Dunsford.—"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
"Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
"Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away."
Milverton.—That is surely one of the most beautiful things that has ever been written by man. It does not do to talk much after it.
Channing closes his Essay upon the Means of Promoting Christianity with this remarkable passage: "If, in this age of societies, we should think it wise to recommend another institution for the propagation of Christianity, it would be one the members of which should be pledged to assist and animate one another in living according to the Sermon on the Mount. How far such a measure would be effectual we venture not to predict; but of one thing we are sure, that, should it prosper, it would do more for spreading the gospel than all other associations which are now receiving the patronage of the Christian world."
At the White House, on an occasion I shall never forget, said a visitor, the conversation turned upon religious subjects, and Lincoln made this impressive remark: "I have never united myself to any church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize their articles of belief and confessions of faith. When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership," he continued, "the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself, that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul."
"You may remember," says Farrar, in his Silence and Voices of God, "how, in the old legend, St. Brendan, in his northward voyage, saw a man sitting upon an iceberg, and with horror recognized him as the traitor Judas Iscariot; and the traitor told him how, at Christmas time, amid the drench of the burning lake, an angel had touched his arm, and bidden him for one hour to cool his agony on an iceberg in the Arctic sea; and when he asked the cause of this mercy, bade him recognize in him a leper to whom in Joppa streets he had given a cloak to shelter him from the wind; and how for that one kind deed this respite was allotted him. Let us reject the ghastly side of the legend, and accept its truth. Yes, charity,—love to God as shown in love to man—is better than all burnt-offering and sacrifice." "In thy face," said the dying Bunsen to the wife of his heart, bending over him, "in thy face have I seen the Eternal."