IT has been said, with perhaps more truth than is generally realized, that more people die for want of love than of starvation, war, and pestilence put together.
It may be that education has been instrumental in leading us to think that love is a personal feeling, unrequited or gratified, rather than a spiritual quality to be learned, cultivated, and developed. Thus we may have drifted into the habit of lazily naming any passing passion or fancy "love," the result being the changeable nature of human affection. Men may love to-day, hate to-morrow, and be indifferent the next day. But this is not love.
In the illuminating thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians, Paul discourses on the important features of love. He shows that even if he had faith to move mountains, and generosity to give all his goods to the poor, or if he gave his body to be burned, and lacked love, it would profit him nothing. To Paul, love was of vital importance, the very essence of Christian character; and he showed how love is exemplified through its qualities—patience, gentleness, courtesy, tenderness, kindness, unselfishness, humility, meekness. Professor Drummond, in his book "The Greatest Thing in the World," takes up each quality of love and enlarges upon it. He writes, "Will you notice . . . 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 . . . the supreme thing ... is made up?"
