1 Corinthians 13
13
The way of perfection — love
1-11And the way I will show you is the way of perfection. I may have knowledge, but it is still fragmentary, I read as it were on a mirror the reflections which I cannot yet quite make out. I prophesy partially, not fully and perfectly, and so is it with other gifts of the kind, tongues and healing and so on. These are, as it were, but the infancy of the Spirit, its first faint babblings and lispings, but love is full, complete, perfect. Here and now it is the all-inclusive, towards which all these other gifts point, and when love is fully come, there will be an end of these partial utterances of the Spirit. Therefore love is above all things necessary. What are all these other gifts without it? What is the speaking with tongues, the utterances of men or angels, without it? Merely a repetition of the old religions with the clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs. And what does it avail to prophesy, to have an intellect which can grapple with all mysteries and knowledge, and to have so powerful a faith as to be able to work miracles with it, if love is not the crown, the aim, the end of it all? It is all worthless. And to give away all your possessions without love, and to embrace martyrdom and the stake without love — how empty, how vain and worthless! For love includes all that is good — all patience, kindness, tolerance, forbearance, faith and hope; and love is antidote to all evil, all jealousy, and boasting, all ugliness, selfishness, ill-temper, evil thinking. Love can never take any pleasure in these things, the joy of love comes from truth. And so it shall come to pass that all other things will change, pass, and be no more, but love will remain. All that is partial, imperfect, incomplete must have an end, but love will never fail. 12In that perfect day of love we shall see face to face, we shall know then as now we are known, 13and though now we see faith, hope and love, these three, abiding with us, the greatest of them is love.
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Translated in 1916, published in 1937.
1 Corinthians 13
13
1Though I speake with the tongues of men and Angels, and haue not loue, I am as sounding brasse, or a tinkling cymbal. 2And though I had the gift of prophecie, and knewe all secrets and all knowledge, yea, if I had all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines and had not loue, I were nothing. 3And though I feede the poore with all my goods, and though I giue my body, that I be burned, and haue not loue, it profiteth me nothing. 4Loue suffreth long: it is bountifull: loue enuieth not: loue doeth not boast it selfe: it is not puffed vp: 5It doeth no vncomely thing: it seeketh not her owne things: it is not prouoked to anger: it thinketh not euill: 6It reioyceth not in iniquitie, but reioyceth in the trueth: 7It suffreth all things: it beleeueth all things: it hopeth all things: it endureth all things. 8Loue doeth neuer fall away, though that prophecyings be abolished, or the tongues cease, or knowledge vanish away. 9For we knowe in part, and we prophecie in part. 10But when that which is perfect, is come, then that which is in part, shalbe abolished. 11When I was a childe, I spake as a childe, I vnderstoode as a childe, I thought as a childe: but when I became a man, I put away childish thinges. 12For nowe we see through a glasse darkely: but then shall wee see face to face. Nowe I know in part: but then shall I know euen as I am knowen. 13And nowe abideth faith, hope and loue, euen these three: but the chiefest of these is loue.
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