The Warfare Is Mental

The Greatest Thing In The World: The Defence (1)

March 29, 2012

*The following is reprinted from the complete, unabridged version of “The Greatest Thing In The World” by Henry Drummond, Spire Books, ISBN unknown

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 again one of his marvellous 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.

The Greatest Thing In The World: Analysis (Conclusion)

March 27, 2012

*The following is reprinted from the complete, unabridged version of “The Greatest Thing In The World” by Henry Drummond, p.37-41, Spire Books, ISBN unknown

So much for the analysis of Love. Now the business of our lives is to have these things fitted into our characters. That is the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world, to learn Love. Is life not full of opportunities for learning Love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a play-ground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson for us all is how better we can love.

The Greatest Thing In The World: Guilelessness, Sincerity

March 26, 2012

*The following is reprinted from the complete, unabridged version of “The Greatest Thing In The World” by Henry Drummond, p.37-39, Spire Books, ISBN unknown

Guilelessness and Sincerity may be dismissed almost with a word. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. And the possession of it is the great secret of personal influence. You will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who influence you are people who believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement and educative fellowship. It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness. Love “thinketh no evil,” imputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction on every action. What a delightful state of mind to live in! What a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them. For the respect of another is the first restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.

The Greatest Thing In The World: Good Temper

March 23, 2012

*The following is reprinted from the complete, unabridged version of “The Greatest Thing In The World” by Henry Drummond, p.32-37, Spire Books, ISBN unknown

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: Good Temper. “Love is not easily provoked.” Nothing could be more striking than to find this here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man’s character. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human nature.

The Greatest Thing In The World: Unselfishness

March 22, 2012

*The following is reprinted from the complete, unabridged version of “The Greatest Thing In The World” by Henry Drummond, p.29-32, Spire Books, ISBN unknown

Unselfishness. “Love seeketh not her own.” Observe: Seeketh not even that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, and rightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exercise even the higher right of giving up his rights. Yet Paul does not summon us to give up our rights. Love strikes much deeper. It would have us not seek them at all, ignore them, eliminate the personal element altogether from our calculations. It is not hard to give up our rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is to give up ourselves. The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already. Little cross then, perhaps, to give them up. But not to seek them, to look every man not on his own things, but on the things of others—id opus est.

The Greatest Thing In The World: Generosity, Humility, Courtesy

March 21, 2012

*The following is reprinted from the complete, unabridged version of “The Greatest Thing In The World” by Henry Drummond, p.27-29, Spire Books, ISBN unknown

Generosity. “Love envieth not” This is Love in competition with others. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little Christian work even is a protection against un-Christian feeling. That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian’s soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly need the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which “envieth not.”

The Greatest Thing In The World: Kindness

March 20, 2012

*The following is reprinted from the complete, unabridged version of “The Greatest Thing In The World” by Henry Drummond, p.25-27, Spire Books, ISBN unknown

Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s life was spent in doing kind things—in merely doing kind things? Run over it with that in view and you will find that He spent a great proportion of His time simply in making people happy, in doing good turns to people. There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.

The Greatest Thing In The World: The Analysis

March 19, 2012

*The following is reprinted from the complete, unabridged version of “The Greatest Thing In The World” by Henry Drummond, p.22-24, Spire Books, ISBN unknown

After contrasting 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 colours–red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colours 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 Greatest Thing In The World: The Contrast

March 13, 2012

This book has given me some valuable insights. I hope it will do the same for somebody else.

Where Vox, Spacebunny, et al. Were Right

March 10, 2012

I’ve realized something in this latest fiasco with the judges in DBT01. I now understand why Vox, Spacebunny, et al. accused me of “entering into” the PZ Myers Memorial Debate. Technically, I did interact with the arguments more than simple judging required. Although there was no conscious intent to do so, that doesn’t change the fact. This became apparent when Matt DeStefano did the same thing in his writeup of my opening statement. He interacted with my arguments from Leviticus:

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