Page:The Power of the Spirit.djvu/104

Rh So we begin with Wyclif, writing 'God is charite', and end with the 'Charity Organization Society', and the unemployed carrying banners with the words 'We want Justice, and not Charity'. And the Revised Version completes the process by taking the word clean out of the Bible.

So the special word agapè, coined because the existing Greek words were sensual or inadequate, and used one hundred and seventeen times in the New Testament, has now no English equivalent, except the word which we use also of the passion of a man for his mistress. We have worked back to paganism: the very word Caritas which the Vulgate uses (with dilectio), because of the erotic associations of amor, has been deprived of its meaning during the last few centuries. Our only consolation is that the meaning of the word 'love' has certainly been greatly extended and heightened in the process. But we have no proper word for the love between God and man, and no word for the love of humanity —unless we can agree to recover 'charity' by a rigid refusal to use it of 'almsgiving' except 'philanthropy', a word the mere savour of which shows what we have made of it. And neither of these has a verb! A Christian has two duties—to love God and to love his neighbour—but he has not yet invented a proper verb to describe either action.

Now S. Paul has the reputation of being less the Apostle of Love than S. John, mainly because