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Pureness, and knowledge, and power — not even in this combination is the Christian character perfected. There might be a hardness, coldness, self-complacency, censoriousness, still — showing some lamentable deficiency in the presentation of the mind that was in Christ. Love, as the Greek says, unhypocritical, is an indispensable part of the "approving," of the "not offending," of the minister, of the Christian. What is purity without love? Cold, stern, how Unlike the holiness of Jesus! What is knowledge without love? Self-engrossing, contemptuous — how opposite to that Divine insight of which St. Paul says, "If Shy man love, the same knoweth," or "is known"! What is power without love? Imperious, exacting, perhaps cruel — how, how incongruous with the position of a creature, of a sinner! Nature herself is witness that there is yet a more excellent way. Love — love unfeigned. Yes, that love which at the altar of God's own love has kindled alike the love of God and the love of man. That love which is the handing on of love; the transmission, the transfusion — as of course, as that which must be, which could not be coerced or cabined — of a forgiveness, of a peace, of a joy, felt first, and felt as a gift, within. That love which has no stint and no limit, because it is the reflection of a love infinite, inexhaustible. Who does not know, who does not feel as he but listens, that the man who has this love in him is indeed "approved as God's minister"? And without this love unhypocritical, what are gifts of intellect, of eloquence, of insight into truth, of scrupulosity in duty? Where is the attestation, in all these, of the ministry, or of the gospel? "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God" — men feel that God is in him, as a light, as a strength, as a love, as a consolation.

(Dean Vaughan.)

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KJV: By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned,

WEB: in pureness, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in sincere love,