The Greatest thing in the World

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1. What is the greatest thing in the world?
2. The words of a great and good man.
3. He said that Love is the greatest thing in the world.
4. Love is the fulfilling of the law. How love would change the world.
5. His analysis of Love
6. “God is Love.”
What is the greatest thing in the world? What is the summon bonus, the supreme good, the noblest object of desire, the highest thing in life? What different answers different people give – happiness health, wealth, success, power, fame! Men work and strive and hope for these things: is any one of them the summon bonus, the supreme good?
Listen to what a very great and good man wrote nearly two thousands years ago; “Though I speak with tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass and a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge. And though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And thought I bestow all my goods to feel the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profited me nothing.”
The apostle Paul then says that one thing is greater than eloquence, knowledge, faith, charity, heroism; and that thing is love. He certainly implies, therefore that love is greater than happiness, health, wealth, success, power, fame; LOVE is the greatest thing in the world.
But what did Paul mean by love? He has told us by describing what love does: “Love suffers long, and is kind; love envied not; love vaunted not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, sleeked not its own, is not provoked, takes not account of evil, rejoiced not in unrighteousness, but rejoiced with the truth; bearish all things, believeth all things, hoped all things, endured all things, believeth all things, hoped all things, endured all things, love never failed.” Analyze that description, and you will find that the ingredients of love are (in order) – patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, guilelessness and sincerity.
Why should love be regarded as the greatest thing in the world? Because it is the root and inspiration of all true goodness. “Love is the fulfilling of the law” that is, of moral law. A man who really loves his fellow men can no more wrong one of them than a loving brother can wrong his brother who is dear to him. We do not wrong those whom we love. If all men loved one another with love like this what a different place this world would be! Hart, malice, spite, selfishness, greed, deceit, dishonesty, oppression persecution, crime, war, could not exist in an atmosphere of love. They would cease to be if mankind was a real brotherhood. Love would solve all social political and economic problems.
This is not yet. But there is love in the world, as leaven; and some day the leaven will leaven the whole lump. Then mankind will partake of the divine nature; for “God is Love”