Love is not blind, declares Tolstoy; it sees what ought to be done and does it.  So with Paul.  His eyes were open to the truth and he saw it; he was sensitive to the needs of the Church and his epistles are filled with wise counsel.  He encouraged the worthy, admonished the erring and strengthened the weak.  Paul knew well the secret of liberality, as shown in 2 Corinthians 8:  5.  The members of the Macedonian church “first gave their own selves”; giving was easy after that.  Paul’s religion could not be shaken; read his vow as recorded in the eighth chapter of Romans: 

For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

His sufferings developed patience and deepened devotion.  They prepared him to appreciate love and to define it as no other mortal has done.

His tribute to love, contained in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, is not approached by any other utterance on this subject.  (I use the old version with the word charity changed to love.)

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, 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 love, 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 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 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; Love never faileth:  but whether there be prophecies they shall fail; whether there be tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away.  For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.  But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.  When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child:  but when I became a man, I put away childish things; For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I cannot leave the Book of Books without referring to one of the supreme moments that it describes.  The Bible is full of pictures; the painter has found it an inexhaustible storehouse of suggestion.  All the great climaxes of sacred history speak to us from the canvas.  Moses and Pharaoh, Ruth and