The Army and Navy Hymnal/Readings/The Greatness of Love

SELECTION 24

THE GREATNESS OF LOVE

I John iv

BELOVED, let us love one another: for love is of God
And every one that loveth is begotten of God and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Herein was the love of God manifested in us,
That God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us,
And sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No man hath beheld God at any time:
If we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us:
God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar:
For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.
And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.

I Corinthians xiii

IF I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love,
I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge;
And if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,

And if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil;
Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done a way;
Whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child:
Now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.
For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face:
Now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.
But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.