'But the greatest of these is charity.' Charity is greater than great
talents. Charity is greater than great industry. Charity is greater
than great learning and great literature. Charity is greater than great
faith. Charity is greater than great prayer. For charity is nothing
less than the Divine Nature Itself in the heart of man. In all English
literature two books stand out beside one another and are alone in this
supreme respect of charity: William Law's _Spirit of Love_, and Sir
Thomas Browne's _Religio Medici_.




SELECTED PASSAGES


SIR THOMAS ON HIMSELF


I have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane
inclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written
and prescribed laws of charity; and if I hold the true anatomy of myself,
I am delineated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue. For I am
of a constitution so general that it comports and sympathiseth with all
things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour,
air, anything. I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs,
snails, and toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but
being amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find them agree
with my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a
churchyard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a
serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander: at the sight of a toad or viper