e. Remain side by side with Him who
loved us, and gave Himself for us, and you too will become a permanent
magnet, a permanently attractive force; and like Him you will draw all
men unto you; like Him you will be drawn unto all men. That is the
inevitable effect of love. Any man who fulfils that cause must have
that effect produced in him. Try to give up the idea that religion
comes to us by chance, or by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us by
natural law, or by spiritual law, for all law is divine. Edward Irving
went to see a dying boy once, and when he entered the room he just put
his hand on the sufferer's head, and said, "My boy, God loves you,"
and went away. And the boy started from his bed, and called out to the
people in the house, "God loves me! God loves me!" It changed that
boy. The sense that God loved him overpowered him, melted him down,
and began the creating of a new heart in him. And that is how the love
of God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and begets in him the
new creature, who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish. And
there is no other way to get it. There is no mystery about it. We love
others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first loved
us.

Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's reason for
singling out love as the supreme possession. It is a very remarkable
reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts. "Love," urges Paul,
"never faileth." Then he begins one of his marvelous lists of the
great things of the day, and exposes them one by one. He runs over the
things that men thought were going to last, and shows that they are
all fleeting, temporary, passing away.

"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." It was the mother's
ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet.
For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet,
and at that time the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited
wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when
he appeared as upon the very voice of God. Paul says, "Whether there
be prophecies, they shall fail." This book is full of prophecies. One
by one they have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled their work
is finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to
feed a devout man's faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly
coveted. "Whether there be tongues, they shall cease." As we all know,
m