" in the Authorized Version, but "love" in the Revised. The word "charity" (from the Latin caritas) has lost its ancient meaning, so that in it the English reader does not get the complete force of the original.
