The true divine commentary on this brief paragraph is the nearly contemporary passage written by the same author, 1 Cor. xiii. There, as we saw above, the description of the sacred thing, love, like that of the heavenly state in the Revelation, is given largely in negatives. Yet who fails to feel the wonderful positive of the effect? That is no merely negative innocence which is greater than mysteries, and knowledge, and the use of an angel tongue; greater than self-inflicted poverty, and the endurance of the martyr's flame; "chief grace below, and all in all above." Its blessed negatives are but a form of unselfish action. It forgets itself, and remembers others, and refrains from the least needless wounding of them, not because it wants merely "to live and let live," but because it loves them, finding its felicity in their good.
It has been said that "love is holiness, spelt short." Thoughtfully interpreted and applied, the saying is true. The holy man in human life is the man who, with the Scriptures open before him as his informant and his guide, while the Lord Christ dwells in his heart by faith as his Reason and his Power, forgets himself in a work for others which is kept at once gentle, wise, and persistent to the end, by the love which, whatever else it does, knows how to sympathize and to serve.
[223] Read ὑπὸ not ἀπό.
[224] "To believe, to suffer, and to love, was the primitive taste" (Milner).
[225] This clause is perhaps to be omitted here.
[226] See Card. Bausset, Vie de Fénelon, ii. 375. Leibnitz, in a letter to T. Burnet, quotes the words from a work of his own; Amare est felicitate alterius delectari.
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHRISTIAN DUTY IN THE LIGHT OF THE LORD'S RETURN
AND IN THE POWER OF HIS PRESENCE
Romans xiii. 11-14