It is a very remarkable reason.  In a single word it is this:  it lasts. “Love,” urges Paul, “never faileth.”  Then he begins again one of his marvelous lists of the great things of the day, and exposes them one by one.  He runs over the things that men thought were going to last, and shows that they are all fleeting, temporary, passing away.

“Whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away.”  It was the mother’s ambition for her boy in those days that he should become a prophet.  For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet, and at that time the prophet was greater than the king.  Men waited wistfully for another messenger to come, and hung upon his lips when he appeared, as upon the very voice of God.  Paul says, “Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.”  The Bible is full of prophecies.  One by one they have “failed”; that is, having been fulfilled, their work is finished; they have nothing more to do now in the world except to feed a devout man’s faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues.  That was another thing that was greatly coveted.  “Whether there be tongues, they shall cease.”  As we all know, many many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this world.  They have ceased.  Take it in any sense you like.  Take it, for illustration merely, as languages in general—­a sense which was not in Paul’s mind at all, and which though it cannot give us the specific lesson, will point the general truth.  Consider the words in which these chapters were written—­Greek.  It has gone.  Take the Latin—­the other great tongue of those days.  It ceased long ago.  Look at the Indian language.  It is ceasing.  The language of Wales, of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands is dying before our eyes.  The most popular book in the English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of Dickens’ works, his Pickwick Papers.  It is largely written in the language of London street-life; and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader.

Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness adds, “Whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away.”  The wisdom of the ancients, where is it?  It is wholly gone.  A schoolboy to-day knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew; his knowledge has vanished away.  You put yesterday’s newspaper in the fire:  its knowledge has vanished away.  You buy the old editions of the great encyclopaedias for a few cents:  their knowledge has vanished away.  Look how the coach has been superseded by the use of steam.  Look how electricity has superseded that, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion.  One of the greatest living authorities, Sir William Thompson, said in Scotland, at a meeting at which I was present, “The steam-engine is passing away.”  “Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.”  At every workshop you will see, in the back yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels, a few levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust.  Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city.  Men flocked in from the country to see the great invention; now it is superseded, its day is done.  And all the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old.