love with these things, Paul, in three verses, very
short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is. I
ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is like
light. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass
it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other
side of the prism broken up into its component colors--red, and
blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the
rainbow--so Paul passes this thing, love, through the magnificent
prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side
broken up into its elements. And in these few words we have what
one might call the spectrum of love, the analysis of love. Will you
observe what its elements are? Will you notice that they have common
names; 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 and ordinary virtues, the
supreme thing, the _summum bonum_, is made up?

The spectrum of love has nine ingredients:

Patience--"Love suffereth long."
Kindness--"And is kind."
Generosity--"Love envieth not."
Humility--"Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up."
Courtesy--"Doth not behave itself unseemly."
Unselfishness--"Seeketh not her own."
Good temper--"Is not easily provoked."
Guilelessness--"Thinketh no evil."
Sincerity--"Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth."

Patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness,
good temper, guilelessness, sincerity--these make up the supreme gift,
the stature of the perfect man. You will observe that all are in
relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day
and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity. We hear much
of love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal
of peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is
not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life,
the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The
supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a
further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the
sum of every common day.

There is no time to do more than to make a passing note upon each of
these ingredients. Love is patience. This is the normal attitude of
love; love passive, love waiting to begin;