Then he goes on to say that prophesying, and glossolaly, and knowledge will be superseded when that which is perfect comes; for we are still but as children, but one day we shall understand. So faith and hope and love endure, these three, but the greatest of these is love. Therefore, he concludes, make love your aim, and then set your heart on the Talents of the Spirit.
The effect of God's Spirit upon man, then, is not only to produce power—intellectual breadth, scientific acuteness, aesthetic insight, firmness and decision, reverence, nor merely to elicit those enhanced mental and psychic faculties due to intense enthusiasm, some of which appear to be in strange contrast to the six princely gifts, though they all fall under natural laws and spring from the same source. Without charity they are nothing worth.
The Fruits of the Spirit, the plenitude of Charity, are the test of the Christian; for a strong man may have the princely virtues in an exceptional degree, and be a pagan; he may have most of them, as Muhammed had, and be an Antichrist, or many of the most remarkable as Napoleon or Bismarck had, and carry on the work of Antichrist.
Yet the gentle fruits themselves include the masterful quality of self-control; and they are not genuine unless they are begotten in wisdom and developed in strength. Only, do they modify all
