You must not run your neighbor
down behind his back, or God will hate you: you must not wound him to
his face, or God will hate you. You must overlook a fault or two, and
see a man's bright side, and then God will love you. If you won't do
that much for your neighbor, why, in Heaven's name, should God overlook
a multitude of sins in you?
"Nothing goes to heaven surer than Charity, and nothing is so fit to
sit in heaven. St. Paul had many things to be proud of and to praise in
himself--things that the world is more apt to admire than Christian
charity, the sweetest, but humblest of all the Christian graces: St.
Paul, I say, was a bulwark of learning, an anchor of faith, a rock of
constancy, a thunder-bolt of zeal: yet see how he bestows the palm.
"'Knowledge puffeth up: but charity edifieth. Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as
sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of
prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I
have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity,
I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth
me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not;
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself
unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no
evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things.
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