we have had our theologies constructed in disregard of the domination of that one of these three principles which Saint Paul exalts. It has been in terms of faith, and faith given a very definitive construction, that our theological thinking with regard to Christianity has been chiefly done. Little by little however the proportions have changed, and now love, as one of the three great fundamental principles of Christianity, is coming to its own, not as a principle of action only but as a regulative principle also of our thought.
But it is a strange thing that no one has ever arisen, apparently, to say of hope what the intellect of the Church, over against Paul's judgment, has been prepared to say of faith. He declared that of these three, love is the greatest. The current opinion of Christian thought through the Christian centuries has contended that faith was the greatest. What would men say if some one should arise now to restore the proportions, who would make bold to declare, "Now abideth faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is hope"? Surely the day will come some time when hope will come to its own, when the Christian heart and mind will no longer be content to construe its interpretation of Christianity in terms either of love or of faith, or of love and faith together, but will insist that these three abide—faith and love and hope.
