Now abideth… love.—I CORINTHIANS 13:13
YES, God be praised, love abides! Whatever the world may take from you, even if it were your dearest; whatever may befall you in life; however much you may in your striving for the good have to suffer, as you will if men turn indifferently away from you, or as enemies against you; if no one is willing to recognize you or he is ashamed to confess how much he, nevertheless, owes you; if even your own best friend should deny you—if you still in some of your striving, in some of your work, in some of your words have truly been inspired by love: then be comforted, for love abides. What you know of love will be a comfort to you to remember—oh, more blessed than any achievement that man may have accomplished; more blessed even than having spirits subject unto you; more blessed than being remembered by love! What you know of love will be a comfort to you to remember, that neither the present nor the future, nor angels nor devils, and also, praise God, neither your own timid thoughts which spring from a confusion of mind, nor the stormiest and most difficult moment of your life, any more than its last moment, shall be able to take this love away from you; for love abides!
And if at first despondency should make you weak so that you lose the desire to will, in order again to make you strong, alas, in the way despondency does it, strong in the defiance of despondency; if despondency wishes to make everything empty for you, wishes to transform all life into a monotonous and meaningless repetition, so that you look at everything, but so indifferently; you see the fields and forests again become green, you see the manifold life again moving in the air and water; you hear again the chorus of singing birds, again see men everywhere engaged in all kinds of labor—and you know of a truth that God exists, but it seems to you as if He had withdrawn into Himself, as if He were far away in heaven, so infinitely far away from all these trivialities, which are hardly worth living for; when despondency would drain the soul out of life, then you still know, but SO dubiously, that Christ has existed, but, on the other hand, you realize with an alarming clarity that it was eighteen hundred years ago, so He seems infinitely far away from all these trivialities which are hardly worth living for: oh, then remember that love abides! For if love abides it is equally certain that it is in the future, should this be the comfort you need: and it is in the present, if this is the comfort you need Set this consolation against all the terrors of the future, that love abides; set this consolation against all the anxieties and weaknesses of the present, that love abides! Oh, it is consoling to dwellers in the desert when they know with certainty that there are water springs, and that there will be water springs however far they travel: what water springs would be so missed, what manner of death would entail so much suffering as if love had not existed and would not exist eternally!
Behold, this is a very edifying thought, that love abides. We are speaking now, when we speak thus, of the love which sustains the whole of existence, the love of God. If for a moment, a single moment, it were to cease, then would everything be thrown into confusion. But it does not cease, and therefore, however confused everything else may become for you—Ilove abides. Hence we speak about the love of God, about this quality of abiding.
However, in this little work we are constantly dealing only with the works of love, and therefore not with the love of God, but with human love. Naturally no man is love; if he is in love, he is a lover. On the other hand, love is everywhere present where there is a lover. One might believe and one certainly thinks more frequently, that love between man and man is a relation between two. This is indeed true, but untrue insofar as this relation is also a relation between three. First there is the lover; next the one, or the ones, who are the object of his love; but for the third person, love itself is present. When then, in relation to human love, we speak about love abiding, this readily appears to be an act, or that it is not an abiding quality which love has as such, but a quality acquired at every moment, and which also, every moment it is acquired, is again an actual work. The lover abides, he abides in love, preserves himself in love; just by that he brings it about so that his love for men abides. He continues to be lover by abiding in love; through abiding in love, his love abides; it abides, and it is this thought upon which we shall now meditate, that:
Love Abides
“Love never faileth”’—it abides.
When a child has been away all day among strangers and now considers that it ought to go home, but is afraid to go alone, and yet really wants to stay as long as possible, it says to the older children, who perhaps wished to leave earlier, “Wait for me”; and so the older ones do as the child asks. When of two equals one is more advanced than the other, the latter says to the first, “Wait for me”; and so the second does what the first asks. When two have planned and taken pleasure in the thought of a trip together, but one of them is taken sick, the sick man says, Wait for me,” and so the other does as requested. If one man owes another man money and cannot pay, then he says, “Wait on me,” and so the other man grants his request. When the maiden in love sees that there will be great and perhaps complicated difficulties in the way of her union with the beloved, she says to him, “Wait for me,” and so the beloved does as he is asked. And all this is very excellent and commendable, to wait thus on another man. But whether it is love which thus waits, we have not yet seen. Perhaps the interval of waiting is too short really to show how far that which determines the one thus to wait, deserves in a decisive sense to be called love. Alas! perhaps the interval of waiting was so long that the older children said to the child, “No, we can’t wait any longer for you.” Perhaps the time of waiting went so slowly that the one more advanced said, “No, I can’t wait for you any longer without retarding myself too much.” Perhaps the sickness dragged out so long that the friend said, “No, I can’t wait any longer for you, I shall have to go alone.” Perhaps the time dragged out so long for the man who could not pay his debt, that the other said, “No, I can’t wait any longer on you. I must have my money now.” Perhaps the prospect of marriage with the young girl became so remote that the lover said, “No, I can’t wait any longer for you; I owe it to myself and my life not to put it off in this way any longer, hoping year after year for that which is uncertain.”—But love abides.