The Supreme Gift: Love Is the Greatest Thing in the World

Love is humankind's supreme gift. Paulo Coelho, the internationally bestselling author of The Alchemist, teaches us how to embrace it.

“I thought that I had already thought about everything you could think about Love when Henry Drummond’s sermon fell into my hands. My life changed a lot from the moment I read the words in this book and tried to put his teaching into practice.”—Paulo Coelho

What is love? In the 19th century, the young missionary Henry Drummond defined love as the culmination of nine elements:

1. patience,
2. kindness,
3. generosity,
4. humility,
5. gentleness,
6. dedication,
7. tolerance,
8. sincerity, and
9. innocence.

He laid this out in his sermon, “The Greatest Thing in the World,” which has become a classic and is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful texts ever written on love. Reflecting on this sermon and its subject, St. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, the admired spiritual teacher Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, a fable of following your dream and one of Oprah’s “Best Self-Help Books of a Generation,” brings us on his own journey of deepening his practice of Love.

Contrary to what we are used to hearing, the greatest treasure in the spiritual life is not faith, but love. No matter what your religious beliefs are, this feeling is, without doubt, the most rewarding way to live. In The Supreme Gift, Paulo Coelho adapts Henry Drummond’s text, offering a real and powerful message that will help us incorporate love into our daily life and experience all its transformational power in our lives.

Freely adapted from the text by Henry Drummond