Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁴ But whence have you this charity, if yet you have it? For I am afraid lest even yet it is through fear you do it not, and lest you seem great in your own eyes. Now if it is through charity that you do it not, you are truly great. Have you charity? “I have,” you say. Whence? “From myself.” Far are you from sweetness, if you have it from your own self. You will love your own self, because you will love that from which you have it. But I will convict you that you have it not.

For in that you think that you have so great a thing from your own self, by that very fact I do not believe you have it. For if you had, you would know from whence you had it. Have you charity from yourself, as if it were some light, some little thing? “If you should speak with the tongues of men and Angels, but have not charity, you would be a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. If you should know all mysteries, and have all knowledge, and all prophecy, and all faith so that you could remove mountains, but not have charity,” these things could not profit you.

“If you should distribute all your goods to the poor, and deliver up your body to be burned, but not have charity, you would be nothing.” How great is this charity, which if it be wanting, all things profit nothing! Compare it not to your faith, not to your knowledge, not to your gift of tongues, to lesser things, to the eye of your body, the hand, the foot, the belly, to any one lowest member compare charity, are these least things to be in any way compared to charity? So then the eye and nose you have from God, and have you charity from your own self?

If you have given yourself charity which surpasses all things, you have made God of light account with you. What more can God give you? Whatever He may have given, is less. Charity which you have given yourself, surpasses all things. But if you have it, you have not given it to yourself. “For what have you which you have not received?” Who gave to me, who gave to you? God. Acknowledge Him in His gifts, that you feel not His condemnation. By believing the Scriptures, God has given you charity, a great boon, charity, which surpasses all things. God gave it you, “because the charity of God has been shed abroad in our hearts;” by your own self, perhaps? God forbid; “by the Holy Ghost, who has been given us.”